In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, Western societies entered a climate of austerity which has limited the penal expansion experienced in the US, UK and elsewhere over recent decades. These altered conditions have led to introspection and new thinking on punishment even among those on the political right who were previously champions of the punitive turn. This volume brings together a group of international leading scholars with a shared interest in using this opportunity to encourage new avenues of reform in the penal sphere. Justice is a famously contested concept and this book takes a deliberately capacious approach to the question of how justice can be mobilised to inform new reform agendas. Some of the contributors revisit an antique question in penal theory and reconsider the question of what fair or just punishment should look like today. Others seek to make gender central to understanding of crime and punishment, or actively reflect on the part that related concepts such as human rights, legitimacy and trust can and should play in thinking about the creation of more just crime control arrangements. Faced with the expansive penal developments of recent decades, much research and commentary about crime control has been gloom-laden and dystopian. By contrast, this volume seeks to contribute to a more constructive sensibility in the social analysis of penality: one that is worldly, hopeful and actively engaged in thinking about how to create more just penal arrangements. Justice and Penal Reform is a key resource for academics and as a supplementary text for students undertaking courses on punishment, penology, prisons, criminal justice and public policy. This book approaches penal reform from an international perspective and offers a fresh and diverse approach within an established field.

While in Plato‘s time there may have been some truth to his belief that there can only be "one single justice, and one single law," such is not the case today. Criminal justice systems vary widely across the world in their approaches to the problem of crime. Bringing together the collective wisdom of Cliff Roberson and Dilip K. Das, two world

This book examines the nature of relations between penal reform campaigners, journalists and policymakers at the crime-media nexus. With a particular focus on women’s penal policy, Birkett uncovers how reform strategies have augmented and developed under changing governments and the news media spotlight. While penal reformers have traditionally relied on the language of humanitarianism to influence the direction of policy, there remains an array of political and cultural sticking points. With a policy-focused orientation, this study provides a number of pragmatic and practical tips for those wishing to think more strategically about their ability to influence politicians, the media and the public. With unprecedented access to over thirty policy elites working around Westminster and Whitehall during the development of the Corston agenda (and beyond), this engaging and timely work exposes the triumphs and tribulations of such actors for the very first time.

This insightful book focuses on developments since the publication in 2007 of the Corston Report into women and criminal justice. While some of its recommendations were accepted by government, actual policy has restricted the scale and scope of change. The challenges of working with women in the current climate of change and uncertainty are also explored, seeking to translate lessons from good practice to policy development and recommending future directions resulting from the coalition government’s Transforming Rehabilitation plans. This timely analysis engages with wide-ranging considerations for policy makers, providers and practitioners of services and interventions for women who offend, and questions whether women should be treated differently in the criminal justice system.

Policy Networks in Criminal Justice is a comprehensive and challenging collection of studies on the workings of pressure groups in criminal justice and the articulation of pressure group politics and criminal justice policymaking. Against a back cloth of policy networks theory, the authors examine the role and activities of professional associations in the areas of policing, probation, law and the courts, together with campaigning groups, such as those in the areas of penal reform, civil liberties and victims. In addition, the book includes a study of the growing role of local authorities in the world of criminal justice.

The history of criminal justice in modern Germany has become a vibrant field of research, as demonstrated in this volume. Following an introductory survey, the twelve chapters examine major topics in the history of crime and criminal justice from Imperial Germany, through the Weimar and Nazi eras, to the early postwar years. These topics include case studies of criminal trials, the development of juvenile justice, and the efforts to reform the penal code, criminal procedure, and the prison system. The collection also reveals that the history of criminal justice has much to contribute to other areas of historical inquiry: it explores the changing relationship of criminal justice to psychiatry and social welfare, analyzes representations of crime and criminal justice in the media and literature, and uses the lens of criminal justice to illuminate German social history, gender history, and the history of sexuality.

