This is the most comprehensive and ambitious book on prisons to have been published, a key text for anybody studying the subject and an essential work of reference for practitioners working in prisons and other parts of the criminal justice system. It is especially timely in view of the many changes and debates about the role of prisons and their future organisation and management as part of the National Offender Management Service. A key aim of the book is to explore a wide range of historical and contemporary issues relating to prisons, imprisonment and prison management, and to chart likely future trends. Chapters in the book are written by leading scholars in the field, and reflect the range and depth of prison research and scholarship. Like the Handbook of Policing and Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety the Handbook on Prisons will be the essential book on the subject.

The Handbook on Prisons and Jails brings together some of the brightest scholars and thinkers in the field to offer a wide range of perspectives for understanding the experiences of persons incarcerated or working/volunteering within carceral institutions. The assembled chapters consider what is known in the area while identifying emerging areas for theoretical, empirical, and policy work. The volume includes contributions on numerous topics and areas related to penal control, containment, living, and/or working in carceral institutions and addresses methodological considerations for doing research with individuals incarcerated in jail or prison. This collection is essential reading for scholars and students seeking an up-to-date guide to contemporary issues facing corrections and sentencing. It also provides practitioners with valuable resources for developing socially informed policies and practices.

The Oxford Handbook of Prisons and Imprisonment provides the only single source that bridges social scientific and behavioral perspectives, providing graduate students with a more comprehensive understanding of the topic, academics with a body of knowledge that will more effectively inform their own research, and practitioners with an overview of evidence-based best practices.

The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography provides an expansive overview of the challenges presented by qualitative, and particularly ethnographic, enquiry. The chapters reflect upon the means by which ethnographers aim to gain understanding, make sense of what they learn and the way they represent their finished work. The Handbook offers urgent insights relevant to current trends in the growth of imprisonment worldwide. In an era of mass incarceration, human-centric ethnography provides an important counter to quantitative analysis and the audit culture on which prisons are frequently judged. The Handbook is divided into four parts. Part I ('About Prison Ethnography') assesses methodological, theoretical and pragmatic issues related to the use of ethnographic and qualitative enquiry in prisons. Part II ('Through Prison Ethnography') considers the significance of ethnographic insights in terms of wider social or political concerns. Part III ('Of Prison Ethnography') analyses different aspects of the roles ethnographers take and how they negotiate their research settings. Part IV ('For Prison Ethnography') includes contributions that convincingly extend the value of prison ethnography beyond the prison itself. Bringing together contributions by some of the world's leading scholars in criminology and prison studies, this authoritative volume maps out new directions for future research. It will be an indispensable resource for practitioners, students, academics and researchers who use qualitative social research methods to further their understanding of prisons.

This extensive Handbook addresses a range of contemporary issues related to Prison Tourism across the world. It is divided into seven sections: Ethics, Human Rights and Penal Spectatorship; Carceral Retasking, Curation and Commodification of Punishment; Meanings of Prison Life and Representations of Punishment in Tourism Sites; Death and Torture in Prison Museums; Colonialism, Relics of Empire and Prison Museums; Tourism and Operational Prisons; and Visitor Consumption and Experiences of Prison Tourism. The Handbook explores global debates within the field of Prison Tourism inquiry; spanning a diverse range of topics from political imprisonment and persecution in Taiwan to interpretive programming in Alcatraz, and the representation of incarcerated Indigenous peoples to prison graffiti. This Handbook is the first to present a thorough examination of Prison Tourism that is truly global in scope. With contributions from both well-renowned scholars and up-and-coming researchers in the field, from a wide variety of disciplines, the Handbook comprises an international collection at the cutting edge of Prison Tourism studies. Students and teachers from disciplines ranging from Criminology to Cultural Studies will find the text invaluable as the definitive work in the field of Prison Tourism.

