Penology category: 518 books

Alcatraz Screw is a firsthand account from a prison guard’s perspective of some of the most storied years at the infamous U.S. Penitentiary at Alcatraz. George Gregory began his career as a guard for the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 1940. Following his training, he was sent to the federal prison...

Correctional Mental Health is a broad-based, balanced guide for students who are learning to treat criminal offenders in a correctional mental health practice. Featuring a wide selection of readings, this edited text offers a thorough grounding in theory, current research, professional practice, and...

From College Student to Real Estate Investor to Convicted Felon Pyerse Dandridge thought he was on the way up. After earning his BA in English from Sacramento State University, he was paying his daily expenses by toiling in a restaurant while working on his novel. But his purchase of five houses...

Thomas Jefferson developed the idea for the Virginia State Penitentiary and set the standard for the future of the American prison system. Designed by U.S. Capitol and White House architect Benjamin Latrobe, the "Pen" opened its doors in 1800. Vice President Aaron Burr was incarcerated there...

California is a state of immense contradictions.  Home to colossal wealth and long portrayed as a bastion of opportunity, it also has one of the largest prison populations in the United States and consistently ranks on the bottom of education indexes. Taking a unique, multifaceted insider’s perspective,...

“Life in a women’s prison is full of surprises,” writes Cristina Rathbone in her landmark account of life at MCI-Framingham. And so it is. After two intense court battles with prison officials, Rathbone gained unprecedented access to the otherwise invisible women of the oldest running women’s...

When teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Will got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range by a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month. One...

This extensive Handbook addresses a range of contemporary issues related to Prison Tourism across the world. It is divided into seven sections: Ethics, Human Rights and Penal Spectatorship; Carceral Retasking, Curation and Commodification of Punishment; Meanings of Prison Life and Representations...

This book explores the idea of the prison boundary, identifying where it is located, which processes and performances help construct and animate it, and who takes part in them. Although the relationship between prison and non-prison has garnered academic interest from various disciplines in the last...

'Punishment and Prisons is a scholarly, powerful and inspirational critique. With passion and humanity, Joe Sim strips neo-liberal penal policies of their reformist pretensions and demonstrates that prisons will continue to be brutal enforcers of gross economic inequalities until such time as the...

When John Cuffe entered Mountjoy as a young prison officer in May 1978, he stepped back into Victorian times. He knew nothing about jails, apart from what he had seen in black-and-white films on RTE: 'good' sheriffs and 'bad' hombres. He quickly learned that behind bars there is no black and white:...

In recent years the death penalty has sharply declined across Africa, but this trend belies actual public opinion and the retributivist sentiments held by political elites. This study explains capital punishment in Africa in terms of culturally specific notions of life and death as well as the colonial-era imposition of criminal and penal policy.

According to Statistics Canada, all crime rates -- including violent crime -- have been trending downward over the last twenty years. Yet the Harper government continues to insist Canadians are in the midst of a crime epidemic. This is their rationale for spending billions on new prisons, and for...

As more people filled the packed church, Jack was forced to move down the wall toward the front, until he was very near the altar. From that vantage point, he could see the young mothers face. He found himself staring at her, unable to look away. He didnt know why. Perhaps it was the terrible sadness...