The Politics of the Prison and the Prisoner

The Politics of the Prison and the Prisoner

Author: Susan Easton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1317368916

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In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the role of the prison as a source of political ideas and site of political engagement, as well as in the prisoner’s quest for citizenship. The rising number of prisoners has increased fiscal burdens, which has meant that imprisonment has become a more important political issue. There is also greater interest in the prison as a site of political activism and in the generation of radical political ideas within the prison context and the formation of political networks within prison which extend beyond the prison walls. This book considers the prison as a site of political protest, discusses the quest for citizenship and the denial or negation of citizenship in prison, examines the discovery of politics in prison and the role of the prison in increasing political awareness, explores the treatment of political prisoners and reflects on the prisoner as a political problem for politicians negotiating pressures from the media and the public when addressing prisoners’ demands. Drawing on a range of contemporary and historical topics such as prison riots, radicalisation and the denial of voting rights, and including discussion of cases from the UK, US and Russia, this book examines the prison as a political institution and as a site of both politicisation and political protest. This book will be of interest to students and academics engaged with prisons, penology, punishment and corrections.


Prisoners of Politics

Prisoners of Politics

Author: Rachel Elise Barkow

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-03-04

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0674919238

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America’s criminal justice system reflects irrational fears stoked by politicians seeking to win election. Pointing to specific policies that are morally problematic and have failed to end the cycle of recidivism, Rachel Barkow argues that reform guided by evidence, not politics and emotions, will reduce crime and reverse mass incarceration.


Convicted and Condemned

Convicted and Condemned

Author: Keesha Middlemass

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2017-06-27

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0814724396

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Winner, W. E. B. DuBois Distinguished Book Award presented by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Examines the lifelong consequences of a felony conviction through the compelling words of former prisoners Felony convictions restrict social interactions and hinder felons’ efforts to reintegrate into society. The educational and vocational training offered in many prisons are typically not recognized by accredited educational institutions as acceptable course work or by employers as valid work experience, making it difficult for recently-released prisoners to find jobs. Families often will not or cannot allow their formerly incarcerated relatives to live with them. In many states, those with felony convictions cannot receive financial aid for further education, vote in elections, receive welfare benefits, or live in public housing. In short, they are not treated as full citizens, and every year, hundreds of thousands of people released from prison are forced to live on the margins of society. Convicted and Condemned explores the issue of prisoner reentry from the felons’ perspective. It features the voices of formerly incarcerated felons as they attempt to reconnect with family, learn how to acclimate to society, try to secure housing, find a job, and complete a host of other important goals. By examining national housing, education and employment policies implemented at the state and local levels, Keesha Middlemass shows how the law challenges and undermines prisoner reentry and creates second-class citizens. Even if the criminal justice system never convicted another person of a felony, millions of women and men would still have to figure out how to reenter society, essentially on their own. A sobering account of the after-effects of mass incarceration, Convicted and Condemned is a powerful exploration of how individuals, and society as a whole, suffer when a felony conviction exacts a punishment that never ends.


Prisoners of the American Dream

Prisoners of the American Dream

Author: Mike Davis

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-07-24

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1786635925

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A brilliant and comprehensive study of class struggle in the United States Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis’s brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world’s most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? This series of essays surveys the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution from its Jacksonian beginnings to the rise of the New Right and the re-election of Ronald Reagan, concluding with some bracing thoughts on the prospects for progressive politics in the United States.


The Prison of Democracy

The Prison of Democracy

Author: Sara M. Benson

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-04-16

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0520296966

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At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Built in the 1890s at the center of the nation, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was designed specifically to be a replica of the US Capitol Building. But why? The Prison of Democracy explains the political significance of a prison built to mimic one of America’s monuments to democracy. Locating Leavenworth in memory, history, and law, the prison geographically sits at the borders of Indian Territory (1825–1854) and Bleeding Kansas (1854–1864), both sites of contestation over slavery and freedom. Author Sara M. Benson argues that Leavenworth reshaped the design of punishment in America by gradually normalizing state-inflicted violence against citizens. Leavenworth’s peculiar architecture illustrates the real roots of mass incarceration—as an explicitly race- and nation-building system that has been ingrained in the very fabric of US history rather than as part of a recent post-war racial history. The book sheds light on the truth of the painful relationship between the carceral state and democracy in the US—a relationship that thrives to this day.


