This book critiques the practices of managerialism and their effects on those who live and work in prisons. It draws upon ethnographic research conducted in English prisons over a 15 year period, written by a former prison governor. Since the last years of the 20th century, public services in England have increasingly adopted managerial approaches with an architecture of target setting, surveillance and assertive line management. The book examines how this system was created and then evolv...

This book explores how an audience of men serving sentences in an English prison responded to viewing five contemporary British prison films. It examines how media representations of prison vary in style and content, how film can influence public attitudes, and how this affects people in prison. The book explains the ways in which film acts as a power resource, presenting an ideological vision of criminal justice. The audience used these films to map the social terrain of prison, including...

Now in its Sixth Edition, this book remains the most comprehensive and authoritative on the penal system, providing students with an incisive, critical account of the punitive, managerial and humanitarian approaches to criminal justice.Fully updated to cover the most recent changes in the Criminal Justice System, the new edition:Outlines contemporary policy debates on sentencing, staffing, youth custody and overcrowding.Explores growing inequalities in the c...

This book offers the first ethnographic account of prison managers in England. It explores how globalised changes, in particular managerialism, have intersected with local occupational cultures, positioning managers as micro-agents in the relationship between the global and local that characterises late modernity.The Working Lives of Prison Managers addresses key aspects of prison management, including how individuals become prison managers, their engagement with elements ...

The second edition of the Handbook on Prisons provides a completely revised and updated collection of essays on a wide range of topics concerning prisons and imprisonment. Bringing together three of the leading prison scholars in the UK as editors, this new volume builds on the success of the first edition and reveals the range and depth of prison scholarship around the world.The Handbook contains chapters written not only by those who have established and develop...

The past decade has seen dramatic growth in every area of the prison enterprise. Yet our knowledge of the inner life of the prison remains limited. This book aims to redress this research gap by providing insight into various aspects of the daily life of prison staff. It provides a serious exploration of their work and, in doing so, will seek to draw attention to the variety, value and complexity of work within prisons. This book will provide practitioners, students and the general reader ...

Contemporary prison practice faces many challenges, is developing rapidly and is become increasingly professionalized, influenced by the new National Offender Management Service. As well as bringing an increased emphasis on skills and qualifications it has also introduced a new set of ideas and concepts into the established prisons and penal lexicon.At the same time courses on prisons and penology remain important components of criminology and criminal justice degree courses. This ...

Little of what we know about prison comes from the mouths of prisoners, and very few academic accounts of prison life manage to convey some of its most profound and important features: its daily pressures and frustrations, the culture of the wings and landings, and the relationships which shape the everyday experience of being imprisoned.The Prisoner aims to redress this by foregrounding prisoners’ own accounts of prison life in what is an original and penetrating edited c...

What if you lost your health? How far would you go to get it back?Health is a fundamental human right that we all take for granted and abuse daily.In this book author Jamie Bennett takes you on a walk through memory lane. Spanning over a decade and a half, this is a story about the seemingly-impossible steps one must go through to get back what was rightfully theirs. It’s a journey through chronic illness, faith, family, and healing; wrapped in the down-to-...