Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice – serie

How can we best help offenders desist from crime, as well as help victims heal? This book engages with this question by offering its readers a comprehensive review of positive criminology in theory, research and practice. Positive criminology is a concept – a perspective – that places emphasis on forces of integration and social inclusion that are experienced positively by target individual and groups, and may contribute to a reduction in negative emotions, desistance from crime and overcoming the traumatic experience of victimization. In essence, positive criminology holds a more holistic view, which acknowledges that thriving and disengagement from distress, addiction, mental illness, crime, deviance or victimization might be fostered more effectively by enhancing positive emotions and experiences, rather than focusing on reducing negative attributes. Each chapter in this book is written by key scholars in the related fields of criminology, victimology and addiction and, thus, assembles varied and extensive approaches to rehabilitation and treatment. These approaches share in common a positive criminology view, thereby enriching our understanding of the concept and other strength-based approaches to dealing with offenders and victims. This edited book elaborates on positive criminology core ideas and assumptions; discusses related theories and innovations; and presents various benefits that this perspective can promote in the field of rehabilitation. For this reason, this book will be essential reading for those engaged in the study of criminology, criminal justice and victimology and may also assist scholars and professionals to help offenders desist from crime and improve victims’ well-being.

The policing of rape is in permacrisis. This book addresses the question of why police investigations continue to fail most rape victim-survivors and puts forward a framework for what policing can do to change this. Low conviction rates and poor victim-survivor experiences are the hallmarks of the rape justice gap. Three decades of research, policy, and legal changes have tweaked rape investigations to alleviate some of their ills; however, for the majority of victim-survivors, the process remains gruelling. Police forces are notoriously resistant to reform, even in the face of rapidly declining public trust. The starting point of this book is the recognition that if we want profound change in policing, we must try something new. To do so, the authors move from asking "What is it about rape that makes it so difficult for police to investigate it well?" to asking "What is it about the police that makes it so difficult for police to investigate rape well?". Policing Rape sets out a practice-oriented theoretical framework for radically and sustainably transforming rape investigations, rape prevention, and the quality of officer engagement with victim-survivors. The authors reflect on the journey of putting this framework into practice within Operation Soteria Bluestone as a step on the path towards a radical transformation of rape policing. This book is essential reading for all those looking to understand and improve the policing of rape.

While evidence-based policy is an emerging rhetoric of the desire by and for governments to develop policies based on the best available evidence, drug policy is an area where particular challenges abound. This book is a detailed and comprehensive examination of the contours of drug policy development through the consideration of the particular roles of science, media, and interest groups. Using Belgium as the primary case-study, supplemented by insights gathered from other countries, the author contributes to a richer understanding of the science-policy nexus in the messy, real-world complexities of drug policy. Change or Continuity in Drug Policy: The Roles of Science, Media, and Interest Groups is the first book to bring together policy and media theories, knowledge utilisation models, and public scholarship literature. As such, the book provides unique insights relevant to aspects of change or continuity in drug policies in Europe and beyond.This book will be of great value to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to academics, practitioners and policymakers with interest in the science-policy nexus with a particular focus on the drug policy domain.

This book is the first volume to explore criminal justice work and criminological research through the lens of emotional labour. A concept first coined 30 years ago, emotional labour seeks to explore the ways in which people manage their emotions in order to achieve the aims of their organisations, and the subsequent impact of this is on workers and service users.The chapters in this edited collection explore work in a wide range of criminal justice institutions as well as the penal voluntary sector. In addition to literature review chapters which consolidate what we already know, this book includes case study chapters which extend our knowledge of how emotional labour is performed in specific contexts, and in relation to certain types of work. Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology covers topics such as prisoners who die from natural causes in prison, to the work of independent domestic violence advisors and the use of emotion by death penalty lawyers in the US. An accessible and compelling read, this book presents ground-breaking qualitative and quantitative research which will be critical to criminologists, criminal justice practitioners, students of criminology and academics in the fields of social policy and public service.