Written by activists and scholars based in Australia, Kenya, Pakistan, New Zealand, South Africa, Uganda and the USA, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Prison Education offers the first global state-of-the-field overview of research into educational practices and programs in prisons. It covers the history of the field and puts forward future directions for research. The range of topics covered include discussions of how gender, race, sexuality, indigeneity, age and faith impact incarceration rates around the world; educational leadership; STEM education; creative writing programs; distance learning; abolition; education after prison and education for correctional staff. The book includes a Foreword by Donald Sawyer, III (Director of Correctional Education, Quinnipiac University, USA).

This handbook brings together expertise from a range of disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts to address a key question facing prison policymakers, architects and designers – what kind of carceral environments foster wellbeing, i.e. deliver a rehabilitative, therapeutic environment, or other ‘positive’ outcomes? The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Design offers insights into the construction of custodial facilities, alongside consideration of the critical questions any policymaker should ask in commissioning the building of a site for human containment. Chapters present experience from Australia, Chile, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – jurisdictions which vary widely in terms of the history and development of their prison systems, their punitive philosophies, and the nature of their public discourse about the role and purpose of imprisonment, to offer readers theories, frameworks, historical accounts, design approaches, methodological strategies, empirical research, and practical approaches.

This handbook brings together the international research focussing on prisoners’ families and the impact of imprisonment on them. Under-researched and under-theorised in the realm of scholarship on imprisonment, this handbook encompasses a broad range of original, interdisciplinary and cross-national research. This volume includes the experiences of those from countries often unrepresented in the prisoner’s families’ literature such as Russia, Australia, Israel and Canada. This broad coverage allows readers to consider how prisoners’ families are affected by imprisonment in countries embracing very different penal philosophies; ranging from the hyper-incarceration being experienced in the USA to the less punitive, more welfare-orientated practices under Scandinavian ‘exceptionalism’. Chapters are contributed by scholars from numerous and diverse disciplines ranging from law, nursing, criminology, psychology, human geography, and education studies. Furthermore, contributions span various methodological and epistemological approaches with important contributions from NGOs working in this area at a national and supranational level. The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family makes a significant contribution to knowledge about who prisoners’ families are and what this status means in practice. It also recognises the autonomy and value of prisoners’ families as a research subject in their own right.

This Handbook covers the special needs of eight groups of prisoners, which have a particularly vulnerable status in prisons. They are: Prisoners with mental health care needs; Prisoners with disabilities; Ethnic and racial minorities and indigenous peoples; Foreign national prisoners; Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) prisoners; Older prisoners; Prisoners with terminal illness and Prisoners under sentence of death. All information, guidelines and recommendations provided for these groups apply to adult male and female members of these categories of prisoners. The Handbook is designed to be used by all actors involved in the criminal justice system, including policymakers, legislators, prison managers, prison staff, members of non-governmental organizations and other individuals interested or active in the field of criminal justice and prison reform.

The Routledge Handbook on American Prisons is an authoritative volume that provides an overview of the state of U.S. prisons and synthesizes the research on the many facets of the prison system. The United States is exceptional in its use of incarceration as punishment. It not only has the largest prison population in the world, but also the highest per-capita incarceration rate. Research and debate about mass incarceration continues to grow, with mounting bipartisan agreement on the need for criminal justice reform. Divided into four sections (Prisons: Security, Operations and Administration; Types of Offenders and Populations; Living and Dying in Prison; and Release, Reentry, and Reform), the volume explores the key issues fundamental to understanding the U.S. prison system, including the characteristics of facilities; inmate risk assessment and classification, prison administration and employment, for-profit prisons, special populations, overcrowding, prison health care, prison violence, the special circumstances of death row prisoners, collateral consequences of incarceration, prison programming, and parole. The final section examines reform efforts and ideas, and offers suggestions for future research and attention. With contributions from leading correctional scholars, this book is a valuable resource for scholars with an interest in U.S. prisons and the issues surrounding them. It is structured to serve scholars and graduate students studying corrections, penology, institutional corrections, and other related topics.