Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The year 2023 marks 50 years of mass incarceration in the United States. This timely volume highlights and addresses pressing social problems associated with the US’s heavy reliance on mass imprisonment. In an atmosphere of charged political debate, including tough on crime rhetoric, the editors bring together scholars and experts in the criminal justice field to provide the most up-to-date science on mass incarceration and its ramifications on justice-impacted people and our communities. This book offers practical solutions for advocates, policy and lawmakers, and the wider public for addressing mass incarceration and its effects to create a more just, fair and safer society.

An essential resource for former convicts and their families post-incarceration. The United States has the largest criminal justice system in the world, with currently over 7 million adults and juveniles in jail, prison, or community custody. Because they spend enough time in prison to disrupt their connections to their families and their communities, they are not prepared for the difficult and often life-threatening process of reentry. As a result, the percentage of these people who return to a life of crime and additional prison time escalates each year. Beyond Bars is the most current, practical, and comprehensive guide for ex-convicts and their families about managing a successful reentry into the community and includes: • Tips on how to prepare for release while still in prison • Ways to deal with family members, especially spouses and children • Finding a job • Money issues such as budgets, bank accounts, taxes, and debt • Avoiding drugs and other illicit activities • Free resources to rely on for support

Being behind bars doesnt make you, as an inmate, less of a human being. Therefore, do not identify yourself with your temporary situation. But since you are behind bars, you need to take responsibility. And while taking responsibility, you need to forgive yourself and forgive those who might have done you wrong. And once you forgive, then you need to live life in jail, in prison, or under house arrest by following rules and demonstrating good behavior to help make your sentence easier and maybe shorter. And until you get free, do not waste your time in a cell doing nothing of value; instead, put your potential, abilities, and gifts to use. And lastly, mentally prepare yourself to live life beyond bars by applying every single lesson learned from the cell. The church and society need to address the issue of ex-inmates reentry as partners and complement each other in facing this issue. The society and the church need to understand that just because these individuals are behind bars, that doesnt make them any less human than everybody else. They have a right to live, a right to be forgiven, and a right to be accepted back into society. These individuals are called inmates while serving time, but once they have paitd their dues and are set free, that name changes to ex-inmates and should eventually switch to citizens. Where society falls short, the church needs to pick up the slack and serve these citizens. And where the church falls short, society needs to step in and help these citizens. We cannot afford to let these ex-inmates live in a life cycle where they go in and out of jail, prison, and house arrest. We have to prove the statistics wrong. Society can provide programs to help these citizens reintegrate much more smoothly. The church can finally become what it was intended to be and provide a safe environment in which these restored citizens will live a life worthy of being called citizens and not return to old behavior and a life back behind bars.

Prisons don’t work, but prisoners do. Prisons are often critiqued as unjust, but we hear little about the daily labour of incarcerated workers — what they do, how they do it, who they do it for and under which conditions. Unions protect workers fighting for better pay and against discrimination and occupational health and safety concerns, but prisoners are denied this protection despite being the lowest paid workers with the least choice in what they do — the most vulnerable among the working class. Starting from the perspective that work during imprisonment is not “rehabilitative,” this book examines the reasons why people should care about prison labour and how prisoners have struggled to organize for labour power in the past. Unionizing incarcerated workers is critical for both the labour movement and struggles for prison justice, this book argues, to negotiate changes to working conditions as well as the power dynamics within prisons themselves.

Millions of children around the world continue to be adversely impacted when they suffer the loss of a mother or father due to incarceration. Nothing is more powerful than being up close and personal with children of the incarcerated who share their real-life stories in this poignant and insightful book. Their first-hand accounts help the reader to put a face to the numbers and see life from their vantage point. Judges, social workers, prison superintendents, corrections department administrators, formerly incarcerated fathers, incarcerated mothers and fathers, and caregivers, including mothers and grandmothers, also share eye-opening stories. This powerful book provides an opportunity to learn about international programs, as well as programs in the US, that are making a difference in the lives of these children and to learn about policies and best practices for engaging with children of the incarcerated, their parents, and caregivers.