In 2007, the Corston Report recommended a far-reaching, radical, ‘women-centred’ approach to women’s imprisonment in England and Wales. It suggested a ‘fundamental re-thinking’ about how services to support women in conflict with the law are delivered in custody and in the community, recommending the development and implementation of a decarceration strategy. This argued for appropriate treatment programmes in the community, reserving prison for only those women who commit serious and violent offences. Ten years on, what progress has been made? What is the relationship between Corston’s vision and a more radical abolitionist agenda? Drawing on a range of international scholarship, this book contributes to the critical discourse on the penal system, human rights, and social injustice, revealing the consequences of imprisonment on the lives of women and their families. A decade on from Corston's publication, it critically reviews her report, revealing the slow progress in meeting the reforms it proposed. Identifying the significant barriers to change, it questions the failure to reverse the unrelenting growth of the women’s prison population or to transform state responses to women’s offending. Reflecting the global expansion of women’s imprisonment, particularly marked in advanced democratic societies, the chapters include comparative contributions from jurisdictions where Corston’s recommendations have relevance. It concludes with a critical appraisal of reformism and the case for penal abolition. Essential for applied and theory courses on prisons, punishment, and penology; social justice and the criminology of human rights; gender and crime; and feminist criminology.

This book represents the first major analysis of Anglo-Australian youth justice and penality to be published and it makes significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the wider field of comparative criminology. By exploring trends in law, policy and practice over a forty-year period, the book critically surveys the ‘moving images’ of youth justice regimes and penal cultures, the principal drivers of reform, the core outcomes of such processes and the overall implications for theory building. It addresses a wide range of questions including: How has the temporal and spatial patterning of youth justice and penality evolved since the early 1980s to the present time? What impacts have legislative and policy reforms imposed upon processes of criminalisation, sentencing practices and the use of penal detention for children and young people? How do we comprehend both the diverse ways in which public representations of ‘young offenders’ are shaped, structured and disseminated and the varied, conflicting and contradictory effects of such representations? To what extent do international human rights standards influence law, policy and practice in the realms of youth justice and penality? To what extent are youth justice systems implicated in the production and reproduction of social injustices? How, and to what degree, are youth justice systems and penal cultures internationalised, nationalised, regionalised or localised? The book is essential reading for researchers, students and tutors in criminology, criminal justice, law, social policy, sociology and youth studies.

This volume brings together scholars and practitioners specialising in juvenile justice from the US, Europe, alongside scholars from Africa and Asia who are working on human rights issues in developing countries or countries in transition. The book thus presents two types of papers, the first being descriptive and analytical academic papers on whole systems of juvenile justice or certain parts thereof (e.g., aftercare, restorative justice, etc.). These topics are presented as essential for the development of new juvenile justice systems. The second group of papers deal with efforts to promote reform through international activity (PRI, DCI, DIHR), and through efforts to utilise modern theory in national reforms in developing countries (Malawi, Nepal, and Serbia) or in countries experiencing current or recent political and systemic changes or developments (South Africa, Germany, and Poland). The volume is also intended to throw light on recent trends in juvenile crime in various countries, the relationship between actual developments and popular and political perceptions and reactions to such developments, including the efforts to locate effective alternatives to the incarceration of young offenders. At the same time as the search for such alternatives is being intensified through international exchange and experimentation, the amelioration of harsh measures against juvenile law violators is often countered by political and public outcries for security and demonstrative public intervention against misbehavior. A streak of new moralism is clearly discernable as a counteracting force against more humane reform efforts. The volume throws light on developments in the actual parameters of juvenile offending, public and political demands for security and public intervention, and measures to provide interventions which are at the same time compatible with international human rights instruments.

This volume on penitentiary systems in the Americas offers a long-overdue look at the prisons that exist at the forefront of the ongoing struggle against drugs and violence throughout North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. From Haiti to Bolivia, the authors examine the conditions in these systems, and allow several common themes to emerge, including the alarming prevalence of lengthy pre-trial detention and the often abysmal living conditions in these institutions. Taken together, this comprises the first comparative overview of the use and abuse of prisons in the Americas.