Struggle Within

Struggle Within

Author: Dan Berger

Publisher: PM Press

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 160486981X

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The Struggle Within is an accessible yet wide-ranging historical primer about how mass imprisonment has been a tool of repression deployed against diverse left-wing social movements over the last fifty years. Berger examines some of the most dynamic social movements across half a century: black liberation, Puerto Rican independence, Native American sovereignty, Chicano radicalism, white antiracist and working-class mobilizations, pacifist and antinuclear campaigns, and earth liberation and animal rights. Berger’s encyclopedic knowledge of American social movements provides a rich comparative history of numerous social movements that continue to shape contemporary politics. The book also offers a little-heard voice in contemporary critiques of mass incarceration. Rather than seeing the issue of America’s prison growth as stemming solely from the war on drugs, Berger locates mass incarceration within a slew of social movements that have provided steep challenges to state power.


The Politics of the Prison and the Prisoner

The Politics of the Prison and the Prisoner

Author: Susan M. Easton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781315671031

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In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the role of the prison as a source of political ideas and site of political engagement, as well as in the prisoner's quest for citizenship. The rising number of prisoners has increased fiscal burdens, which has meant that imprisonment has become a more important political issue. There is also greater interest in the prison as a site of political activism and in the generation of radical political ideas within the prison context and the formation of political networks within prison which extend beyond the prison walls. This book considers the prison as a site of political protest, discusses the quest for citizenship and the denial or negation of citizenship in prison, examines the discovery of politics in prison and the role of the prison in increasing political awareness, explores the treatment of political prisoners and reflects on the prisoner as a political problem for politicians negotiating pressures from the media and the public when addressing prisoners' demands. Drawing on a range of contemporary and historical topics such as prison riots, radicalisation and the denial of voting rights, and including discussion of cases from the UK, US and Russia, this book examines the prison as a political institution and as a site of both politicisation and political protest. This book will be of interest to students and academics engaged with prisons, penology, punishment and corrections.


Prison Policy in Ireland

Prison Policy in Ireland

Author: Mary Rogan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2011-04

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1136811451

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This book explores how Irish prison policy has come to take on its particular character, with comparatively low prison numbers, significant reliance on short sentences and a policy-making climate in which long periods of neglect are interspersed with bursts of political activity all prominent features. Drawing on the emerging scholarship of policy analysis, the book argues that it is only through close attention to the way in which policy is formed that we will fully understand the nature of prison policy.


Dance in Chains

Dance in Chains

Author: Padraic Kenney

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-10-02

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0199375755

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States around the world imprison people for their beliefs or politically-motivated actions. Oppositional movements of all stripes celebrate their comrades behind bars. Yet they are more than symbols of repression and human rights. Dance in Chains examines the experiences of political prisoners themselves in order to understand who they are, what they do, and why it matters. This is the first book to trace the history of modern political imprisonment from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century. The letters, diaries, and memoirs of political prisoners, as well as the records of regime policies, relate the contest in the prison cell to political conflicts between regime and opposition. Padraic Kenney draws on examples from regimes ranging from communist and fascist to colonial and democratic, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Poland, and South Africa. They include the Fenian Brotherhood, imprisoned in England and Ireland in the 1860s, and their successors during the Irish War of Independence and the Northern Ireland Troubles; Afrikaaners suspected of treason during the Boer War; socialists fighting for Polish freedom in the Russian Empire, and then Communists denouncing "bourgeois" rule in newly-independent Poland; the opponents of apartheid South Africa and stalinist Poland; and those imprisoned by the United States in Guantanamo Bay detention camp today. Some prisons are well-known; in others, inmates suffered in obscurity. Through self-organization, education, and actions ranging from solitary non-cooperation to mass hunger strikes, these prisoners transform their incarceration and counter states' efforts to control them. While considering the international movements that have sought to publicize the plight of political prisoners, Dance in Chains examines the actions of the prisoners themselves to find universal answers to questions about the meaning and purpose of their imprisonment.