Genetic Surveillance and Crime Control presents a new empirical and conceptual framework for understanding trends of genetic surveillance in different countries in Europe and in other jurisdictions around the world. The use of DNA or genome for state-level surveillance for crime governance is becoming the norm in democratic societies. In the post-DNA, contemporary modes of criminal identification are gradually changing through the increasing expansion of transnational sharing of DNA data, along with the development of highly controversial genetic technologies that pose acute challenges to privacy and generate fears of discrimination, racism and stigmatization. Some questions that guide this book are: How is genetic surveillance in the governance of crime intertwined with society, ethics, culture, and politics? What are the views and expectations of diverse stakeholders –scientists, police agencies, and non-governmental organizations? How can social sciences research about genetic surveillance accommodate socio-cultural and historical differences, and be sensitive to specificities of post-authoritarian societies in Europe? Taking an interdisciplinary approach focused on challenges to genetic privacy, human rights and citizenship in contemporary societies , this book will be of interest to students and scholars of social studies of science and technology, sociology, criminology, law and policing, international relations and forensic sciences.

This edited text draws together the insights of numerous worldwide eminent academics to evaluate the condition of predictive policing and artificial intelligence (AI) as interlocked policy areas. Predictive and AI technologies are growing in prominence and at an unprecedented rate. Powerful digital crime mapping tools are being used to identify crime hotspots in real-time, as pattern-matching and search algorithms are sorting through huge police databases populated by growing volumes of data in an eff ort to identify people liable to experience (or commit) crime, places likely to host it, and variables associated with its solvability. Facial and vehicle recognition cameras are locating criminals as they move, while police services develop strategies informed by machine learning and other kinds of predictive analytics. Many of these innovations are features of modern policing in the UK, the US and Australia, among other jurisdictions.AI promises to reduce unnecessary labour, speed up various forms of police work, encourage police forces to more efficiently apportion their resources, and enable police officers to prevent crime and protect people from a variety of future harms. However, the promises of predictive and AI technologies and innovations do not always match reality. They often have significant weaknesses, come at a considerable cost and require challenging trade- off s to be made. Focusing on the UK, the US and Australia, this book explores themes of choice architecture, decision- making, human rights, accountability and the rule of law, as well as future uses of AI and predictive technologies in various policing contexts. The text contributes to ongoing debates on the benefits and biases of predictive algorithms, big data sets, machine learning systems, and broader policing strategies and challenges.Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of policing, criminology, crime science, sociology, computer science, cognitive psychology and all those interested in the emergence of AI as a feature of contemporary policing.

Sweeping changes are being introduced into the lower-tier magistrates’ courts in England and Wales in efforts to modernise the system and speed up case processing. They concentrate on delivering prompt justice within a modern, efficient and technologically advanced system. But these transformations are fundamentally changing the way justice is delivered. This book analyses criminal court streamlining processes and argues that there are areas where due process protections are being undermined.Transforming Summary Justice reports empirical research carried out with lay magistrates and criminal justice professionals. Views and experiences drawn from magistrates are valuable because of the central role they perform in lower court justice. Further, magistrates provide a wider understanding of the context in which the lower criminal courts operate and enable a critical appraisal of this unique style of ‘lay justice’. This book is directed at students of criminology, criminal justice and socio-legal studies, who will find the debates stimulating and useful to engage with in contemporary analyses of criminal court justice. It will also be of interest to justice and legal professionals who are seeing swingeing alterations to the field in which they work. The book will have appeal in other common-law jurisdictions, where similar modifications to lower court justice are occurring, and also across Europe, where lay involvement in legal decision-making is being debated and becoming accepted practice.

‘Stop and search’ is a form of police-citizen interaction that is confrontational, often stressful for those involved, and potentially damaging to the relationship between police and public. The extent to which police officers use their power to stop and perhaps search members of the public is intimately linked not only to the present-day context of policing but also to longer term patterns in the aims of policing, the ends used to achieve them, and ultimately to the ideology of policing in England and Wales.Stop and Search and Police Legitimacy draws upon both police-administrative and survey-based data to examine what has for many years been one of the most highly charged and contested aspects of police practice. Taking a decidedly quantitative, empirical, approach, this book examines the patterning of police stops over social and geographic space, the problem of ethnic disproportionality, and the evidence concerning how people experience and react to being stopped by police – particularly in relation to issues of fairness, legitimacy, cooperation and compliance. A further important concern is the extent to which this form of police practice shapes and re-shapes the identities of those affected by it.This ground-breaking study is a comprehensive resource for students and scholars in the fields of criminology, sociology, social policy, ethnic and racial studies and human rights. It will also be of special interest to police leaders and policy-makers.

