Download or read book The Perpetual Prisoner Machine written by Joel Dyer and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical look at the United States' criminal justice system, raising an obvious question: If crime rates aren't going up, why is the prison population?
Download or read book Perpetual Prisoner Machine written by Joel Dyer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2000-12-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Perpetual Prisoner Machine, author Joel Dyer takes a critical look at the United States' criminal justice system as we enter the new millennium. America has more than tripled its prison population since 1980 even though crime rates have been either flat or declining. The U.S. now incarcerates nearly two million people in its prisons and jails on any given day and over five million of its citizens are currently under some form of justice department supervision. These facts raise an obvious question: If crime rates aren't going up, why is the prison population? The Perpetual Prisoner Machine provides the answer to this question and, shockingly, it has little to do with crime or justice. The answer is “profit.”In the 1990s, through their mutual and pension funds, millions of American investors are now unwittingly profiting from crime. As a result of America's controversial push towards the privatization of its justice system, a growing number of well-known and politically influential U.S. Corporations—and subsequently their shareholders—are now cashing in on a prison trade whose profit potential is tied directly to the growth of the prison population. A disturbing realization, when you consider the influence that these same multi-national companies now have over our government's policy-making process by way of their lobbyists and their ability to fill campaign coffers.The Perpetual Prisoner Machine explains how the new prison-industrial complex has capitalized upon the public's fear of crime—which has its origins in violent media content—to help bring about the “hard on crime” policies that have led to our prison-filling, and therefore profitable, “war on crime.” In addition to a quest for profits, Dyer describes an astounding chain of events including media consolidation and globalization, advances in communication technology, and the increasing political dependence upon public opinion polls and campaign funding that have led to the creation of what the author calls “the perpetual prisoner machine,” a mechanism designed to suck the funds from social programs that diminish the crime-enhancing power of poverty and spit them into the bank accounts of those who own stock in the prison-industrial complex.Dyer concludes that powerful, market-driven forces have manipulated America into fighting a very real war against an imaginary foe. “Unfortunately,” says Dyer, “real wars have real casualties. And in this case, the victims are America's poor, particularly those segments of our black and Hispanic population who live in poverty and who now comprise the vast majority of the new human commodity.”
Download or read book Marxism and Criminological Theory written by Mark Cowling and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-11-03 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at Marxist thought in criminology, the work of Willem Bonger, Georg Rusche and Otto Kircheimer, and assesses the role of Marxist analysis in areas such as Critical Criminology and Left Realism. Arguing that Marxism is relevant in the post-Soviet era, it offers a 'toolkit' of Marxist theories and how to use them.
Download or read book Punishing the Poor written by Loïc Wacquant and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-22 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The punitive turn of penal policy in the United States after the acme of the Civil Rights movement responds not to rising criminal insecurity but to the social insecurity spawned by the fragmentation of wage labor and the shakeup of the ethnoracial hierarchy. It partakes of a broader reconstruction of the state wedding restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” under a philosophy of moral behaviorism. This paternalist program of penalization of poverty aims to curb the urban disorders wrought by economic deregulation and to impose precarious employment on the postindustrial proletariat. It also erects a garish theater of civic morality on whose stage political elites can orchestrate the public vituperation of deviant figures—the teenage “welfare mother,” the ghetto “street thug,” and the roaming “sex predator”—and close the legitimacy deficit they suffer when they discard the established government mission of social and economic protection. By bringing developments in welfare and criminal justice into a single analytic framework attentive to both the instrumental and communicative moments of public policy, Punishing the Poor shows that the prison is not a mere technical implement for law enforcement but a core political institution. And it reveals that the capitalist revolution from above called neoliberalism entails not the advent of “small government” but the building of an overgrown and intrusive penal state deeply injurious to the ideals of democratic citizenship. Visit the author’s website.
Download or read book The Pains of Mass Imprisonment written by Benjamin Fleury-Steiner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise and engaging book presents a critical perspective on the correctional system and the process of incarceration in the United States. Fleury-Steiner and Longazel emphasize the magnitude of mass imprisonment in the United States, especially of people of color, not by objective statistics and trends, but by the voices and lived experiences of individuals who live their harsh conditions on a daily basis. This is an ideal book for courses in corrections, social problems, criminology, and prisoner re-entry.
