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Prisons and imprisonment have become a commonplace topic in popular culture as the setting and rationale for fiction and documentaries and most people seem to have a clear notion of what it is like in prison, ranging from the idea of the prison cell as a cosy nook with fast internet access to that of a dungeon with a hard bed and a diet of bread and water. But what is prison really like? Do prisoners have the same rights as everyone else? What are the similarities and differences between prisons in different European countries? This book answers all of these questions, whilst also presenting cutting-edge research on the living conditions of long-term prisoners in Europe and considering wheth...
Life imprisonment has replaced capital punishment as the most common sentence imposed for heinous crimes worldwide. As a consequence, it has become the leading issue in international criminal justice reform. In the first global survey of prisoners serving life terms, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton argue for a human rights–based reappraisal of this exceptionally harsh punishment. The authors estimate that nearly half a million people face life behind bars, and the number is growing as jurisdictions both abolish death sentences and impose life sentences more freely for crimes that would never have attracted capital punishment. Life Imprisonment explores this trend through systemati...
The question of ‘what works’ in offender treatment has dominated the field of prisoner re-entry and recidivism research for the last thirty years. One of the primary ways the criminal justice system tries to reduce the rates of recidivism among offenders is through the use of cognitive behavioural programs (CBP) as in-prison intervention strategies. The emphasis for these programs is on the idea that inmates are in prison because they made poor choices and bad decisions. Inmates’ thinking is characterized as flawed and the purpose of the program is to teach them to think and act in socially appropriate ways so they will be less inclined to return to prison after their release. This boo...
Restorative justice is increasingly being applied to settings characterized by large-scale violence and human rights abuses. While many embrace this development as an important step in attempts to transform protracted conflict, there are a number of conceptual challenges in transporting restorative justice from a democratic setting to one which has been affected by mass victimisation or civil war. These include responding to the seriousness and scale of harms that have been caused, the blurred boundaries between victims and offenders, and the difficulties associated with holding someone to account and compelling reparative activities. Despite reams of paper being devoted to defining restorat...
The Defense of Insanity, The World Over is the 10th in a series of books that examines and compares social issues or social problems from an explicitly comparative perspective. This volume examines and compares the criteria and procedures surrounding the defense of insanity across twenty-two countries. In addition to the criteria for each of the countries, Simon and Ahn-Redding report the burden of proof; whether this burden is on the side of the defense or the prosecution; the degree, beyond a reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of the evidence; the form the verdict takes; who typically decides, a judge or a jury; what role experts play in the proceedings; and what happens to the defenda...