When most people think of prison gangs, they think of chaotic bands of violent, racist thugs. Few people think of gangs as sophisticated organizations (often with elaborate written constitutions) that regulate the prison black market, adjudicate conflicts, and strategically balance the competing demands of inmates, gang members, and correctional officers. Yet as David Skarbek argues, gangs form to create order among outlaws, producing alternative governance institutions to facilitate illegal activity. He uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics, and to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence over crime even beyond prison walls. The ramifications of his findings extend far beyond the seemingly irrational and often tragic society of captives. They also illuminate how social and political order can emerge in conditions where the traditional institutions of governance do not exist.

A revelatory account of what is really happening to China's Uyghurs 'Intimate, sombre, and damning... compelling.' Financial Times 'Chilling... Horrifying.' Spectator 'Invaluable.' Telegraph In China's vast northwestern region, more than a million and a half Muslims have vanished into internment camps and associated factories. Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society uncovers their plight. Revealing a sprawling network of surveillance technology supplied by firms in both China and the West, Byler shows how the country has created an unprecedented system of Orwellian control. A definitive account of one of the world's gravest human rights violations, In the Camps is also a potent warning against the misuse of technology and big data.

Punishment occupies a central place in our lives and attitudes. We suffer a profound ambivalence about its moral consequences. Persons who have been punished or are liable to be punished have long objected to the legitimacy of punishment. We are all objects of punishment, yet we are also its users. Our ambivalence is so profound that not only do we punish others, but we punish ourselves as well. We view those who submit too willingly to punishment as obedient verging on the groveling coward, and we view those who resist punishment as disobedient, rebels. In The Punishment Response Graeme Newman describes the uses of punishment and how these uses change over time.Some argue that punishment promotes discrimination and divisiveness in society. Others claim that it is through punishment that order and legitimacy are upheld. It is important that punishment is understood as neither one nor the other; it is both. This point, simple though it seems, has never really been addressed. This is why Newman claims we wax and wane in our uses of punishment; why punishing institutions are clogged by bureaucracy; why the death penalty comes and goes like the tide.Graeme Newman emphasizes that punishment is a cultural process and also a mechanism of particular institutions, of which criminal law is but one. Because academic discussions of punishment have been confined to legalistic preoccupations, much of the policy and justification of punishment have been based on discussions of extreme cases. The use of punishment in the sphere of crime is an extreme unto itself, since crime is a minor aspect of daily life. The uses of punishment, and the moral justifications for punishment within the family and school have rarely been considered, certainly not to the exhaustive extent that criminal law has been in this outstanding work.

An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

Richard Peace is Emeritus Professor of Russian at Bristol University. He is the author of Dostoevsky: An Examination of his Major Novels.

Punishments hurt. Therefore they must be justifie; but philosophical attempts to do so founder in contradictions and moral difficulties. Danger faces the unwary penologist, yet he persists, for with social organization comes the need to punish those who do wrong. Plato on Punishment draws together philosophy, law, and the history of ideas in the classical topic of Plato's penology; it discusses this philosopher's attitude towards punishment in relation to the whole of his philosophy. Mackenzie beings by examining the three major theories of punishment current today (retribution, utilitarianism, and reform), arguing that, held separately, they are objectionable; maintained simultaneously, they provoke intolerable conflict. Thus attempt to justify punishment is necessarily doomed to failure. However, Mackenzie claims that compelling reasons lead people to punish. Drawing on the development of the moral valus of early and classical Greece, she shows how the institution fo punishment is entailed by ordinary moral attitudes. Finally, Mackenzie presents Plato's theory of reformative punishment in relation to the whole of his moral theory. She argues that, although his theory of punishment appears formidable when viewed as a product of his moral theory, it requires the strong foundation of an unacceptable Platonic metaphysic. Plato succumbs to the demands imposed by tradition of moral justice, thus demonstrating how heavy the pressure of ordinary moral attitudes can be: reinforced by tradition, we, like Plato, are compelled to justify punishment, although the rationale we employ is but imperfect. Mackenzie criticizes the modern philosophy of punishment. She participates in the current controversy about he development of Greek values. And her account of Plato's theory of punishment is the first to employ both the perspective of classical scholarship and a modern philosophical viewpoint. The major contribution of this original work is the fusion of three elements--the philosophy of punishment, the history of ideas, and Platonic scholarship--into a single argument: we should not punish, but we must. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

‘Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East: A Translation of Vlas Doroshevich’s “Sakhalin”’ is the first English language translation of the Russian journalist Vlas Doroshevich’s 1903 account of his visit to tsarist Russia’s largest penal colony, Sakhalin, in the north Pacific. This translation introduces English-language readers to an important writer and original stylist who defined journalistic practice during the years leading up to the1917 Revolution, by way of a book which helps explain the causes for that revolution.

In recent years, research interest has increased both in the needs of punishment by the public and in the psychological processes underlying decisions on sentencing. This comprehensive look at the social psychology of punishment focuses on recent advances, and presents new findings based on the authors’ own empirical research. Chapters explore the application of social psychology and social cognitive theories to decision making in the context of punishments by judges and the punitiveness of laymen. The book also highlights the different legal systems in the UK, US and Europe, discussing how attitudes to punishment can change in the context of cultural and social development.