The Barlinnie Special Unit
The Barlinnie Special Unit

Author: Dr Kirstin Anderson

Publisher: Waterside Press

Published: 2024-10-01

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 191460346X

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Fifty years ago, a small unit in HM Prison Barlinnie, Glasgow, became a radical experiment whose approach polarised opinion. It encouraged shared decision-making between prisoners and staff, allowed greater access to families and enabled prisoners to explore creative activities. Through the support of visiting artists, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, notably the sculptor Jimmy Boyle (author of A Sense of Freedom), its impact challenged prevailing, disciplinarian prison culture. Arts of various kinds, plus respectful and challenging dialogue, released dormant abilities and strengths in hitherto recalcitrant, formerly violent prisoners. Always controversial, the legacy of the Barlinnie Special Unit challenges overly punitive ideas around crime to this day. The first edited collection on the Barlinnie Special Unit’s almost 22-year history with contributions by those who were there at the time, or helped preserve its legacy. They include artist filmmaker Bill Beech, Scotland’s first art therapist Joyce Laing, leading Scottish impresario Richard Demarco, Sara Trevelyan, ex-wife of Jimmy Boyle (who also contributes), Rupert Wolfe Murray, son of Boyle’s publisher, Professor Mike Nellis of Strathclyde University, Claire Coia, a curator at Glasgow’s Open Museum, Andrew Coyle, founding Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies and journalist, and former Scottish MP Brian Wilson. Based on first-hand accounts, the book is a definitive retrospective and the first detailed history/analysis of the unit. A supreme record of an ‘iconic’ social experiment which includes diverse and largely unpublished materials. Review ‘Looking again at the BSU is a reminder that we have to reform the prison system. It means treating people in a humane way, even those who have committed serious crime, and by inventing creative projects which restore a person’s self-worth as a better route to redemption than mere punishment’ — Baroness Helena Kennedy KC (from the Foreword).

Imprisonment Today
Imprisonment Today

Author: Simon Backett

Publisher:

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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A collection of papers on various aspects of the imprisonment process in which each chapter highlights a critical area in the prisoner's passage through the penal system. The book aims to promote a greater understanding of the issues and problems inherent to the British penal system.

The Barlinnie Story
The Barlinnie Story

Author: Robert Jeffrey

Publisher: Black & White Publishing

Published: 2011-11-08

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1845023730

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Barlinnie is one of the most notorious prisons in the world and for a hundred years it has held Glasgow's toughest and most violent men, swept up from the city streets. Ten men died on its gallows in the infamous Hanging Shed, including serial killer Peter Manuel. It has sparked rooftop protests and cell block riots, and been home to godfathers of crime like Arthur Thompson Snr and Walter Norval. Barlinnie was also the scene of one of the most controversial experiments in penal history, the Special Unit, where the likes of Jimmy Boyle and Hugh Collins were at the centre of a fierce battle between those who see prison as retribution and those who regard it as a step on the road to redemption, even for the most evil killers. Paul Ferris, T C Campbell and gangleaders galore have languished behind its grim walls and, a hundred years on, Barlinnie still makes headlines. This is its fascinating, turbulent story.

A Sense of Freedom
A Sense of Freedom

Author: Jimmy Boyle

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2016-04-07

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1473529220

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Foreword by Irvine Welsh 'My life sentence had actually started the day I left my mother's womb...' Jimmy Boyle grew up in Glasgow’s Gorbals. All around him the world was drinking, fighting and thieving. To survive, he too had to fight and steal... Kids’ gangs led to trouble with the police. Approved schools led to Borstal, and Jimmy was on his way to a career in crime. By his twenties he was a hardened villain, sleeping with prostitutes, running shebeens and money-lending rackets. Then they nailed him for murder. The sentence was life – the brutal, degrading eternity of a broken spirit in the prisons of Peterhead and Inverness. Thankfully, Jimmy was able to turn his life around inside the prison walls and eventually released on parole. A Sense of Freedom is a searing indictment of a society that uses prison bars and brutality to destroy a man's humanity and at the same time an outstanding testament to one man's ability to survive, to find a new life, a new creativity, and a new alternative.

New Perspectives on Desistance
New Perspectives on Desistance

Author: Emily Luise Hart

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-06-14

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1349951854

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This book brings together a collection of emergent research that moves the debate on desistance beyond a general consideration of individual and social structural influences. The authors examine empirical developments which have implications for policy surrounding resettlement and re-offending, but also for punishment practices. Presenting thought-provoking theoretical advances and critiques, the editors challenge and enrich traditional understandings of desistance. A wide range of chapters explore how some criminal justice interventions hinder the desistance process, but also how alternative approaches may be more helpful in promoting and supporting desistance. Thorough and diverse, this book will be of great interest to scholars of criminology and criminal justice, social policy, sociology and psychology, and of special interest to researchers and practitioners working with (ex-)offenders.

