This work aims to provoke reflection on the English conception and treatment of prisoners' rights, through juxtaposition with prisoners' rights in Germany. The systems are compared and placed against a wider social background, and the methodological problems of comparative law are considered.

"[The report] finds that supervision -– probation and parole -– drives high numbers of people, disproportionately those who are Black and brown, right back to jail or prison, while in large part failing to help them get needed services and resources. In states examined in the report, people are often incarcerated for violating the rules of their supervision or for low-level crimes, and receive disproportionate punishment following proceedings that fail to adequately protect their fair trial rights."--Publisher website.

This book is concerned with the unintended consequences of the incarceration of parents on children.

American law and the American legal system are rights-based, whereas Jewish law and the halakhic system are duty-based. This distinction goes to the heart of the two legal systems; the basis on which each is founded, how they conceptualize human nature and the social order, and how they function. The American legal system is a human construction forged in a secular society. The halakhic system, while honed and clarified over the centuries by human decisors, is ultimately grounded in a text revealed by God. In consequence, the two legal systems approach problems quite differently. This is explained and illustrated in this volume by discussions of such compelling social issues as euthanasia, medical treatment without consent, search and seizure in schools, procreation rights of prisoners, liability for environmental damage, termination of parental rights due to mental incapacity, and the capacity of the mentally retarded to give informed consent.

There are millions of children experiencing parental imprisonment all over the world. This book is about their problems, human rights and how they are treated throughout the justice process from the arrest of a parent to imprisonment and release.

Although prison suicide is a global problem, there is little knowledge about the investigations occurring after prison suicides. Addressing this gap, this book provides the first detailed case study of the investigations that follow prison suicides: using England and Wales. Despite the large range of institutions that monitor English and Welsh prisons, suicides reached a record high in 2016, with the rate having doubled since 2012. These deaths represent the sharp end of a continuum of suffering, self-harm, despair and distress within prisons, which affects prisoners, their families and prison staff. This book details and critiques the lengthy and expensive police, ombudsman and coroner investigations that follow prison suicides. Drawing on extensive document analysis, including analysis of over 100 Prison and Probation Ombudsman fatal incident investigations, and original semi-structured interviews with stakeholders undertaken between 2016-2017, this book provides a novel analysis of prison oversight.

Are human rights gaining or losing ground? This question has become relevant after two decades of unprecedented progress in developing human rights standards and institutions. The political climate during the Cold War created many obstacles, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its aftermath during the following decade created a sense of promise and progress among human rights scholars and actors. Yet, today, actions, statements and initiatives questioning the legitimacy and validity of human rights, or even threatening their very existence, have become a regular part of current political realities, even in states traditionally dedicated to the rule of law. This would have been inconceivable ten or twenty years ago. At the political level human rights are gaining as well as losing ground. The question of the adequacy, legitimacy and scope of human rights is still a live one. And weaknesses in supra-national human rights protection systems have emerged over the last twenty years. It is now clear that human rights mechanisms are not well adapted to the handling of the ever-increasing number of complaints or to the effective implementation of human rights. This thought-provoking collection of essays by leading scholars and practitioners in the field of human rights explores the ways in which human rights are currently being challenged and weakened, but also strengthened in important and groundbreaking ways in different areas and settings. They explore the many current debates which centre on human rights concerns: debates about secularism and religious norms, about minimum social standards and social security, about the future regulation of citizenship, about prison reform and theuse of less inhumane methods of detention; as well as the reform of the UN system and the challenges facing the now overburdened European Court of Human Rights.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, Western societies entered a climate of austerity which has limited the penal expansion experienced in the US, UK and elsewhere over recent decades. These altered conditions have led to introspection and new thinking on punishment even among those on the political right who were previously champions of the punitive turn. This volume brings together a group of international leading scholars with a shared interest in using this opportunity to encourage new avenues of reform in the penal sphere. Justice is a famously contested concept and this book takes a deliberately capacious approach to the question of how justice can be mobilised to inform new reform agendas. Some of the contributors revisit an antique question in penal theory and reconsider the question of what fair or just punishment should look like today. Others seek to make gender central to understanding of crime and punishment, or actively reflect on the part that related concepts such as human rights, legitimacy and trust can and should play in thinking about the creation of more just crime control arrangements. Faced with the expansive penal developments of recent decades, much research and commentary about crime control has been gloom-laden and dystopian. By contrast, this volume seeks to contribute to a more constructive sensibility in the social analysis of penality: one that is worldly, hopeful and actively engaged in thinking about how to create more just penal arrangements. Justice and Penal Reform is a key resource for academics and as a supplementary text for students undertaking courses on punishment, penology, prisons, criminal justice and public policy. This book approaches penal reform from an international perspective and offers a fresh and diverse approach within an established field.

This is the second edition of the acclaimed Security and Human Rights, first published in 2007. Reconciling issues of security with a respect for fundamental human rights has become one of the key challenges facing governments throughout the world. The first edition broke the disciplinary confines in which security was often analysed before and after the events of 11 September 2001. The second edition continues in this tradition, presenting a collection of essays from leading academics and practitioners in the fields of criminal justice, public law, privacy law, international law, and critical social theory. The collection offers genuinely multidisciplinary perspectives on the relationship between security and human rights. In addition to exploring how the demands of security might be reconciled with the protection of established rights, Security and Human Rights provides fresh insight into the broader legal and political challenges that lie ahead as states attempt to control crime, prevent terrorism, and protect their citizens. The volume features a set of new essays that engage with the most pressing questions facing security and human rights in the twenty-first century and is essential reading for all those working in the area.

This collection evaluates the crisis of confidence in human rights which underpins understandings of just decision making and liberal democracy.