Download or read book Battleground Criminal Justice 2 volumes written by Gregg Barak and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 869 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many controversial aspects of our criminal justice system, and this encyclopedia examines the most significant controversies throughout American history with emphasis on current debates, trends, and issues. Arranged alphabetically, approximately 100 entries cover background, explanations, notable cases and events, various sides of an issue, and what to expect in the future. Entries are objective and factual, allowing readers to formulate their own conclusions. Sidebars and case examples help to illustrate each entry, and sources for further reading point readers to other important materials. Given the prevalance of controversial criminal justice topics in the news, this timely reference is an important resource for anyone interested in crime and justice. Entries include: Boot Camps, Corporal Punishment, DNA Evidence, Domestic Violence, Expert Testimony, Eye Witness Identifications, Gun Control, Homeland Security, International Criminal Court, Legalization of Marijuana, Mental Health and Insanity, Police Brutality, Prison Violence, Racial Profiling, School Violence, Sex Offender Laws, Stalking Laws, Supermax Prisons, Three Strikes, Treating Juveniles as Adults, War on Drugs, and more.
Download or read book The Big House in a Small Town written by Eric J. Williams and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is an in-depth, on-the-ground examination of how prisons impact rural communities, including a revealing study of two rural communities that have chosen prisons as an economic development strategy. A recent study by the Urban Institute estimates that one-third of all counties in the United States house a prison, and that our prison and jail population is now over 2.1 million. Another report indicates that more than 97 percent of all U.S. prisoners are eventually released, and communities are absorbing nearly 650,000 formerly incarcerated individuals each year. These figures are particularly alarming considering the fact that rural communities are using prisons as economic development vehicles without fully understanding the effects of these jails on the area. This book is the result of author Eric J. Williams' ground-level research about the effects of prisons upon two rural American communities that lobbied to host maximum security prisons. Through hundreds of interviews conducted while living in Florence, Colorado, and Beeville, Texas, Williams offers the perspective of local residents on all sides of the issue, as well as a social history told mainly from the standpoint of those who lobbied for the prisons.
Download or read book Drug Conspiracy written by Richard Thomas and published by NewSouth Books. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part history, part true crime thriller, part first-hand investigation into the inner workings of the U.S. Justice Department, and part polemic, Drug Conspiracy: “We Only Want the Blacks”—My Persecution by the United States Government is the story of one man’s attempt to navigate the labyrinthine bureaucratic system that oppresses marginalized people and bullies innocent victims into submission. It also tells the story of one man’s refusal to yield to the yoke of an out of control machine, the local color of a city in the Heart of Dixie, and the strange logic of the War on Drugs that is eroding the soul of this country.
Download or read book Censored written by Matthew Fellion and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Henry Vizetelly was imprisoned in 1889 for publishing the novels of Émile Zola in English, the problem was not just Zola’s French candour about sex – it was that Vizetelly’s books were cheap, and ordinary people could read them. Censored exposes the role that power plays in censorship. In twenty-five chapters focusing on a wide range of texts, including the Bible, slave narratives, modernist classics, comic books, and Chicana/o literature, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis chart the forces that have driven censorship in the United Kingdom and the United States for over six hundred years, from fears of civil unrest and corruptible youth to the oppression of various groups – religious and political dissidents, same-sex lovers, the working class, immigrants, women, racialized people, and those who have been incarcerated or enslaved. The authors also consider the weight of speech, and when restraints might be justified. Rich with illustrations that bring to life the personalities and the books that feature in its stories, Censored takes readers behind the scenes into the courtroom battles, legislative debates, public campaigns, and private exchanges that have shaped the course of literature. A vital reminder that the freedom of speech has always been fragile and never enjoyed equally by all, Censored offers lessons from the past to guard against threats to literature in a new political era.
Download or read book Corrections written by John T. Whitehead and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-09-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corrections: Exploring Crime, Punishment, and Justice in America provides a thorough introduction to the topic of corrections in America. In addition to providing complete coverage of the history and structure of corrections, it offers a balanced account of the issues facing the field so that readers can arrive at informed opinions regarding the process and current state of corrections in America. The 3e introduces new content and fully updated information on America’s correctional system in a lively, colorful, readable textbook. Both instructors and students benefit from the inclusion of pedagogical tools and visual elements that help clarify the material.
Download or read book Corrections written by Michael Welch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 767 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Review questions; Recommended readings; 3. America's Penal Past; Introduction; Colonial America; Methods of punishment; William Penn and the Great Law; Analyzing punishment in colonial America; Prisons in the nation's early years; Newgate Prison, Connecticut: subterranean incarceration and political imprisonment; The Walnut Street Jail: penal reform and the quest for state power; Newgate Prison, New York City; The Jacksonian era; Reconceptualizing crime as a social problem; The Pennsylvania and Auburn systems of prison discipline; Elam Lynds: warden of Auburn and Sing Sing.