Violence among the Mentally III
Violence among the Mentally III

Author: Sheilagh Hodgins

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9401141304

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The NATO Advanced Study Institute on the Prevention of Crime and Violence Among the Mentally III was held in May 1999 in Tuscany, Italy. Participants from 15 countries attended. Since care for persons with mental illness (schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, delusional disorder, atypical psychoses) has been deinstitutionalized, some persons with these disorders are committing crimes and serious violence. Consequently, societies around the world are confronted with a new challenge: to provide mental health care and social services to mentally ill persons in a humane way that will prevent illegal behaviours. Research in this field has been dominated by investigations designed to improve clinicians' accuracy in predicting violent behaviours, with little attention focused on the organization and implemen tation of treatments. The premise of the Advanced Study Institute was that treatments must have em pirically proven efficacy. Both professional ethics and public accountability require empirical evidence that each treatment will alleviate the problem that it targets. However, despite the fact that Western industrial societies provide treatment for mentally ill persons who have offended, there is a very limited base of knowledge on what constitutes effective treatment and how such treatments should be organized and delivered. The Advanced Study Institute was an attempt to stimulate and encour age research that will extend this knowledge base. The goals were to review what is known about mentally ill offenders and about effective treatments for them, and to provide a framework for the orientation of future investigations designed to improve treatment efficacy.

The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales
The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales

Author: David Downes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-22

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1000373657

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Volume III of The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales draws on archival sources and individual accounts to offer a history of penal policymaking in England and Wales between 1959 and 1997. The book studies the changes underlying penal policymaking in the period, from a belief in the rehabilitative potential of imprisonment to a reaffirmation in 1993 that ‘Prison Works’ as a deterrent to crime. A need to curb the rising prison population initially focussed on developing alternatives to prison and a new system of parole; however, their relative ineffectiveness led to sentencing becoming the key to penal reform. A slackening of faith in rehabilitation led to pressure for greater emphasis on humane containment and the rebalancing of security, order and justice in prison regimes. Thus, 1991 was the climactic year for what became largely unfulfilled hopes for lasting penal reform. Escapes, riots and prison occupations were prime catalysts for changes, often highly contentious, in penal policymaking. Notably, there was no simple equation between political party, minister and policy choice. Both Labour and Conservative governments had distinctly liberal Home Secretaries and, after 1992, both parties took a more punitive approach. This book will be of much interest to students of criminology and British history, politics and law.

Crime, Justice, and Social Order
Crime, Justice, and Social Order

Author: Alison Liebling

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0192859609

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To honour the extraordinary contribution of Professor Anthony Edward Bottoms to criminology and criminal justice, leading criminologists and penal scholars have been asked to contribute original essays on the wide range of areas in which he has written. The book starts by reflecting on the depth and breadth of Anthony's contribution and his melding of perspectives from moral philosophy, social theory, empirical social science research, and criminal justice. This is no ordinary collection, because it also contains a major essay by Anthony Bottoms, on Criminology and 'positive morality', reflecting on social order and social norms. In similar vein, Jonathan Jacobs approaches criminology from a moral philosophical viewpoint, whilst Ian Loader and Richard Sparks ponder social theory and contemporary criminology. Topically, Peter Neyroud reflects on evidence-based practice and the process of trying to do experiments in relation to policing. In the second section of the book on Crime, Justice, and Communities, Loraine Gelsthorpe reminds us that justice is about people, in considering the treatment of women in community justice. Joanna Shapland draws parallels between the process of desistance from crime and the potential role of restorative justice in affecting offenders' journeys. P.-O. Wikstrom reflects on the social ecology of crime, whilst Antje Du Bois Pedain considers the theoretical and practical challenges of sentencing constructively. Finally, the book turns to Anthony Bottoms' major interest in punishment and penal order. David Garland puts penal populism under the microscope, whilst Alison Liebling explores the empirical evidence for theories of penal legitimacy. Mike Nellis looks back at the use of the creative arts in prisons in Scotland's Barlinnie Unit, whilst Justice Tankebe explores police legitimacy.

Doing Time
Doing Time

Author: Roger Matthews

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-03-11

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0230277063

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The new edition of Doing Time brings this widely recognized book up-to-date and provides an accessible and informed discussion of current debates around prisons and penal policy. Drawing on a range of international material the book provides a critical sociological analysis of developments in imprisonment.