Young offenders given custodial sentences in youth institutions constitute an important group in the context of crime prevention research, given that offenders within this group are at high risk of reoffending or continuing with a criminal career into adulthood. This book explores the significance of custodial openness for children and youths and how this environment affects future desistance from crime.In Young Offenders and Open Custody Tove Pettersson provides powerful support for the view that the experience of more open custodial forms during the youth custody sentence is of significance both for providing incarcerated youths with a more humane environment and for the likelihood of a positive outcome following their release. Building upon detailed interviews with convicted youths and staff at the special approved homes in Sweden, this book offers unique insights into the effect of punishment on young offenders and their understanding of social control. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data, this book examines levels of reoffending over time among youths sentenced to custody, and considers the impact of open sentences. This book will be useful reading for students and researchers engaged in youth and juvenile justice, juvenile delinquency, and sentencing and punishment.

Sexual violence, in all its forms, is a crime for which anecdotal accounts and scholarly reports suggest victims in their great majority do not receive adequate ‘justice’ or redress. The theory and practice of restorative justice is rapidly developing and offers some well-argued new avenues for dealings with crime in general. It has the potential to be extended to cases of sexual violence and a number of small scale programmes are already underway across the world. Restorative Responses to Sexual Violence examines this innovative justice paradigm in more depth in the particular context of sexual trauma and violence in order to establish the empirical realities of restorative justice approaches in cases of sexual violence, and considers how such approaches could be developed adequately in the future. This book is divided into two parts, each representing a key area of research and practice: theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and justice and therapeutic perspectives.This international collection brings together leading expert scholars and practitioners to offer both theoretical and practical perspectives on restorative justice and sexual violence. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of law, criminology, psychology, social science, social work and psychotherapy, as well as practitioners in the fields of criminal justice, restorative justice and sex offender and victim trauma therapies.

In a contemporary setting of increasing social division and marginalisation, Policing Hate Crime interrogates the complexities of prejudice motivated crime and effective policing practices. Hate crime has become a barometer for contemporary police relations with vulnerable and marginalised communities. But how do police effectively lead conversations with such communities about problems arising from prejudice? Contemporary police are expected to be active agents in the pursuit of social justice and human rights by stamping out prejudice and group-based animosity. At the same time, police have been criticised in over-policing targeted communities as potential perpetrators, as well as under-policing these same communities as victims of crime. Despite this history, the demand for impartial law enforcement requires police to change their engagement with targeted communities and kindle trust as priorities in strengthening their response to hate crime.Drawing upon a research partnership between police and academics, this book entwines current law enforcement responses with key debates on the meaning of hate crime to explore the potential for misunderstandings of hate crime between police and communities, and illuminates ways to overcome communication difficulties. This book will be important reading for students taking courses in hate crime, as well as victimology, policing, and crime and community.

Special constables are warranted officers retained within British constabularies. Wearing similar uniforms, carrying the same personal protective equipment and holding identical powers to enforce the criminal law, special constables are to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from their colleagues in the regular police service. However, very little is documented about the experiences and motivations of special constables, the roles they play in contemporary policing or the impact that they have on the police organisation.This book draws together academics and practitioners to provide a valuable insight into historical, international and contemporary themes pertinent to the historical development and contemporary operation of the special constabulary. The book critically considers the origins of the special constabulary and the political, social and economic factors which led to its evolution over time. It compares and contrasts the organisation, functions and status of the special constabulary with other auxiliary forces, notably from the United States. The book also contributes to theoretical understanding of contemporary policing, to debates about the roles and operation of the 'mixed economy' of provision, and informs policy and practice in the United Kingdom and beyond.

The core baseline of Intelligence-led Policing is the aim of increasing efficiency and quality of police work, with a focus on crime analysis and intelligence methods as tools for informed and objective decisions both when conducting targeted, specialized operations and when setting strategic priorities. This book critically addresses the proliferation of intelligence logics within policing from a wide array of scholarly perspectives. It considers questions such as: How are precautionary logics becoming increasingly central in the dominant policing strategies? What kind of challenges will this move entail? What does the criminalization of preparatory acts mean for previous distinctions between crime prevention and crime detection? What are the predominant rationales behind the proactive use of covert cohesive measures in order to prevent attacks on national security? How are new technological measures, increased private partnerships and international cooperation challenging the core nature of police services as the main providers of public safety and security? This book offers new insights by exploring dilemmas, legal issues and questions raised by the use of new policing methods and the blurred and confrontational lines that can be observed between prevention, intelligence and investigation in police work.

