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While state and federal prisons like Attica and Alcatraz occupy a central place in the national consciousness, most incarceration in the United States occurs within the walls of local jails. In This Is My Jail, Melanie D. Newport situates the late twentieth-century escalation of mass incarceration in a longer history of racialized, politically repressive jailing. Centering the political actions of people until now overlooked—jailed people, wardens, corrections officers, sheriffs, and the countless community members who battled over the functions and impact of jails—Newport shows how local, grassroots contestation shaped the rise of the carceral state.As ground zero for struggles over criminal justice reform, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, jails in Chicago and Cook County were models for jailers and advocates across the nation who aimed to redefine jails as institutions of benevolent transformation. From a slave sale on the jail steps to new jail buildings to electronic monitoring, from therapy to job training, these efforts further criminalized jailed people and diminished their capacity to organize for their civil rights. With prisoners as famous as Al Capone, Dick Gregory, and Harold Washington, and a place in culture ranging from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to B. B. King's Live in Cook County Jail, This Is My Jail places jails at the heart of twentieth-century urban life and politics.As a sweeping history of urban incarceration, This Is My Jail shows that jails are critical sites of urban inequality that sustain the racist actions of the police and judges and exacerbate the harms wrought by housing discrimination, segregated schools, and inaccessible health care. Structured by liberal anti-Blackness and legacies of violence, today's jails reflect longstanding local commitments to the unfreedom of poor people of color.

The Abolition of Prison provides a reflection from a longtime prison abolitionist, psychoanalyst, and former prisoner on the history, theory, and practice of anti-prison activism in France and globally over the last fifty years. This book powerfully makes the case for the end of prisons, punishment, and guilt and, instead, suggests we work towards social change, care, collectivity. The book weaves together Lesage de La Haye's own experiences—in prison, as a psychiatrist, and as a social theorist—with the simple argument that, if we take the reasons for prison and punishment at their word, we must evaluate the system as a complete failure. So then why continue to support it and funnel money into it?

Incarceration has a long and inglorious history, from dungeons in the bowels of castles to oppressive penal colonies in Australia. Karen Farrington brings this history up to the 21st century, exploring some of the world's worst prisons, from Alcatraz to Pollsmoor, and the unending battles that rage between convicts and warders. Inside the prison walls, gangs rule, guards devise sadistic punishments, and newcomers suffer abuse at the hands of experienced tormentors. The World's Worst Prisons is packed with shocking accounts of prison breakouts, drug smuggling and life on death row. It also explores the politics of incarceration, including the harsh labour camps of North Korea and controversies surrounding private management of prisons. With prison populations rising each year, questions surrounding incarceration are all the more pertinent. Whether focusing on punishment, containment or rehabilitation, the prison system is imperfect and The World's Worst Prisons examines this dysfunction through some of the most dangerous jails on earth.

Zur Entschärfung bedrängender Vollzugsproblematik wird in der Gegenwart neben den Alternativen zur Freiheitsstrafe zunehmend auf die Privatisierung der Justizvollzugsanstalt verwiesen. Auf internationaler Ebene nimmt man die Entwicklung der Privatisierung des Strafvollzugs längst ernst: Inzwischen sind in den USA, England, Neuseeland, Australien, zwei Provinzen in Kanada, Südafrika, Chile und Japan private oder teilprivatisierte Justizvollzugsanstalten in Betrieb. In Südkorea und Brasilien haben die Regierungen Verträge mit den religiösen Gemeinschaften über den Betrieb von Justizvollzugsanstalten abgeschlossen. Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit dem Ziel des Vollzugs in privaten Justizvollzugsanstalten.

Prison studies has experienced a period of great creativity in recent years, and this collection draws together some of the field's most exciting and innovative contemporary critical writers in order to engage directly with one of the most profound questions in penology - why prison? In addressing this question, the authors connect contemporary penological thought with an enquiry that has received the attention of some of the greatest thinkers on punishment in the past. Through critical exploration of the theories, policies and practices of imprisonment, the authors analyse why prison persists and why prisoner populations are rapidly rising in many countries. Collectively, the chapters provide not only a sophisticated diagnosis and critique of global hyper-incarceration but also suggest principles and strategies that could be adopted to radically reduce our reliance upon imprisonment.

