Beyond Prison

The author tells of his own appalling treatment when in detention and how it informed and inspired a lifetime vocation to struggle for the rights of all prisoners everywhere. As the story demonstrates, he is one of those rare individuals who moved from passion and conviction to effective action - he was responsible for the establishment of one of the world's most reliable and mature human rights organizations, in the field of penal reform, Penal Reform International (PRI). His untimely death in Morocco in 2004 deprived the cause of a passionate advocate, but the work goes on.

At present, prisons are seen as a logical response to crimes of poverty and crimes of violence. And yet, the desolation, degradation, and violence of prisons may be causing our communities far more harm than good. This book offers a glimpse inside the world of prisons as well as documenting inspiring work in a range of communities in Australia, New Zealand, and North America that is offering to take us beyond the prison. Most particularly, this book is written to offer company and practical ideas to those working with adults and young people whose lives are lived in the shadow of prisons.

Germany today has one of the lowest incarceration rates in the industrialized world, and social welfare principles play an essential role at all levels of the German criminal justice system. Warren Rosenblum examines the roots of this social approach to criminal policy in the reform movements of the Wilhelmine and Weimar periods, when reformers strove to replace state institutions of control and incarceration with private institutions of protective supervision. Reformers believed that private charities and volunteers could diagnose and treat social pathologies in a way that coercive state institutions could not. The expansion of welfare for criminals set the stage for a more economical system of punishment, Rosenblum argues, but it also opened the door to new, more expansive controls over individuals marked as "asocial." With the reformers' success, the issue of who had power over welfare became increasingly controversial and dangerous. Other historians have suggested that the triumph of eugenics in the 1890s was predicated upon the abandonment of liberal and Christian assumptions about human malleability. Rosenblum demonstrates, however, that the turn to "criminal biology" was not a reaction against social reform, but rather an effort to rescue its legitimacy.

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

This short text, ideal for Social Problems and Criminal Justice courses, examines the American prison system, its conditions, and its impact on society. Wehr and Aseltine define the prison industrial complex and explain how the current prison system is a contemporary social problem. They conclude by using California as a case study, and propose alternatives and alterations to the prison system.

Although the negative consequences of rising incarceration rates have been well-established, criminological research has largely neglected to document psychological, social, and behavioral changes that occur during periods of incarceration. Drawing on an original longitudinal study of long-term French prisoners, this book examines the process of desistance from crime and positive growth in prison. It offers reflections on how personal transformation can be achieved in prison, particularly among individuals serving long prison sentences. This research investigates the barriers to achieving positive growth in prison, as well as the different ways in which transformation can occur behind bars. It also conceptualizes the process of abandoning crime in prison, and sheds light on the cognitive, social, and structural factors that may trigger, accelerate, or hamper this process. This book explores the circumstances under which individuals can thrive in prison, and identifies key features of the narratives of prisoners who have achieved positive growth. The research presented in this book also examines the intricacies of returning to society after a lengthy period of time in prison. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book will be invaluable reading for those engaged in studies of criminology and criminal justice, sociology, criminal behavior, prisons, and penology. It is also aimed at a variety of audiences, including academics, practitioners, policy-makers, and prisoners.

The crisis of borders and prisons can be seen starkly in statistics. In 2011 some 1,500 migrants died trying to enter Europe, and the United States deported nearly 400,000 and imprisoned some 2.3 million people--more than at any other time in history. International borders are increasingly militarized places embedded within domestic policing and imprisonment and entwined with expanding prison-industrial complexes. Beyond Walls and Cages offers scholarly and activist perspectives on these issues and explores how the international community can move toward a more humane future. Working at a range of geographic scales and locations, contributors examine concrete and ideological connections among prisons, migration policing and detention, border fortification, and militarization. They challenge the idea that prisons and borders create safety, security, and order, showing that they can be forms of coercive mobility that separate loved ones, disempower communities, and increase shared harms of poverty. Walls and cages can also fortify wealth and power inequalities, racism, and gender and sexual oppression. As governments increasingly rely on criminalization and violent measures of exclusion and containment, strategies for achieving change are essential. Beyond Walls and Cages develops abolitionist, no borders, and decolonial analyses and methods for social change, showing how seemingly disconnected forms of state violence are interconnected. Creating a more just and free world--whether in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands, the Morocco-Spain region, South Africa, Montana, or Philadelphia--requires that people who are most affected become central to building alternatives to global crosscurrents of criminalization and militarization. Contributors: Olga Aksyutina, Stokely Baksh, Cynthia Bejarano, Anne Bonds, Borderlands Autonomist, Collective, Andrew Burridge, Irina Contreras, Renee Feltz, Luis A. Fernandez, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Amy Gottlieb, Gael Guevara, Zoe Hammer, Julianne Hing, Subhash Kateel, Jodie M. Lawston, Bob Libal, Jenna M. Loyd, Lauren Martin, Laura McTighe, Matt Mitchelson, Maria Cristina Morales, Alison Mountz, Ruben R. Murillo, Joseph Nevins, Nicole Porter, Joshua M. Price, Said Saddiki, Micol Seigel, Rashad Shabazz, Christopher Stenken, Proma Tagore, Margo Tamez, Elizabeth Vargas, Monica W. Varsanyi, Mariana Viturro, Harsha Walia, Seth Freed Wessler.

DescriptionThis book is one mans experience of his time incarcerated in the prison system of this country. Basically it is a diatribe against the system, what it does to human beings and how it affects the lives of those unfortunate enough to have been in the same predicament. The injustice of it all and the corruption that is so rife within the system but no one wants to acknowledge or talk about. Lots of books have been written on this subject but I have tried to take a slightly different slant on the story and go through some of the different types of people we have locked away in our prisons and their plights. We are always trying to find someone else to blame when we come across a bad situation instead of taking a good look at ourselves. This is the attitude taken through the whole of society, from the top to the bottom. Billions of pounds of taxpayers money is spent on trying to find solutions to our problems hence jails full of people who have no right in being there in the first place. The people that are responsible for this situation are the ones making the laws, you cannot fart in public these days without some individual proclaiming him or herself as the fart police and giving you a fine, madness, the whole kit and caboodle. I have not produced an answer to these problems, although I know there is one, I have merely tried to point out the madness of our prison system. The second part of this story is about getting out of prison and the changes I have noticed since my release, which are considerable and quite unbelievable in some cases. About the AuthorI am John Harry Simons and was born in Berwick on Tweed on 22nd August 1952, my dad was a sailor and my mum a housewife and mother, I have a younger brother called Andy. We lived in Wooler in Northumberland for the first 6 years of my life and then moved to Gravesend in Kent. My mum became a schoolteacher and my dad carried on sailing for a while. I ended up going to the H.M.S. Worcester nautical training college, a big square rigger moored at Greenhithe on the River Thames, where I learned to become a navigating officer in the Merchant Navy. I did my apprenticeship in the Merchant Navy and then left to pursue other ways of living and eventually got married and had 2 children, both of whom are now over 30 years old. I was divorced in 1982 and have had a very colourful career since then. I became a single parent when my son came to live with me in 1986 and was one until he went to university some six years later. I eventually got caught up in the world of cocaine smuggling and was caught in 2002 and sentenced to 8 years for my efforts. I have now been at liberty for just over a year and am trying my hand at writing, a skill which I picked up whilst at Her Majesty's Prisons.