To understand how people experience justice and security is a challenging task in times of unrest, marked by growing perceptions of insecurity, discrimination and uncertainty. The European project ALTERNATIVE aimed to understand justice and security experiences related to conflicts in intercultural settings, when citizens are given the means to actively contribute to these processes. This book relates how the project was set up as an action research through the concrete description of four action sites: social housing estates in Vienna, Austria; a small community in Hungary with a Roma population; three border towns in Serbia; and three communities in Northern Ireland. These four sites have been compared through an innovative methodology, which leads to a deeper understanding of the impact of participatory and restorative justice oriented processes, and - in a more general way - of what action research may entail in the criminological field. Bringing together researchers and case studies from around Europe, this book examines the scientific potential of action research as a methodology in criminal justice settings. This book is one of two volumes resulting from the work by a group of researchers in six European countries having cooperated intensively during four years in ALTERNATIVE, an action research project funded under the EU Seventh Framework Programme.

The intercultural contexts and new configurations in Europe offer fertile ground for social conflict, tensions and threat. This book challenges predominant and fear inducing approaches of justice and security as they appear in intercultural contexts, and develops alternative understandings by exploring both theoretically and empirically the potential of dialogic and restorative justice oriented actions in sensitive areas of living together. The book offers unique opportunities for rethinking frames of (in)justice, (in)security, and their intersections, and for reshaping European practices and policies in a more sustainable way.This book is based on an innovative and exploratory action research project in four European countries, which challenges the obsessive focus on security concerns, the merging of the security discourse with intercultural contexts, and the emphasis on technology and surveillance as a way to conceive the doing of security. Both the project and the book offer another vision on what security means and how it can be done, by multiplying participatory encounters between different groups in society, promoting opportunities for deliberations and dialogue about alternative forms of conviviality. The book is one of two volumes resulting from the work by a group of researchers in six European countries having cooperated intensively during four years in ALTERNATIVE, an action research project funded under the EU Seventh Framework Programme.

From predictive policing to self-surveillance to private security, the potential uses to of big data in crime control pose serious legal and ethical challenges relating to privacy, discrimination, and the presumption of innocence. The book is about the impacts of the use of big data analytics on social and crime control and on fundamental liberties.Drawing on research from Europe and the US, this book identifies the various ways in which law and ethics intersect with the application of big data in social and crime control, considers potential challenges to human rights and democracy and recommends regulatory solutions and best practice. This book focuses on changes in knowledge production and the manifold sites of contemporary surveillance, ranging from self-surveillance to corporate and state surveillance. It tackles the implications of big data and predictive algorithmic analytics for social justice, social equality, and social power: concepts at the very core of crime and social control.This book will be of interest to scholars and students of criminology, sociology, politics and socio-legal studies.

Diversion in youth justice is a subject of enduring interest. It concerns the processes by which decisions are made about whether or not to prosecute young offenders, and this book explores the continuing debates and historical developments which shape these processes. The treatment of young offenders is a contentious subject, and this book provides a comprehensive review of out of court decision-making in the context of wider arguments about how we should deal with the crimes of the young.This book follows a broadly historical structure, exploring the development of ideas and approaches to agency decision-making at the point of prosecution. This leads to the identification of a number of distinctive ‘models’ of diversion, reflecting both specific periods of time and particular philosophies of intervention with young people in trouble with the law. Based on this classification, this book explores the implications for wider debates about childhood, crime and punishment and how these relate to theories of social control. This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that diversionary ideas and practices act as a kind of barometer for wider developments in the governance of youth.This is one of the very few books that focuses exclusively on diversion as a feature of youth justice, and it provides a range of original and contemporary insights into this subject area which remains of considerable interest in this field, both academically and in practice. The ideas outlined here will contribute to new thinking in youth criminology, as the discipline responds to a prolonged period of apparent liberalisation in the treatment of young offenders which has yet to be fully understood or properly theorised.