This is a penetrating critique of our criminal justice and penal systems from the unique, firsthand experiences of its priest-prisoner author. His conclusion is that they are “sick, broken, rudderless systems that neither correct nor rehabilitate offenders, nor help or heal victims.” A compelling case is made—from practical, biblical and humane arguments—for moving from retributive-punishment models of seeking justice to restorative-rehabilitative ones. Restorative justice actively involves victims, offenders and the community in a joint process of working toward healing, restitution, rehabilitation and reconciliation. Incarceration becomes only one option, rather than the foregone conclusion. Specific proposals are made for reforming the justice, prison and parole systems. Examples of working models are presented. Evaluation tools and discussion guides are provided. Christians will find rich meditative material and spiritual challenges, as the author plumbs the scriptures and Catholic social justice teachings for personal moral answers and principled civic policies. One chapter offers examples of what individuals, parishes and dioceses can and are doing to promote restorative justice. A cross-reference is included to the November 2000 document on criminal justice by the U.S. Catholic bishops. Topics covered include: the relationship of poverty, race, mental illness and drug addiction to incarceration; capital punishment; the consequences of three-strikes and minimum-mandatory sentencing; the effects of politics on policy; inadequate legal representation for the poor.

Women, Gender, and Crime: Core Concepts provides you with a complete and concise view into the intersection of gender and the criminal justice system. Author Stacy L. Mallicoat explores core topics on women as victims, offenders, and criminal justice professionals as they interact with various areas of the criminal justice system. She investigates relevant subjects that are not found in many traditional texts, including women who work as victim advocates and international issues of crime and justice relating to gender. Key Features: This text discusses women and victimization prior to covering women as offenders, because victimization is often a precursor to offending. Case Studies present compelling examples that connect concepts to real-life occurrences to reinforce learning and cover key issues, such as, sexual victimization in the military, stalking on college campuses, financial challenges for incarcerated women, pregnancy and policing, and self-care for victim advocates. Coverage of critical topics introduce you to important issues such as gender representation in criminal justice academia, multiple marginalities and LGBT populations, cyberstalking, labor trafficking, and challenges faced by women as criminal justice practitioners. Statistics, graphs, and tables demonstrate the most recent trends in the field to give students an accurate picture of the criminal justice system today.

This book brings to the management of nonprofit organizations and public sector organizations the kind of concepts that have long been applied to commercial firms. Management thinking has long been concentrated on the problems of managing commercial organizations. Authors Sandler and Hudson set out to study the best managed nonprofit and government organizations and to determine what they did to achieve their success. The authors found that there is a close similarity between the management thinking of these organizations and that of profit-making firms. Each type of firm defined who their customers were and how to best serve them. They looked for ways of selling their particular product. They formed partnerships with other organizations in pursuit of their ultimate goals. They encouraged innovation among their workers. They diffused power down through the organizations to the lowest level possible. They created an atmosphere that made their workers feel valued. And they had extensive systems for communicating within and outside the organizations. The book develops these concepts in separate chapters and describes the organizations the authors study as examples. Sandler and Hudson are experienced writers who have produced a straightforward, non-technical work that analyzes the special problems and concerns that these organizations share and offers a set of effective organizing principles to improve their management.

Life's hardships try to come in and steal your power to dream and your ability to hope. That's what I want to share with you through this book ...My Story. How after 3 months of being married, the love of my life was taken to Federal Prison. And how I used the Power in waiting, as my life was falling apart, to strengthen myself to fight the weights, and become resilient and formidable. I pray this story not only empowers you, but inspires you to get up from the broken pieces of life and dream again. Enabling you take the pain you have endured and lived through, and create something great out of it. And when the wait is over, you will know that things do get better... you will be coming out swinging in greatness, and a much grander version of who you were before.