Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer “The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times “Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.” —NPR: What We're Reading A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice. In 2014, PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner's Handbook.

This handbook surveys American sentencing and corrections from global and historical views, from theoretical and policy perspectives, and with attention to a number of problem-specific issues.

The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition provides an authoritative and comprehensive look at the latest developments in the 21st-century penal abolitionism movement, both reflecting on key critical thought and setting the agenda for local and global abolitionist ideas and interventions over the coming decade. Penal abolitionists question the legitimacy of criminal law, policing, courts, prisons and more broadly the idea of punishment, to argue that rather than effectively handling or solving social problems, interpersonal disputes, conflicts and harms, they actually increase individual and societal problems. The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition is organized around six key themes: Social movements and abolition organizing Critical resistance to the penal state Voices from imprisoned and marginalized communities Diversity of abolitionist thought International perspectives on abolitionism Building new justice practices as a response to social and individual wrongdoing. A global-centred and world-encompassing project, this book provides the reader with an alternative and critical perspective from which to reflect and raises the visibility of abolitionist ideas and strategies in a time when there is considerable discussion of how we will move forward in response to what has given rise to the criminalizing system: white supremacy, racial capitalism and human wrongdoing. It is essential reading for all those engaged with punishment and penology, criminology, sociology, corrections and critical prisons studies. It will appeal to any reader who seeks an innovative response to the calamitous failures of the modern criminalizing system.

Originally published: Syracuse, N.Y.: Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976.

The first practical, clinical guidebook on correctional mental health care that uses hypothetical case vignettes to illustrate important points, the "Handbook of Correctional Mental Health" is designed to assist mental health professionals in providing effective care to inmates and understanding both the unique living environment and stressors faced by inmates in a variety of correctional settings and the legal context in which they provide that care. Each of 12 fascinating chapters written by 26 recognized experts is clearly organized by overview, clinical case vignette, and key summary points, following the individual from arrest through probation. The "Handbook of Correctional Mental Health" combines basic background information for providers new to the world of corrections with more advanced material for seasoned correctional providers, covering topics such as medication management, malingering, developmentally disabled inmates, female inmates, and the complex legal issues regarding the unique and separate constitutional standard of care within correctional settings. Incorporating various viewpoints on potentially controversial issues and including extensive legal and clinical references that reflect current trends in correctional psychiatry, the "Handbook of Correctional Mental Health" has a broad multidisciplinary scope and will appeal to psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, nurses, attorneys and judges, and correctional officers and administrators.

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.