Police-citizen relations are in the public spotlight following outbursts of anger and violence. Such clashes often happen as a response to fatal police shootings, racial or ethnic discrimination, or the mishandling of mass protests. But even in such cases, citizens’ assessment of the police differs considerably across social groups. This raises the question of the sources and impediments of citizens’ trust and support for police. Why are police-citizen relations much better in some countries than in others? Are police-minority relations doomed to be strained? And which police practices and policing policies generate trust and legitimacy? Research on police legitimacy has been centred on US experiences, and relied on procedural justice as the main theoretical approach. This book questions whether this approach is suitable and sufficient to understand public attitudes towards the police across different countries and regions of the world. This volume shows that the impact of macro-level conditions, of societal cleavages, and of state and political institutions on police-citizen relations has too often been neglected in contemporary research. Building on empirical studies from around the world as well as cross-national comparisons, this volume considerably expands current perspectives on the sources of police legitimacy and citizens’ trust in the police. Combining the analysis of micro-level interactions with a perspective on the contextual framework and varying national conditions, the contributions to this book illustrate the strength of a broadened perspective and lead us to ask how specific national frameworks shape the experiences of policing.

The process of judicial control over institutions is often described as growing socio-legal trend which impacts the development of modern societies. This is particularly the case for prisons and other penal institutions, as international bodies and the courts have tried to influence prison policies since the 1960s. This book addresses this dynamic situation by focusing on European monitoring as a major influence on penal and prison policies within, between and across nation states. Bringing together experts from around Europe, this book actively contributes to debates and analysis within penal and prison policy studies by shedding lights on the impacts of monitoring, and demonstrates how the study of penal and prison reform in different European countries can contribute to building a clearer and more precise picture of European legal systems.This book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of prisons, penology and punishment, as well as policymakers and professionals working for national Ministries of Justice and for prison department and national human rights institutions, as well as those working for INGOs and NGOs.

Does a more academic type of police education produce new police officers that are reluctant to patrol the streets? What is the impact of gender diversity and political orientation on a police students’ career aspirations and attitudes to policing? These are some of the questions addressed by this longitudinal project, following police students in seven European countries. The unique data material makes it possible to explore a wide range of topics relevant to the future development of policing, police education and police science more generally. Part I presents an overview of the different goals and models of police education in the seven participating countries. Part II describes what type of student is attracted to police education, taking into consideration educational background, political orientation and career aspirations. Part III shows the social impact of police education by examining students’ orientations towards emerging competence areas; students’ career aspirations; and students’ attitudes concerning trust, cynicism and legalism.The overall results show that police students are strikingly similar across different types of police education. Students in academic institutions are at least as interested in street patrolling as students in vocational training institutions. Gender and recruitment policies matters more in relation to career preferences than education models. The national context plays a more important role than the type of police education system. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in policing, criminology, sociology, social theory and cultural studies and those interested in how police education shapes its graduates.

"Crossover" Children in the Youth Justice and Child Protection Systems explores the outcomes faced by the group of children who experience involvement with both child protection and youth justice systems across several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Situated against a backdrop of international evidence and grounded in a two-year study with the Children’s Court in Victoria, Australia, this book presents a cohesive picture of the backgrounds, characteristics, and pathways traversed by crossover children. It presents statistical data from 300 crossover Children’s Court case files, alongside the expert evidence of 82 professionals, to generate a comprehensive picture of the lives of crossover children, and the individual and systemic challenges that they face. The book investigates the crucial question of why some children involved with child welfare systems experience particularly poor criminal justice outcomes, demonstrating how the convergence of cumulative childhood adversity, complex support needs, and systemic disadvantage produces acutely damaging outcomes for some crossover youth. It outlines the implications of the study, including how these findings might shape diversion and differential justice system responses to child protection-involved youth, and the innovative approaches adopted internationally to avert the care to custody pathway. This book is internationally relevant and will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology and law, social work, psychology, and sociology, as well as legal, welfare, and government agencies and policy developers, non-government peak bodies and services, professional probation services, case managers, health and mental health services, disability and drug treatment agencies, and others who work with both young offenders and the design and implementation of policy and legislation.

