This book demonstrates that alternative approaches to criminal rehabilitation succeed in developing pro-social attitudes and in improving mental, physical and spiritual health for youth and adults in prison and community settings. The use of mindfulness is highlighted as a foundational tool of self-reflexivity, creative expression and therapy.
Stephen Stanley and Mary Baginsky examine and evaluate the range of non-custodial sentences available to the courts, discussing their effectiveness, and exploring the often complex issues they raise. Drawing on a wide range research literature, this is both a clear and informative synthesis of thinking on a pressing problem and an important contribution to the wider debate about how society should deal with crime and criminals.
Drawing upon original qualitative research with prisoners in three democratic therapeutic communities (TCs), this book provides a unique sociological portrayal and new criminological understanding of the TC's rehabilitative regime and culture.
Introduces the reader to the basic principles central to understanding alternatives to imprisonment as well as descriptions of promising practices implemented throughout the world. This handbook offers information about alternatives to imprisonment at various stages of the criminal justice process.
"The Expanding Prison is a provocative, cogent argument for prison reform. David Cayley argues that our overpopulated prisons are more reflective of a society that is becoming increasingly polarized than of an actual surge in crime. This book considers proven alternatives to imprisonment that emphasize settlement-oriented techniques over punishment, and move us towards a vision of justice as peace-making rather than one of vengeance."
After decades of the American “war on drugs” and relentless prison expansion, political officials are finally challenging mass incarceration. Many point to an apparently promising solution to reduce the prison population: addiction treatment. In Addicted to Rehab, Bard College sociologist Allison McKim gives an in-depth and innovative ethnographic account of two such rehab programs for women, one located in the criminal justice system and one located in the private healthcare system—two very different ways of defining and treating addiction. McKim’s book shows how addiction rehab reflects the race, class, and gender politics of the punitive turn. As a result, addiction has become a racialized category that has reorganized the link between punishment and welfare provision. While reformers hope that treatment will offer an alternative to punishment and help women, McKim argues that the framework of addiction further stigmatizes criminalized women and undermines our capacity to challenge gendered subordination. Her study ultimately reveals a two-tiered system, bifurcated by race and class.
Explores the challenges faced by convicted offenders over the course of rehabilitation and reintegration. Each chapter focuses on a specific phase of the process.
With a new afterword from the authors, the critically praised indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration” Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But in a searing, “cogent critique” (Library Journal), Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal that many of these so-called reforms actually weave in new strands of punishment and control, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state. Whether readers are seasoned abolitionists or are newly interested in sensible alternatives to retrograde policing and criminal justice policies and approaches, this highly praised book offers “a wealth of critical insights” that will help readers “tread carefully through the dizzying terrain of a world turned upside down” and “make sense of what should take the place of mass incarceration” (The Brooklyn Rail). With a foreword by Michelle Alexander, Prison by Any Other Name exposes how a kinder narrative of reform is effectively obscuring an agenda of social control, challenging us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change, and offering a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.
