Azrini Wahidin

Jamie Bennett

Ben Crewe

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 with a comprehensive and accessible guide to the contemporary issues and concerns facing prison staff.

Understanding Prison Staff

Phil Scraton

Linda Moore

In 2007, the Corston Report recommended a far-reaching, radical, ‘women-centred’ approach to women’s imprisonment in England and Wales. It suggested a ‘fundamental re-thinking’ about how services to support women in conflict with the law are delivered in custody and in the community, recommending the development and implementation of a decarceration strategy. This argued for appropriate treatment programmes in the community, reserving prison for only those women who commit serious and violent offences. Ten years on, what progress has been made? What is the relationship between Corston’s vision and a more radical abolitionist agenda? Drawing on a range of international scholarship, this book contributes to the critical discourse on the penal system, human rights, and social injustice, revealing the consequences of imprisonment on the lives of women and their families. A decade on from Corston's publication, it critically reviews her report, revealing the slow progress in meeting the reforms it proposed. Identifying the significant barriers to change, it questions the failure to reverse the unrelenting growth of the women’s prison population or to transform state responses to women’s offending. Reflecting the global expansion of women’s imprisonment, particularly marked in advanced democratic societies, the chapters include comparative contributions from jurisdictions where Corston’s recommendations have relevance. It concludes with a critical appraisal of reformism and the case for penal abolition. Essential for applied and theory courses on prisons, punishment, and penology; social justice and the criminology of human rights; gender and crime; and feminist criminology.

Critical Reflections on Corston Ten Years On

Women’s Imprisonment and the Case for Abolition

This book explores the contours of women's involvement in the Irish Republican Army, political protest and the prison experience in Northern Ireland. Through the voices of female and male combatants, it demonstrates that women remained marginal in the examination of imprisonment during the Conflict and in the negotiated peace process. However, the book shows that women performed a number of roles in war and peace that placed constructions of femininity in dissent. Azrini Wahidin argues that the role of the female combatant is not given but ambiguous. She indicates that a tension exists between different conceptualisations of societal security, where female combatants both fought against societal insecurity posed by the state and contributed to internal societal dissonance within their ethno-national groups. This book tackles the lacunae that has created a disturbing silence and an absence of a comprehensive understanding of women combatants, which includes knowledge of their motivations, roles and experiences. It will be of particular interest to scholars of criminology, politics and peace studies./div

Women, Political Protest and the Prison Experience

Ex-Combatants, Gender and Peace in Northern Ireland

John D. Brewer

This book develops the discourse on the experiences of ex-combatants and their transition from war to peace, from the perspective of scholars across disciplines. Ex-combatants are often overlooked and ignored in the post-conflict search for memory and understanding, resulting in their voice being excluded or distorted. This collection seeks to disclose something of the lived experience of ex-combatants who have made the transition from war to peace to help to understand some of the difficulties they have encountered in social and emotional reintegration in the wake of combat. These include: motivations and mobilizations to participation in military struggle; the material difficulties experienced in social reintegration after the war; the emotional legacies of conflict; the discourses they utilize to reconcile their past in a society moving forward from conflict toward peace; and ex-combatants’ subsequent engagement – or not – in peacebuilding. It also examines the contributions that former combatants have made to post-conflict compromise, reconciliation and peacebuilding. It focusses on male non-state actors, women, child soldiers and, unusually, state veterans, and complements previous volumes which captured the voices of victims in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka. This volume speaks to those working in the areas of sociology, criminology, security studies, politics, and international relations, and professionals working in social justice and human rights NGOs.

Transitioning from War to Peace in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka

Ex-Combatants’ Voices

Anthea Hucklesby

Criminal Justice provides a thorough, thought-provoking and critical introduction to the challenges faced by the UK's criminal justice system. A team of high-profile contributors each present a concise overview of their particular field of expertise, detailing key procedures and challenging students to engage with current and topical debates.

Criminal Justice

Nicola Carr

Few subjects provoke as much public fascination and political concern as crime, criminality, criminology, and criminal justice policy and practice. Understanding Criminal Justice seeks to provide students with a critical introduction to the range of theoretical, policy and operational issues faced by the criminal justice system in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It anticipates little or no prior knowledge of criminal justice, and seeks to provide an introduction to the area. This critical textbook provides both a thorough overview of the procedures central to the workings of the criminal justice system and a distillation of the topical debates that surround it. It outlines the political and historical context, detailing key procedures and challenging students to engage with current debates. Containing chapters on policing, prosecution, community justice and alternative modes of justice, this text provides a comprehensive coverage of the key topics included within undergraduate criminology programmes at an introductory level. Written in a lively and accessible style, this book will also be of interest to general readers and practitioners in the criminal justice system.

A Critical Introduction

Understanding Criminal Justice

Keith Hayward

Emma Wincup

Chris Hale

Criminology is a broad-ranging and stimulating introduction that is ideal for undergraduates approaching the subject for the first time. Each chapter is written by an expert in their field and includes a range of learning features designed to help students engage with the material covered.

Criminology

What is life like for the women who grow old behind bars? Azrini Wahidin examines in-depth the experiences and needs of this overlooked group. What happens to the identity and mental health of these women who are closed off from the outside world and without familial networks? What does it feel like to have to carve out a new version of your private self, in a public space? Wahidin shows how ageist and sexist attitudes in criminal procedures and penal policy regulate and discipline the ageing body. She also highlights the failures of practical provisions in prisons to meet the particular needs of this group. Illuminating reading for all those working in the prison services, probation, and the courts, and an important addition to the wider criminology punishment-rehabiliation debate, Older Women in the Criminal Justice System offers a rare view of what happens to the women who grow old in prison.

Running Out of Time

Older Women in the Criminal Justice System

This book will provide practitioners, students and the general reader with a comprehensive and accessible guide to the contemporary issues and concerns facing prison staff.

This book explores the contours of women's involvement in the Irish Republican Army, political protest and the prison experience in Northern Ireland. Through the voices of female and male combatants, it demonstrates that women remained marginal in the examination of imprisonment during the Conflict and in the negotiated peace process. However, the book shows that women performed a number of roles in war and peace that placed constructions of femininity in dissent. Azrini Wahidin argues that the role of the female combatant is not given but ambiguous. She indicates that a tension exists between different conceptualisations of societal security, where female combatants both fought against societal insecurity posed by the state and contributed to internal societal dissonance within their ethno-national groups. This book tackles the lacunae that has created a disturbing silence and an absence of a comprehensive understanding of women combatants, which includes knowledge of their motivations, roles and experiences. It will be of particular interest to scholars of criminology, politics and peace studies.

Azrini Wahidin

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