'The HIV+ men incarcerated in Limestone Prison's Dorm 16 were put there to be forgotten. Not only do Benjamin Fleury-Steiner and Carla Crowder bring these men to life, Fleury-Steiner and Crowder also insist on placing these men in the middle of critical conversations about health policy, mass incarceration, and race. Dense with firsthand accounts, Dying Inside is a nimble, far-ranging and unblinking look at the cruelty inherent in our current penal policies.'---Lisa Kung, Director, Southern Center for Human Rights'The looming prison health crisis, documented here at its extreme, is a shocking stain on American values and a clear opportunity to rethink our carceral approach to security.'---Jonathan Simon, University of California, Berkeley'Dying Inside is a riveting account of a health crisis in a hidden prison facility.'---Michael Musheno, San Francisco State University, and coauthor of Deployed'This fresh and original study should prick all of our consciences about the horrific consequences of the massive carceral state the United States has built over the last three decades.'---Marie Gottschalk, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Prison and the Gallows'An important, bold, and humanitarian book.'---Alison Liebling, University of Cambridge'Fleury-Steiner makes a compelling case that inmate health care in America's prisons and jails has reached the point of catastrophe.'---Sharon Dolovich, University of California, Los Angeles'Fleury-Steiner's persuasive argument not only exposes the sins of commission and omission on prison cellblocks, but also does an excellent job of showing how these problems are the natural result of our nation's shortsighted and punitive criminal justice policy.'---Allen Hornblum, Temple University, and author of Sentenced to Science Dying Inside brings the reader face-to-face with the nightmarish conditions inside Limestone Prison's Dorm 16---the segregated HIV ward. Here, patients chained to beds share their space with insects and vermin in the filthy, drafty rooms, and contagious diseases spread like wildfire through a population with untreated---or poorly managed at best---HIV. While Dorm 16 is a particularly horrific human rights tragedy, it is also a symptom of a disease afflicting the entire U.S. prison system. In recent decades, prison populations have exploded as Americans made mass incarceration the solution to crime, drugs, and other social problems even as privatization of prison services, especially health care, resulted in an overcrowded, underfunded system in which the most marginalized members of our society slowly wither from what the author calls'lethal abandonment.'This eye-opening account of one prison's failed health-care standards is a wake-up call, asking us to examine how we treat our forgotten citizens and compelling us to rethink the American prison system in this increasingly punitive age.

From 1951 until 1974, Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia was the site of thousands of experiments on prisoners conducted by researchers under the direction of University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Albert M. Kligman. While most of the experiments were testing cosmetics, detergents, and deodorants, the trials also included scores of Phase I drug trials, inoculations of radioactive isotopes, and applications of dioxin in addition to mind-control experiments for the Army and CIA. These experiments often left the subject-prisoners, mostly African Americans, in excruciating pain and had long-term debilitating effects on their health. This is one among many episodes of the sordid history of medical experimentation on the black population of the United States.The story of the Holmesburg trials was documented by Allen Hornblum in his 1998 book Acres of Skin. The more general history of African Americans as human guinea pigs has most recently been told by Harriet Washington in her 2007 book Medical Apartheid. The subject is currently a topic of heated public debate in the wake of a 2006 report from an influential panel of medical experts recommending that the federal government loosen the regulations in place since the 1970s that have limited the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates.Sentenced to Science retells the story of the Holmesburg experiments more dramatically through the eyes of one black man, Edward “Butch” Anthony, who suffered greatly from the experiments for which he “volunteered” during multiple terms at the prison. This is not only one black man's highly personal account of what it was like to be an imprisoned test subject, but also a sobering reminder that there were many African Americans caught in the viselike grip of a scientific research community willing to bend any code of ethics in order to accomplish its goals and a criminal justice system that sold prisoners to the highest bidder.

Can the morality of a nation really be judged by how it treats its prisoners? The United States has more people in prison than any other nation, and the nature of the American correctional system continues to be the subject of passionate debate. This unique combination of historical overview and personal testimony provides an unprecedented look at the U.S. correctional system.The first section of the book places the notion of corrections within an historical context. The second examines contemporary correctional issues. In the third and final section, Stephen Stanko, an inmate in the South Carolina correctional system, provides a detailed look at prison life from the inside. Stanko offers his perspective—in a voice that is blunt but never preachy—on the harsh realities of prison life, making this a rigorous exploration of our correctional system in both theory and practice.