“Supermax” prisons, conceived by the United States in the early 1980s, are typically reserved for convicted political criminals such as terrorists and spies and for other inmates who are considered to pose a serious ongoing threat to the wider community, to the security of correctional institutions, or to the safety of other inmates. Prisoners are usually restricted to their cells for up to twenty-three hours a day and typically have minimal contact with other inmates and correctional staff. Not only does the Federal Bureau of Prisons operate one of these facilities, but almost every state has either a supermax wing or stand-alone supermax prison. The Globalization of Supermax Prisons examines why nine advanced industrialized countries have adopted the supermax prototype, paying particular attention to the economic, social, and political processes that have affected each state. Featuring essays that look at the U.S.-run prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanemo, this collection seeks to determine if the American model is the basis for the establishment of these facilities and considers such issues as the support or opposition to the building of a supermax and why opposition efforts failed; the allegation of human rights abuses within these prisons; and the extent to which the decision to build a supermax was influenced by developments in the United States. Additionally, contributors address such domestic matters as the role of crime rates, media sensationalism, and terrorism in each country’s decision to build a supermax prison.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Bloomberg • Forbes • The Spectator Recipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie Award A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end global poverty "The poor you will always have with you," to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey Sachs—celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential bestseller The End of Poverty—disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development." In 2006, Sachs launched the Millennium Villages Project, a daring five-year experiment designed to test his theories in Africa. The first Millennium village was in Sauri, a remote cluster of farming communities in western Kenya. The initial results were encouraging. With his first taste of success, and backed by one hundred twenty million dollars from George Soros and other likeminded donors, Sachs rolled out a dozen model villages in ten sub-Saharan countries. Once his approach was validated it would be scaled up across the entire continent. At least that was the idea. For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Millennium Villages Project, accompanying Sachs on his official trips to Africa and listening in on conversations with heads-of-state, humanitarian organizations, rival economists, and development experts. She has immersed herself in the lives of people in two Millennium villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers, and witnessing their struggle to survive, Munk came to understand the real-life issues that challenge Sachs's formula for ending global poverty. THE IDEALIST is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the reality of human life.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.

An introduction to political crime provides a comprehensive and contemporary analysis of political crime including both violent and nonviolent crimes committed by and against the state in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other advanced industrialized democracies since the 1960s.

The United States has the highest incarceration and execution rate in the industrialized world. Due to bias in policing and sentencing, seventy percent of the nearly two million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and immigration detention centers are people of color. Statistics like these, and the often unsafe conditions under which people are imprisoned, make an analysis of incarceration urgent and timely. Using a broad multicultural approach, States of Confinement uncovers the political, social, and economic biases in our policing and punishment systems. The distinguished authors of this collection - such as Angela Y. Davis, Manning Marable, Gary Marx, Robert Meeropol (the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg), Julie Su (an attorney for immigrants' rights), and Judi Bari (a founder of Earthfirst!) - use their diverse experiences and expertise to discuss troubling abuses of police powers in our society. The issues they expose include racial profiling and sentencing disparities that target African Americans and Latinos, the sexual exploitation of women in prison and police custody, racist and homophobic violence, the policing of Asian Americans and Arabs, the adverse conditions of HIV-positive prisoners, and the use of the Grand Jury and police to undermine political activity. These twenty-seven cogent and accessible essays will appeal to students and educators, as well as anyone concerned about the erosion of democracy and equality in this era of increasing incarceration and police powers.

Ex Black Panther and now a leading academic dissident, Angela Davis has long been at the fore of the fight against the expansion of prisons. In this recent talk she reviews the background for the current prison building binge, the effects of mass incarceration on communities of colour, and particularly women of colour who are now one of the fastest growing segments of the US prison population. she also offers a personal view of her own time in prison and the imprisonment of others close to her. Double compact disc.

Schools under Surveillance gathers together some of the very best researchers studying surveillance and discipline in contemporary public schools. Surveillance is not simply about monitoring or tracking individuals and their dataùit is about the structuring of power relations through human, technical, or hybrid control mechanisms. Essays cover a broad range of topics including police and military recruiters on campus, testing and accountability regimes such as No Child Left Behind, and efforts by students and teachers to circumvent the most egregious forms of surveillance in public education. Each contributor is committed to the continued critique of the disparity and inequality in the use of surveillance to target and sort students along lines of race, class, and gender.

Research on prisons prior to the prison boom of the 1980s and 1990s focused mainly on inmate subcultures, inmate rights, and sociological interpretations of inmate and guard adaptations to their environment, with qualitative studies and ethnographic methods the norm. In recent years, research has expanded considerably to issues related to inmates' mental health, suicide, managing special types of offenders, risk assessment, and evidence-based treatment programs. The Oxford Handbook of Prisons and Imprisonment provides the only single source that bridges social scientific and behavioral perspectives, providing graduate students with a more comprehensive understanding of the topic, academics with a body of knowledge that will more effectively inform their own research, and practitioners with an overview of evidence-based best practices. Across thirty chapters, leading contributors offer new ideas, critical treatments of substantive topics with theoretical and policy implications, and comprehensive literature reviews that reflect cumulative knowledge on what works and what doesn't. The Handbook covers critical topics in the field, some of which include recent trends in imprisonment, prison gangs, inmate victimization, the use and impact of restrictive housing, unique problems faced by women in prison, special offender populations, risk assessment and treatment effectiveness, prisoner re-entry, and privatization. The Oxford Handbook of Prisons and Imprisonment offers a rich source of information on the current state of institutional corrections around the world, on issues facing both inmates and prison staff, and on how those issues may impede or facilitate the various goals of incarceration.

Methamphetamine (ice, speed, crystal, shard) has been called epidemic in the United States. Yet few communities were ready for increased use of methamphetamine by suburban women. Women on Ice is the first book to study exclusively the lives of women who use the drug and its effects on their families. In-depth interviews with women in the suburban counties of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. chronicle the details of their initiation into methamphetamine, the turning points into problematic drug use, and for a few, their escape from lives veering out of control. Their life course and drug careers are analyzed in relation to the intersecting influences of social roles, relationships, social/political structures, and political trends. Examining the effects of punitive drug policy, inadequate social services, and looming public health risks, including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, the book gives voice to women silenced by shame. Boeri introduces new and developing concepts in the field of addiction studies and proposes policy changes to more broadly implement initiatives that address the problems these women face. She asserts that if we are concerned that the war on drugs is a war on drug users, this book will alert us that it is also a war on suburban families.

Solitary confinement is used for a variety of different reasons in many prison systems all over the world, despite the fact that research shows that these practices have widespread and pronounced negative health effects. Besides the death penalty, solitary confinement is arguably the most punitive and dangerous intervention available to state authorities in democratic nations. This broad and interdisciplinary book draws together research and personal experience from neuroscientists, high level prison officials, social and political scientists, medical doctors, lawyers, and former prisoners and their families from different countries in order to address the effects and practices of prolonged solitary confinement and to strengthen the movement for its reform and eventual abolition.