Prison

About: Prison is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25120 publications have been published within this topic receiving 470474 citations. The topic is also known as: jail & gaol.

Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison

Abstract: The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century's major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name 'S-21'. The facility was an interrogation center where more than 14,000 'enemies' were questioned, tortured, and made to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes. Fewer than a dozen prisoners left S-21 alive. During the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era, the existence of S-21 was known only to those inside it and a few high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials. When invading Vietnamese troops discovered the prison in 1979, murdered bodies lay strewn about and instruments of torture were still in place. An extensive archive containing photographs of victims, cadre notebooks, and "DK" publications was also found. Chandler utilizes evidence from the S-21 archive as well as materials that have surfaced elsewhere in Phnom Penh. He also interviews survivors of S-21 and former workers from the prison. Documenting the violence and terror that took place within S-21 is only part of Chandler's story. Equally important is his attempt to understand what happened there in terms that might be useful to survivors, historians, and the rest of us. Chandler discusses the 'culture of obedience' and its attendant dehumanization, citing parallels between the Khmer Rouge executions and the Moscow Show Trails of the 1930s, Nazi genocide, Indonesian massacres in 1965-66, the Argentine military's use of torture in the 1970s, and the recent mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. In each of these instances, Chandler shows how turning victims into 'others' in a manner that was systematically devaluing and racialist made it easier to mistreat and kill them. More than a chronicle of Khmer Rouge barbarism, "Voices from S-21" is also a judicious examination of the psychological dimensions of state-sponsored terrorism that conditions human beings to commit acts of unspeakable brutality.

The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America

Abstract: THE PUNISHMENT IMPERATIVE: THE RISE AND FAILURE OF MASS INCARCERATION IN AMERICA Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost (2014). New York: New York University Press. pp 258 (hdbk) 19.99 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 978-0-8147-1719-6 Clear and Frost introduce their book by defining what the 'Punishment Imperative' (PI) is, and how the 'grand social experiment' of mass incarceration has shaped the course of the American criminal justice system over the past several decades: '[T]he Punishment Imperative began with the co-alignment of an array of forces that came together to make the explosive growth in the penal system a social and political possibility.' The authors argue that rising crime rates, media attention to victimization, high political priority, an emerging, large pool of unemployed young black men that came to symbolize an urban 'enemy' in which to wage 'wars' against, and a political economy that emphasized get-tough politics propelled the prison population and extended the reach of the correctional system starting in the 1970s. The book's timeliness allows the analysis of this storyline to be advanced by proposing that 2009 marked a shift in the mass incarceration trajectory, as prison numbers began to meaningfully drop for the first time in years, which, they contend, signifies the fall of the Punishment Imperative. (12) The authors support this (somewhat tentative) claim by arguing that the dominant driver for the reduction of dependence and overuse of prisons is the present economic crisis, though it is more complex than simple austerity: 'So while the current fiscal crisis is a motivating factor for the downsizing of the correctional system, it is not by itself the cause. The de-escalation of punishment is possible mainly because the sentiment of punitiveness has undergone an important shift (11).' This book, then, is about the rise, failure, and fall of the Punishment Imperative. Because of that, it is an interesting read for established academics, practitioners, and students alike. The first several chapters present a thorough and well-researched navigation through the development and growth of the Punishment Imperative. To begin, the historical context which laid the groundwork for the turn in public and political punitiveness in the 1970s is outlined. This introduction leads to a sophisticated examination of the PI as a 'grand social experiment', in which the authors argue that the PI as a social and political experiment is particularly insidious because 'the goal was never articulated, the full array of consequences was never considered, and the momentum built even as the forces driving the policy shifts diminished' (57). This is a persuasive section, specifically because it addresses broader moral concerns about the impact of such wide-reaching, yet often racially targeted, state-sanctioned controls on community and social justice: 'concern about crime became shorthand for a broader concern about what many perceived as the general breakdown of order' (60), in which race became a foundation for punishment (62). Chapter four provides a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the policies that preceded the Punishment Imperative (namely the 1967 Crime Commission report), those that contributed to the amplification and potency of the PI, and the apparent sea change in rhetoric and reform that is now taking place. …

The prison experience : disciplinary institutions and their inmates in early modern Europe

Abstract: The prison occupies a central position in the penal systems of most countries today. Many historians believe that imprisonment did not become a major judicial sanction until the nineteenth century. Pieter Spierenburg corrects this view. First as a disciplinary institution and later as a penal option, the prison has played an important role in European societies from the late sixteenth century to today. Spierenburg traces the evolution of the prison during the early modern period, with particular emphasis on the prisons of the Netherlands, Germany, and France, but with reference to all of Europe. Spierenburg looks at the daily lives of inmates, a focus that is unusual in historical studies of prisons. He also analyzes the long term nature of change in prisons and the conceptions of prisoners as persons who had broken away from family bonds. His work adds to our understanding of social change and daily life in early modern Europe and will appeal to historians, sociologists, and criminologists.

Social capital and offender reintegration: making probation desistance focused

Abstract: In recent years increased attention has been given to the later stages of criminal careers and, in particular, to the reasons why people stop offending. From both initial and subsequent explorations a number of factors have emerged as related to the termination of offending careers. For serious persistent offenders, betrayal by co-offenders, experiencing traumatic events while offending and finding prison increasingly hard to cope with have been offered as reasons for desistance (Cusson and Pinsoneault 1986; Shover 1996; Hughes 1998). For those less committed to a ‘criminal lifestyle’, leaving home, family formation, entry into the labour market and disassociation from delinquent peers appear to be more frequently associated with desistance (see Sampson and Laub 1993; Warr 1998; Farrall and Bowling 1999; Farrall 2000). Many of the results of academic investigations into desistance are corroborated by autobiographies of desistance (e.g. Devlin and Turney 1999) and analyses of those autobiographies (e.g. Maruna 1997).

The Nexus: Homelessness and Incarceration in Two American Cities

Abstract: Using street ethnography and interviews with homeless men in San Francisco and St Louis, this article examines the dynamic connection between incarceration and homelessness. Among the homeless men in the study, crimes of desperation, aggressive policing of status offenses, and the close proximity of many ex-cons created a strong likelihood of incarceration and reincarceration. Conversely, for jail and prison inmates, time inside consistently eroded employability, family ties, and other defences against homelessness: several of the men had become homeless for the first time directly following release from a carceral establishment. Each of these dynamics was present in both San Francisco and St Louis but the process of becoming homeless and the experience of homelessness itself varied significantly with the differing economic and cultural configurations presented by the two cities. In both cases, each trajectory reinforced the other, creating a homelessness/incarceration cycle more powerful than the sum of ...