This article explores the practical relevance of pragmatism as a research paradigm through the example of a piece of pragmatic research that not only used both quantitative and qualitative research...

Doing Mixed Methods Research Pragmatically: Implications for the Rediscovery of Pragmatism as a Research Paradigm:

The ‘pains of imprisonment’ have been a longstanding concern within prison sociology. This article revisits the topic, suggesting that modern penal practices have created some new burdens and frust...

Depth, weight, tightness: Revisiting the pains of imprisonment

Direct Protective and Buffering Protective Factors in the Development of Youth Violence

The incidence of acts of interpersonal violence in prisons is influenced by the characteristics of inmates but also by aspects of the prison environment and by the continual dynamic interaction between prisoners, prison staff, and the physical and social context within which they are placed. Enhanced physical restrictions can often reduce levels of violence due to restrictions on opportunity but may also sometimes lead to a loss of legitimacy that can escalate violence. Previously understudied aspects of prison social life include routines and staff-prisoner relationships, both of which are central to the maintenance of everyday social order. Prisoner-staff assaults are particularly associated with the potential "friction points" of the prison regime and the prison day, but some officers seem more skilled at handling these friction points in ways that avoid violence. The study of prisoner-prisoner violence presents a paradox, with a frequently described pervasiveness of the rule of force within inmate soc...

Interpersonal Violence and Social Order in Prisons

This article explicates and extends the analyses put forth by the author in his book, Prisons of Poverty, which argues that the generalised increase of carceral populations in advanced societies is due to the growing use of the penal system as an instrument for managing social insecurity and containing the social disorders created at the bottom of the class structure by neo-liberal policies of economic deregulation and social-welfare retrenchment. It retraces the steps whereby this ‘neo-liberal penality’ was elaborated in the United States and then diffused throughout the world, but contends that European countries are not blindly following the American road to mass imprisonment: Europe's path to the penal state entails the conjoint intensification of both social and penal treatments of poverty and the activation of the policing functions of welfare services leading to a form of ‘social panoptism’. Only the building of a Europe-wide social state can check the spread of the penalisation of poverty and its deleterious social consequences.

The Penalisation of Poverty and the rise of Neo-Liberalism

This volume brings together research principles with the practical issues of carrying out research to provide a clear and fascinating guide to the reality of contemporary criminological research. The experience of leading experts is combined with first-hand accounts from new scholars, to provide a text that students can refer to throughout their criminological studies. Doing Research on Crime and Justice is divided into five parts, and covers practice and politics in criminology; theory, data and types of criminological research; research on crime, criminals and victims; research on criminal justice agencies and institutions, and concludes with four case studies from new scholars. Incorporating a new international perspective, this volume also addresses contemporary issues such as cyber crime, and provides guidance on conducting research in situations of cultural diversity.

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Doing research on crime and justice

MIND GAMESWhere the action is in Prisons

John Howard's original "The State of Our Prisons" was a famous landmark in the history of literature on crime, criminal justice and attitudes to offenders in England and Wales. On publication towards the end of the 18th century, its impact was immediate and profound, effecting a change in attitude towards the incarceration of offenders. What, then, is the state of our prisons today, some 200 years after his death? In this original study, two leading experts offer a broad-ranging survey of the prison system. The result is a systematic and comprehensive account of the contemporary state of the prisons in England and Wales, which should contribute to the current debate on prison reform.

The state of our prisons

The future of the prison system

The prison system of England and Wales relies on a number of measures, said to be 'merely administrative' in character, to maintain order in its establishments. In this paper the official discourse on order and control in prisons is examined and the characteristic methods of identifying 'control problem' prisoners are criticised. The processes by which 'control problems' are socially constructed and then entered into the official discourse are explored through an analysis of 'disciplinary transfers' especially the use of the Circular Instruction 10 of 1974 procedure whereby prisoners can be transferred to special cells in local prisons for a 28 day 'cooling offs period. The analysis is based on observations carried out in five prisons and interviews with both prisoners and security staff as well as documentary records.

Roy D. King

Papers

Doing research on crime and justice

MIND GAMESWhere the action is in Prisons

The state of our prisons

The future of the prison system

'My Geranium Is Subversive': Some Notes on the Management of Trouble in Prisons