Criminal Intimacy

Sex is usually assumed to be a closely guarded secret of prison life. But it has long been the subject of intense scrutiny by both prison administrators and reformers—as well as a source of fascination and anxiety for the American public. Historically, sex behind bars has evoked radically different responses from professionals and the public alike. In Criminal Intimacy, Regina Kunzel tracks these varying interpretations and reveals their foundational influence on modern thinking about sexuality and identity. Historians have held the fusion of sexual desire and identity to be the defining marker of sexual modernity, but sex behind bars, often involving otherwise heterosexual prisoners, calls those assumptions into question. By exploring the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries—along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners’ rights activism; and the HIV epidemic—Kunzel discovers a world whose surprising plurality and mutability reveals the fissures and fault lines beneath modern sexuality itself. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, correctional administrators, journalists, and prisoners themselves—as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture—Kunzel argues for the importance of the prison to the history of sexuality and for the centrality of ideas about sex and sexuality to the modern prison. In the process, she deepens and complicates our understanding of sexuality in America.

In what circumstances and on what basis, should those who transmit serious diseases to their sexual partners be criminalised? In this new book Matthew Weait uses English case law as the basis of a more general and critical analysis of the response of the criminal courts to those who have been convicted of transmitting HIV during sex. Examining cases and engaging with the socio-cultural dimensions of HIV/AIDS and sexuality, he provides readers with an important insight into the way in which the criminal courts construct the concepts of harm, risk, causation, blame and responsibility. Taking into account the socio-cultural issues surrounding HIV/AIDS and their interaction with the law, Weait has written an excellent book for postgraduate and undergraduate law and criminology students studying criminal law theory, the trial process, offences against the person, and the politics of criminalisation. The book will also be of interest to health professionals working in the field of HIV/AIDS genito-urinary medicine who want to understand the issues that may face their clients and patients.

The story of a scandal that shook American culture to the core in the 1870s when a famous writer sued his best friend--the nation's leading minister--for seducing his wife. 56 halftones.

For a practical, hands-on approach to learning forensic psychology, Experiments in Anti-Social Behaviour: Ten Studies for Students presents a collection of unique projects for students that illustrate the many ways research into anti-social behaviour can be conducted whilst also highlighting social psychological aspects of criminality. Drawing on over half a century of supervising many hundreds of projects at high school, undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels, David Canter provides well-grounded and detailed guidance for students on how to execute a range of different research studies through several psychological approaches, including quantitative cognitive studies, qualitative discourse analysis, and social identity theory. After introducing the ethical and practical challenges of studying crime and criminality, Experiments in Anti-Social Behaviour outlines broad approaches to research. This is followed by ten practical studies for students to carry out in order to engage directly with experimental research. These studies cover experiments, surveys, and case studies, and include a controlled examination of how easy it is to forge a signature, descriptions of experiments trying to detect deception, and an exploration of what is involved in linking actions in a serial killer’s crimes to his characteristics. Both engaging and interactive, Experiments in Anti-Social Behaviour is an invaluable resource for instructors and students from colleges and universities around the world in many different fields, such as psychology, criminology, and socio-legal studies. It will also be of interest to all those who want to know more about the psychology of crime and criminality.