Escape Routes: Contemporary Perspectives on Life After Punishment addresses the reasons why people stop offending, and the processes by which they are rehabilitated or resettled back into the community. Engaging with, and building upon, renewed criminological interest in this area, Escape Routes nevertheless broadens and enlivens the current debate. First, its scope goes beyond a narrowly-defined notion of crime and includes, for example, essays on religious redemption, the lives of ex-war criminals, and the relationship between ethnicity and desistance from crime. Second, contributors to this volume draw upon a number of areas of contemporary research, including urban studies, philosophy, history, religious studies, and ethics, as well as criminology. Examining new theoretical work in the study of desistance and exploring the experiences of a number of groups whose experiences of life after punishment do not usually attract much attention, Escape Routes provides new insights about the processes associated with reform, resettlement and forgiveness. Intended to drive our understanding of life after punishment forward, its rich array of theoretical and substantive papers will be of considerable interest to criminologists, lawyers, and sociologists.

This book provides a unique analysis of prisons and the violence at work inside them. It not only addresses aspects such as racial discrimination, especially in US prisons, but also gender differences, specific criminal groups operating within prisons, the reintegration processes and its failures. Combining works by various authors, it presents diverse perspectives on prison violence: in countries ranging from the USA to Australia, crossing European countries such as Portugal and Spain, among others, but also specific aspects such as prohibitions on phone calls, the economic crisis, and the current challenges of mass incarceration. As such, it offers a broad overview of several problems relevant to all scholars interested in deepening their understanding of violence in prisons.

Essential for anyone undertaking a dissertation or thesis, this title presents clear and straightforward information and advice on the process and functions of methodology.

The essays selected for this volume illustrate the growing interest in and importance of crime that is both environmental and transnational in nature. The topics covered range from pollution and waste to biodiversity and wildlife crimes, and from the violation of human rights associated with the exploitation of natural resources through to the criminogenic implications of climate change. The collection provides insight into the nature and dynamics of this type of crime and examines in detail who is harmed and what can be done about it. Differential victimisation and contemporary developments in environmental law enforcement are also considered. Collectively, these essays lay the foundations for a criminology that is forward looking, global in its purview, and that deals with the key environmental issues of the present age.

The formation of a coalition government, at a time of economic crisis, is likely to prove a watershed for criminal justice. Following a review of the achievements and disappointments in criminal justice over the last thirty years, 'Where next for criminal justice?' aims to stimulate fresh thinking in criminal justice by considering the policies which need to be adopted, how they should be formed, and the principles and values which should be adopted.

Corrections officials faced with rising populations and shrinking budgets have increasingly welcomed "faith-based" providers offering services at no cost to help meet the needs of inmates. Drawing from three years of on-site research, this book utilizes survey analysis along with life-history interviews of inmates and staff to explore the history, purpose, and functioning of the Inmate Minister program at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka "Angola"), America’s largest maximum-security prison. This book takes seriously attributions from inmates that faith is helpful for "surviving prison" and explores the implications of religious programming for an American corrections system in crisis, featuring high recidivism, dehumanizing violence, and often draconian punishments. A first-of-its-kind prototype in a quickly expanding policy arena, Angola’s unique Inmate Minister program deploys trained graduates of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout the prison. Inmates lead their own congregations and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cell block visitation, delivery of familial death notifications to fellow inmates, "sidewalk counseling" and tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and delivering "care packages" to indigent prisoners. Life-history interviews uncover deep-level change in self-identity corresponding with a growing body of research on identity change and religiously motivated desistance. The concluding chapter addresses concerns regarding the First Amendment, the dysfunctional state of U.S. corrections, and directions for future research.