The Evolving Protection of Prisoners’ Rights in Europe explores the development of the framing of penal and prison policies by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), clarifying the European expectations of national authorities, and describing the various models existing in Europe, with a view to analysing their mechanisms and highlighting those that seem the most suitable.A new frame of penal and prison policies in Europe has been progressively established by the ECHR and the Council of Europe (CoE) to protect the rights of detainees in Europe. European countries have reacted very diversely to these policies. This book has several key benefits for readers: • A global and detailed overview of the ECHR jurisprudence on penal and prison policies through an analysis of its development over time. • An analysis of the interactions between the Strasbourg Court and the CoE bodies (Committee of Ministers, Committee for the Prevention of Torture …) and their reinforced framing of domestic penal and prison policies. • A detailed examination of the impacts of the European case law on penal and prison policies within ten nation states in Europe (including Romania which is currently very underresearched). • A robust engagement with the diverse national reactions to this European case law as a policy strategy. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Law, Criminal Justice, Criminology and Sociology. It will also appeal to civil servants (judges, lawyers, etc.), professionals and policymakers working for the CoE, the European Union, and the United Nations; Ministries of Justice; prison departments; and human rights institutions, as well as activists working for INGOs and NGOs.

How has rapid economic modernization in China and India impacted upon policing? To what extent are the two police forces trusted by its citizens? Do the police carry out their duties in a fair and unbiased fashion? What does police corruption look like and why does it persist? And what are the influencing factors in decision-making at the moments-of-truth? Filling the lacuna of research into the police in China and India, this book offers a unique comparative study of the prevalence, nature and organization of police corruption in these countries.This book provides key insights into the relationships between rapid economic modernisation, urbanisation and crime, and its effects on police organisational culture and behaviour as well as on ethical decision making. Moreover, this book performs an audit on which country is better placed to tackle corruption and professionalise their police service.It offers a major contribution to comparative research on criminal justice. It is essential reading for all policing scholars and will be of interest to students of criminology, social and political sciences, development studies, Asian studies, and post-colonial studies.

Understanding the Educational Experiences of Imprisoned Men explores how adult male prisoners interpret and give value to their experiences of education, presenting an opportunity to consider how education can be beneficial to prisoners including and beyond the enhancement of employability skills.While the primary aim for education in prison has been to increase employability skills to prevent reoffending, further attention needs to be given to the broader outcomes of educational experiences and the importance of the development of other personal attributes including self-confidence, empowerment and the ability to engage in positive relationships. This book considers how education is also used by men in prison to cope with prison life, to reconsider their identity and to develop and maintain relationships. It also discusses the relationships that prisoners have with their teachers and other prison staff as well as the relationships that different types of prison staff have between each other. In addition, the role that education can play in the process of desistance from crime is discussed to provide an understanding of what changes occur in men who participate in educational courses. This book will be of interest to not only students and scholars with an interest in imprisonment, rehabilitation and criminal justice practice, but also educationalists, those who work in the prison setting and in social work. It may also appeal to those involved in community development programmes and broader sociological research.

In recent times the question of private sector involvement in public affairs has become framed in altogether new terms. Across Europe, there has been a growth in various forms of public-private cooperation in building and maintaining (new) penal institutions and an increasing presence of private companies offering security services within penal institutions as well as delivering security goods such as electronic monitoring and other equipment to penal authorities. Such developments are part of a wider trend towards privatising and marketising security. Bringing together key scholars in criminology and penology from across Europe and beyond, this book maps and describes trends of privatising punishment throughout Europe, paying attention both to prisons and community sanctions. In doing so, it initiates a continent-wide dialogue among academics and key public and private actors on the future of privatisation in Europe. Debates on the privatisation of punishment in Europe are still underdeveloped and this book plays a pioneering and agenda-setting role in developing this dialogue.

