Learning behind Bars is an oral history of former Irish republican prisoners in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland between 1971, the year internment was introduced, and 2000, when the high-security Long Kesh Detention Centre/HM Prison Maze closed. Dieter Reinisch outlines the role of politically motivated prisoners in ending armed conflicts as well as the personal and political development of these radical activists during their imprisonment. Based on extensive life-story interviews with Irish Republican Army (IRA) ex-prisoners, the book examines how political prisoners developed their intellectual positions through the interplay of political education and resistance. It sheds light on how prisoners used this experience to initiate the debates that eventually led to acceptance of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Politically relevant and instructive, Learning behind Bars illuminates the value of education, politics, and resistance in the harshest of social environments.

While scholarship on the education of youth behind bars has largely focused on boys, more than one in three youth arrests in the USA is female, and Girls Behind Bars sets out to address this imbalance. The book offers autobiographies, life-stories, and counter-stories in order to challenge simplistic generalizations and empirical prescriptions. Girls Behind Bars provides the educational community with critical perspectives that examine empiricist epistemologies and positivist methodologies that label certain groups of girls as delinquent and mark them for punitive and corrective treatment behind bars. Sharma opens up the discussion on girls' gender, desire, and sexuality by offering a language for these issues absent in educational discourse. Finally, the book supports calls for educators and practitioners in their desire to envision and create transformative spaces that enable young girls behind bars to reclaim their education. Including a foreword by William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, this important and powerful book gives voice to a neglected, silenced, and misrepresented population - young girls behind bars.

Radio produced and broadcast behind prison walls is redefining traditional meanings of ‘public service broadcasting’ and disrupting traditional power structures within the prison system. Focusing on one of the most interesting developments in UK prisons over the past 10 years, this book examines the early history of the Prison Radio Association and the formation of the first national radio station for prisoners. Highlighting the enduring importance of social values in broadcasting this book shows how radio can be used as a powerful force for social change. It will be of interest to those involved in media, criminal justice and social activism.

In an effort to create a more educated workforce in the United States, many community colleges are implementing new practices and strategies to assist under-prepared students. These efforts will ultimately support a stronger and more resilient global workforce. Examining the Impact of Community Colleges on the Global Workforce provides relevant theoretical and conceptual frameworks, best practices, and emerging empirical research about new approaches being employed in community colleges to prepare students for their post-collegiate careers. Featuring recent initiatives in educational settings, this publication is a critical reference source for higher education practitioners, policymakers, and graduate students in higher education administration programs interested in the innovative practices utilized by community colleges to educate underserved students.

Civil Rights and Federal Higher Education offers a renewed vision for higher education policy making, presenting an incisive analysis of the connections between educational politics and educational inequality. With a view toward the future, the editors assert that the thoughtful application of evidence-based solutions to complex policy problems can help establish a more just and equitable system of higher education. Edited by Nicholas Hillman and Gary Orfield, the volume focuses on federal policy debates that have significant racial and socioeconomic implications, linking civil rights reforms to contemporary higher education policy issues. Through a mix of history and current events, the chapters highlight how policy has strayed from the Higher Education Act’s intended trajectory of promoting and protecting civil rights. This drift, the editors show, has created far-reaching consequences for students of color, low-income students, and incarcerated students, in addition to the colleges that serve them. Deftly identifying the social justice dimensions of today’s federal policies, the editors reveal how certain political influences have preserved the interests of powerful and historically advantaged stakeholders—often at the expense of those who are less powerful and most disadvantaged. With great insight, the book’s contributors explore higher education issues such as enrollment at Minority Serving Institutions, for-profit college outcomes, and legal and academic perspectives on affirmative action. Perhaps more importantly, Civil Rights and Federal Higher Education provides guidance on what can be done to course correct. The book offers short- and long-term policy prescriptions and policy alternatives to help legislative staffers, policy analysts, and researchers plot a way forward.

Every day children exiled to prison are exposed to abusive and neglectful treatment, yet their plight is hidden. Based on wide-ranging research and first-person interviews, this passionately argued book presents the shocking truth about the lives and deaths of children in custody. Drawing on human rights legislation and progress in the care and treatment of vulnerable children elsewhere, it outlines the harsh realities of penal child custody including hunger, denial of fresh air, cramped and dirty cells, strip-searching, segregation, the authorised infliction of severe pain, uncivilised conditions for suicidal children and ever-present violence and intimidation. The issues are explored through the lens of protection, not punishment, and the author finds there can be only one conclusion: child prisons must close. Providing a compelling manifesto for urgent and radical change, this book should be read by everyone who cares about child protection and human rights.

This book provides a rare glimpse into the lives of some adult male prisoners in a high-security prison in England together with the infrastructure behind the prison service for safer custody, well-being, and personal development of the inmates. Their emotions, anguish, and frustration are revealed through their own uncanny narratives written in a simple language. It is an attempt to portray the hidden side of the neglected community of captives of our society today.

This book draws on a four-year ethnographic study conducted in the prisons and on the streets of Greater Manchester, England, to examine gangs and organised crime in the North of England. It includes the personal testimonies of active prison gang members and major organised crime figures, many of whom are behind bars, and some active street gang members. It presents an holistic account by exploring the linkages that exist between prisons and the streets, including the lines of continuity between gangs on both sides of the prison walls and how gang affiliation straddles this divide. It offers data on the region’s drug market (specifically Class A drugs) as this market is the lynchpin of the underworld, both within and without prison. It also includes the perspectives and insights of prison officers, police detectives, youth workers, active and former street gang members and the parents of deceased gang members. This is a ground-breaking, contemporary study, analysing English gang compositions and activities, with its findings and results based on qualitative interviews and ethnographic research.

Public Health Behind Bars From Prisons to Communities examines the burden of illness in the growing prison population, and analyzes the impact on public health as prisoners are released. This book makes a timely case for correctional health care that is humane for those incarcerated and beneficial to the communities they reenter.

The United States accounts for 5 percent of the world's population, yet incarcerates about 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Examining a wealth of studies by researchers and correctional professionals, and the experience of educators, this book shows recidivism rates drop in direct correlation with the amount of education prisoners receive, and the rate drops dramatically with each additional level of education attained. Presenting a workable solution to America's mass incarceration and recidivism problems, this book demonstrates that great fiscal benefits arise when modest sums are spent educating prisoners. Educating prisoners brings a reduction in crime and social disruption, reduced domestic spending and a rise in quality of life. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.