Peer mentoring is an increasingly popular criminal justice intervention in custodial and community settings. Peer mentors are community members, often with lived experiences of criminal justice, who work or volunteer to help people in rehabilitative settings. Despite the growth of peer mentoring internationally, remarkably little research has been done in this field. This book offers the first in-depth analysis of peer mentoring in criminal justice. Drawing upon a rigorous ethnographic study of multiple community organisations in England, it identifies key features of criminal justice peer mentoring. Findings result from interviews with people delivering and using services and observations of practice. Peer Mentoring in Criminal Justice reveals a diverse practice, which can involve one-to-one sessions, group work or more informal leisure activities. Despite diversity, five dominant themes are uncovered. These include Identity, which is deployed to inspire change and elevate knowledge based on lived experiences; Agency, or a sense of self-direction, which emerges through dialogue between peers; Values or core conditions, including caring, listening and taking small steps; Change, which can be a terrifying and difficult struggle, yet can be mediated by mentors; and Power, which is at play within mentoring relationships and within the organisations, contexts and ideologies that surround peer mentoring. Peer mentoring offers mentors a practical opportunity to develop confidence, skills and hope for the future, whilst offering inspiration, care, empathy and practical support to others. Written in a clear and direct style this book will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, social theory and those interested in learning about the social effects of peer mentoring.

This book provides a comprehensive and positive reimagining of probation practice in England and Wales across all the key settings in which work with people subject to supervision takes place. Bringing together chapters co-authored by academics and practitioners, it offers an overall conceptualisation of the rehabilitative endeavour within the realities of a probation service recently unified after the acknowledged failure of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. Reimagining Probation Practice covers the main themes and job functions of probation practice, from court work to individual and group interventions, to resettlement and public protection, to partnerships, to education and training. Each chapter includes a brief critical history of the area of practice, the current policy context, the applicability of different forms of rehabilitation (personal, legal/judicial, social and moral) to this area of practice, an overview of current good practice and areas in need of development. The book argues that the principles of parsimony, proportionality and productiveness should be applied to the criminal justice system in its work to rehabilitate individuals. This book is essential reading for practitioners and all those engaged in probation training, as well as policy makers, leaders, managers and those interested in social and criminal justice. .

Since the 1960s, the field of victimology has developed into a variegated discipline with its own theoretical and methodological traditions. In the early 1990s two texts were published—Towards a Critical Victimology (Fattah, 1992) and Critical Victimology (Mawby and Walklate, 1994)—that concretized critical victimology as a paradigm within victimology. Since then, the field has remained conceptually stale and with few a few exceptions there has not been a considerable lacuna of works from a critical perspective. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities provides a rejoinder to the two aforementioned texts and demonstrate how critical victimology can be reconceptualized, where interventions can be made in this victimological paradigm, and possibilities for future theorizing and research in this provocative field. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology includes eleven papers on the forms of victimization and issues pertinent to victims written by leading and emerging international scholars in the field of critical victimology. It is interdisciplinary in scope and contains contributions from leading and emergent international scholars on victims and victimization. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology serves as a crucible to demonstrate the complexities of and the multitude of factors that interact to complicate victim status, the vagaries of victim response, and the phenomenology of violence and victimization.

The risk assessment process, the interventions and treatment commenced as a result of it and the theory behind it are central to the administration of criminal justice programmes around the world. Most youth and adult corrections departments routinely conduct risk assessments, which are then used to inform the nature and intensity of subsequent criminal justice interventions. In this unique and important text, a team of the world's leading researchers in the field of criminal justice come together to provide a critique of this risk paradigm, and to provide practical guidance for professionals, students and academics on how to move to a more effective way of working with offenders. Divided into three sections, the book provides coverage of topics such as: - The development of risk assessment in criminal justice practice, and its advantages and disadvantages. - The significance of risk factor research in understanding and explaining juvenile delinquency – as well as the problems it creates. - The argument that the risk paradigm fails to accommodate diversity, further disadvantaging women, ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups. - The various ways in which real or imagined risk posed by offenders has been regulated under the risk paradigm, the powerful influence of media reporting, and ways of moving 'beyond risk' to support successful reintegration of offenders. - Ways forward for criminal justice interventions that do not rely on risk, but focus rather on the vitally important aspects of social context, relationships and motivation. With strong links between theory and practice, Beyond the Risk Paradigm in Criminal Justice provides a fresh new direction for criminal justice work.