The Politics of Prison Crowding investigates recent transformations in Italy’s penal system to make the key analytical observation that conditions of overcrowding have become the ‘new normal’ under which the modern prison system continues to operate and deliver punishment. Engaging with the politics of crowding thus entails a direct and pertinent engagement with the modern state’s politics of criminal justice and social control.Worldwide, over the last decades, a growing number of jurisdictions have prison systems operating above or to the limit of their capacity, yet little attention has been paid to these elements in the analysis of prison politics and day-to-day functions. By exploring the crowding issue, this book offers an original and interesting insight into the politics and dynamics characterising contemporary prison systems. The hypothesis of this book is that the politics of prison crowding have become the template for the daily administration of the prison system, which incorporates not just policy and rules but day-to-day functions and practices regulating life behind bars. Through interviews in modern Italian prisons, the book brings to light a radical redefinition of a carceral system that harshens the delivery of punishment while justifying this exacerbation of pain by adding new bureaucratic logic to the administration of the penal system within a narrative of compliance to human rights standards.By shedding new light on prison politics to open new critical perspectives and research paths, The Politics of Prison Crowding offers a fundamental tool to scholars, students, and all professional policymakers and practitioners dealing with prison policies and the politics of justice.

This book provides a comparative analysis of the process of breach across ten different European jurisdictions by identifying and elaborating a number of key analytical themes through which the different systems can be compared and evaluated. It is informed by and hopes to advance the research activities of the COST Action IS1106 on Offender Supervision in Europe, particularly the Action’s work on developing new comparative methodologies to examine the process of decision-making involved in the breaching of offenders for non-compliance. This volume consists of country chapters and thematic chapters. Analyses are based on exhaustive reviews of the literature available in each jurisdiction as well as the results of an empirical pilot study to provide a unique and valuable insight into current practice as well as enhancing our understanding of the contingencies and vagaries of the processes of breach as they exist in both civil and common law European jurisdictions. The key themes and emerging concerns that are explored include: the roles and responsibilities of the different actors involved in the breach process; the degree and nature of discretion exercised by decision-makers; and legitimacy, due process and procedural requirements of breach processes both from a pan-European and from a comparative perspective. This book will be of interest to criminal lawyers and criminologists, policy makers, criminal justice practitioners, probation workers and students of criminal justice studies across Europe. Comparative insight into the decision-making processes of breach across Europe will also be of interest to American, Canadian and Australian audiences seeking comparisons with their own systems.

What are the potential contributions of anthropology to the study of police? Even beyond the methodological particularities and geographic breadth of cultural anthropology, there are a set of conceptual and analytical traditions that have much to bring to broader scholarship in police studies. Including original and international contributions from both senior and emerging scholars, this pioneering book represents a foundational document for a burgeoning field of study: the anthropology of police. The chapters in this volume open up the question of police in new ways: mining the disciplinary legacies of anthropology in order to discover new conceptual tools, methods, and pedagogies; reworking relationships between "police," "public," and "researcher" in ways that open up new avenues for exploration at the same time as they articulate new demands; and retracing a hauntology that, through interactions with individuals and collectives, constitutes a body politic through the figure of police.Illustrating the various ways that anthropology enables a reassessment of the police/violence relationship with a broad consideration of the human stakes at the center, this book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and the broad interdisciplinary field invested in the study of policing, order-making, and governance.

Coercive medico-legal interventions are often employed to prevent people deemed to be unable to make competent decisions about their health, such as minors, people with mental illness, disability or problematic alcohol or other drug use, from harming themselves or others. These interventions can entail major curtailments of individuals’ liberty and bodily integrity, and may cause significant harm and distress. The use of coercive medico-legal interventions can also serve competing social interests that raise profound ethical, legal and clinical questions.Examining the ethical, social and legal issues involved in coerced care, this book brings together the views and insights of leading researchers from a range of disciplines, including criminology, law, ethics, psychology and public health, as well as legal and medical practitioners, social-service ‘consumers’ and government officials. Topics addressed in this volume include: compulsory treatment and involuntary detention orders in civil mental health and disability law; mandatory alcohol and drug treatment programs and drug courts; community treatment orders; the use of welfare cards with Indigenous populations; mandated treatment of seriously ill minors; as well as adult guardianship and substituted decision-making regimes. These contributions attempt to shed light on why we use coercive interventions, whether we should, whether they are effective in achieving the benefits that are offered to justify their use, and the impact that they have on some of society’s most vulnerable citizens in the names of ‘justice’ and ‘treatment’. This book is essential reading for clinicians, researchers and legal practitioners involved in the study and application of coerced care, as well as students and scholars in the fields of law, medicine, ethics and criminology. The collection asks important questions about the increasing use of coercive care that demand to be answered, and offers critical insights, guidance and recommendations for those working in the field.