Download or read book Feminist Theories of Crime written by Merry Morash and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection re-imagines the field of criminology with insights gleaned from feminist theory. Works included here illustrate that gender is a key organizing principle of social life. This means that men and women have gender, that patriarchy as well as gender must be theorized, and that other systems of oppression such as race and class must also be studied to fully understand the crime problem and the criminal justice system. Finally, the articles collected here exemplify the feminist concern for thinking consciously about how and why we do our research with the crucial goal of producing knowledge that will promote social justice.
Download or read book An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse written by Jens Soering and published by Lantern Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, himself a former inmate in the American Corrections System, writes about the state of the American prisons and the justice system and the American public's misconceptions about the system.
Download or read book Jailed for Justice written by Clare Hanrahan and published by Celtic WordCraft. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bodies in Beds written by Sue Binder and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Breaking Women written by Jill A. McCorkel and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-08-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2014 Division of Women and Crime Distinguished Scholar Award presented by the American Society of Criminology Finalist for the 2013 C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Compelling interviews uncover why tough drug policies disproportionately impact women in the American prison system Since the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison populations soared, the increase in women’s rate of incarceration has steadily outpaced that of men. As a result, women’s prisons in the US have suffered perhaps the most drastically from the overcrowding and recurrent budget crises that have plagued the penal system since harsher drugs laws came into effect. In Breaking Women, Jill A. McCorkel draws upon four years of on-the-ground research in a major US women’s prison to uncover why tougher drug policies have so greatly affected those incarcerated there, and how the very nature of punishment in women’s detention centers has been deeply altered as a result. Through compelling interviews with prisoners and state personnel, McCorkel reveals that popular so-called “habilitation” drug treatment programs force women to accept a view of themselves as inherently damaged, aberrant addicts in order to secure an earlier release. These programs were created as a way to enact stricter punishments on female drug offenders while remaining sensitive to their perceived feminine needs for treatment, yet they instead work to enforce stereotypes of deviancy that ultimately humiliate and degrade the women. The prisoners are left feeling lost and alienated in the end, and many never truly address their addiction as the programs’ organizers may have hoped. A fascinating and yet sobering study, Breaking Women foregrounds the gendered and racialized assumptions behind tough-on-crime policies while offering a vivid account of how the contemporary penal system impacts individual lives.
Download or read book Ironies of Imprisonment written by Michael Welch and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2004-06-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Foreword "Michael Welch′s book is an invitation to think. It is an invitation to grow intellectually and critically, as a consumer of crime policy and an observer of the American scene. Written by a scholar who has dedicated his work to uncovering the hidden ironies of formal crime policy, this is a collection of essays of depth and significance." -Todd R. Clear, Distinguished Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Praise for Ironies of Imprisonment: "The American correctional system is too often misshaped by a toxic mixture of ideology, anti-intellectualism, wishful thinking, and structural interests. Michael Welch uses his substantial critical skills to illuminate how these various factors intersect to create policies and practices that produce, in the end, more injustice and less public safety. His sobering analysis deconstructs the rhetoric used to justify mass imprisonment and its unanticipated, disquieting consequences." -Frank Cullen, University of Cincinnati "Michael Welch has written a book which anyone who is looking for an alternative to conventional and conservative approaches to prisons and punishment should read. Welch provides the groundwork for the development of a penology which engages critically with the growing tensions and ironies of imprisonment." -Roger Matthews, Middlesex University Ironies of Imprisonment examines in-depth an array of problems confronting correctional programs and policies from the author′s singular and consistent critical viewpoint. The book challenges the prevailing logic of mass incarceration and traces the ironies of imprisonment to their root causes, manifesting in social, political, economic, and racial inequality. Key Features A compelling Foreword written by Todd E. Clear, an internationally recognized leader in the field of criminal justice. Chapters open with illuminating real-life vignettes and end with provocative review questions. The author′s knowledgeable and dynamic voice provides a consistent perspective on key issues such as the war on drugs, the war on terror, prison violence, capital punishment, health care, and the prison industry. Up-to-date presentation of pertinent subject matter, including chief developments in research and theory. Discussion of the problems facing corrections in a post-September 11th world. Unique and accessible, this book promises to stimulate spirited discussion and debate over the use of prisons. Ironies of Imprisonment is recommended reading for students in corrections classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels in sociology, criminology, and criminal justice departments. In addition, it can be used in conjunction with a core text in courses on policy, theories of punishment, and social problems. The book will also be of interest to a general audience interested in reading about incarceration. Michael Welch is the author of numerous articles and several books on the subject of punishment and social control, including Punishment in America (1999), Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest (2000), and Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Jail Complex (2002). He has correctional experience at the federal, state, and local levels. Welch received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Texas, Denton and is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University.
