Book•
Limits to Pain
01 Nov 1981-
About: The article was published on 1981-11-01 and is currently open access. It has received 228 citations till now.
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TL;DR: The authors argue that non-custodial sentences have proven more effective than incarceration in securing social reconciliation and preventing recidivism, and they avoid the serious social and personal costs of imprisonment.
Abstract: Restorative justice should have greater weight as a criterion in criminal justice sentencing practice. It permits a realistic recognition of the kinds of harm and damage caused by offences, and encourages individualized non-custodial sentencing options as ways of addressing these harms. Non-custodial sentences have proven more effective than incarceration in securing social reconciliation and preventing recidivism, and they avoid the serious social and personal costs of imprisonment. This paper argues in support of restorative justice as a guiding idea in sentencing. As part of this defence, it considers whether the use of the idea of restorative justice will conflate criminal law with civil law or displace the authority of the criminal courts, and whether the sentences it recommends are best thought of as punishments or alternatives to punishment.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, interviews with probation staff who were appointed to rural mid-Wales between the 1950s and 1980s were conducted to investigate the autonomy and responsibility that rural work offered.
Abstract: Rural probation work has been largely ignored by academic researchers. This article is based on interviews with probation staff who were appointed to rural mid‐Wales between the 1950s and 1980s. It shows that, contrary to the assumption that isolation is problematic, they enjoyed the autonomy and responsibility that rural work offered. They were proud to have contributed to a service which, in their view, held to traditional values and had lessons to offer to probation work as a whole. The article concludes that practice in small communities and non‐urban locations can be demonstrably effective and even sometimes advanced.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors conducted interviews with members of a self-help and campaign group formed by the families of victims of homicide where offenders are seen to have been unjustly acquitted.
Abstract: Based on in-depth interviews with members Justice After Acquittal - a self-help and campaign group formed by the families of victims of homicide where offenders are seen to have been unjustly acquitted - this study describes and analyses the issues, problems and injustices that the families? experienced at each stage of the criminal justice process, from initial police investigations though to the trial and beyond. The families craved information about what had happened to the victim and what would subsequently happen in response, and they understandably became preoccupied with the details of the police investigation and court case. In order to help them comprehend the homicide and adapt to their trauma, families developed narratives in an attempt to understand the events and individuals surrounding the case. They drew their knowledge from what they knew about the deceased and their lives, the details they had gleaned about the events surrounding the homicide itself, and often also what they knew about the moral character of the suspected offenders. Acquittal, however, smashed those narratives. Families? outlooks were once again shaken, exacerbating their trauma. This forced them to examine and re-examine the police?s initial investigation, the trial, and the main participants that had acquitted, or aided the acquittal of the defendants, and it lead them to lose all faith in the criminal justice system.
4 citations
TL;DR: The idea of a "left" has outlived its historical time and needs to be decently buried, along with the false conservatism that merely clothes an older liberal tradition in conservative rhetoric as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Faced with the unexpected growth of the new right, the left has asked itself how it can recover its former strength and momentum. Some call for a vigorous counterattack, a reassertion of the left-wing gospel in all its purity and messianic fervor. Others wait passively for another age of reform. More thoughtful people on the left have begun, however reluctantly, to acknowledge the legitimacy of some of the concerns that underlie the growth of contemporary conservatism. But even this last response is inadequate if it issues simply in a call for the left to appropriate conservative issues and then to give them a liberal twist. The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right. It lies in rejecting conventional political categories and redefining the terms of the political debate. The idea of a 'left' has outlived its historical time and needs to be decently buried, along with the false conservatism that merely clothes an older liberal tradition in conservative rhetoric. The old labels have no meaning anymore. They can only confuse the debate instead of clarifying it. They are products of an earlier era, the age of steam and steel, and wholly inadequate to the age of electronics, totalitarianism, and mass culture. Let us say good-bye to these old friends, fondly but firmly, and look elsewhere for guidance and moral support.1
4 citations
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors lay the theoretical and methodological foundations for a comprehensive, socio-historical and critical sociology of prison escape, which relies on the founding idea that escape not only breaks the prison but more fundamentally makes the prison: in other words, avoiding escapes constitute the deep raison d'etre of the prison.
Abstract: This introduction lays the theoretical and methodological foundations for a comprehensive, socio-historical and critical sociology of prison escape. This collective project relies on the founding idea that escape not only breaks the prison but more fundamentally makes the prison: in other words, avoiding escapes constitute the deep raison d'etre of the prison. This also entails a double critique. Firstly, a critique of the dominant instrumental-cum-normative analyses that implicitly or explicitly consider escape control and avoidance as the Alpha and Omega of any reflection about escape. And secondly, a critique of the geographically biased and euro-centric analyses that focus on Western imprisonment practices, and consequently reduce the possibility of grasping the great diversity of the social meanings and practices of escape all over the world. Within this framework, the contributions gathered here are based on diverse methodologies, but they are all driven by a desire to intensively study empirical "cases" of escape, in order to decipher the anthropological, sociological, political, cultural, or psychological situations and contexts that give escapes their specific social meanings. As such the contributions jointly address questions such as: How to analyze the link between escape and the structuration of everyday life and daily resistances within the prison walls? What are the functions and meanings of prison escapes during political transitions and revolutionary moments? Beyond the mere legal definitions, how is escape shaped by institutional, bureaucratic and professionals power relations? Why does prison escape remain such a central image in popular culture? And why do we secretly love escape?
4 citations
References
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TL;DR: In this article, a court procedure that restores the participants' rights to their own conflicts is outlined, where the participants have lost their rights to participate in conflict resolution in the past.
Abstract: CONFLICTS are seen as important elements in society. Highly industrialised societies do not have too much internal conflict, they have too little. We have to organise social systems so that conflicts are both nurtured and made visible and also see to it that professionals do not monopolise the handling of them. Victims of crime have in particular lost their rights to participate. A court procedure that restores the participants' rights to their own conflicts is outlined.
1,046 citations
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TL;DR: The authors of as discussed by the authors suggest that a wide range of services which were once produced in the money economy are increasingly provided informally on a self-service basis. But they do not consider the role of the state in the provision of these services.
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