Alexander Paterson: Prison Reformer

Alexander Paterson: Prison Reformer PDF Author: Harry Potter
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783276673
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
The first biography of the prison reformer Alexander Paterson (1884-1947). Sir Alexander Paterson (1884-1947) is best remembered for his role as Commissioner of Prisons and as the individual responsible for some of the greatest British innovations in the field of penal practice. All major prison reforms of his day can be associated with his name. One of the key characteristics of Paterson's reform drive was that he brought a much more 'scientific' approach to penology, encouraging psychiatrists and psychologists to work in prison. He was the prime mover behind the rapid expansion and transformation of the Borstal System and the introduction of open prisons, gaining Britain an international reputation for being at the forefront of penal reform. Harry Potter's account is the first biography of Alexander Paterson and it is based on unpublished material from government and family archives. Besides his achievements as prison reformer, Paterson's life encapsulated many trends in English society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: from the influence of Liberalism and Unitarianism in the industrial heartland of his youth, the Idealist philosophy of Thomas Hill Green at Oxford, to the impact of school and university 'missions' in the dark reaches of London. At Oxford he became friends with Clement Atlee. He also knew the radical Winston Churchill and it was Churchill who in 1910 first appointed him to a leading role in the aftercare of prisoners. Paterson's most formative years were undoubtedly spent living in a slum dwelling in South London when he devoted his time and energy to the Oxford and Bermondsey Medical Mission, one of the university settlements so common at the time - Attlee famously spent years in Hailesbury boys' club and Toynbee Hall in the East End. Paterson went on to publish a best-selling book - Across the Bridges - on his experiences in the South London slums. After a distinguished service in the Great War, Paterson devoted the rest of his life to the prison service at home and to penal reform abroad. Given current debates about prison reform and the general challenges the penal system is facing, revisiting Paterson's life and work will be a timely endeavour. Harry Potter - criminal barrister, historian and former prison chaplain - is ideally suited to write this biography.

Alexander Paterson: Prison Reformer

Alexander Paterson: Prison Reformer PDF Author: Harry Potter
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783276673
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first biography of the prison reformer Alexander Paterson (1884-1947). Sir Alexander Paterson (1884-1947) is best remembered for his role as Commissioner of Prisons and as the individual responsible for some of the greatest British innovations in the field of penal practice. All major prison reforms of his day can be associated with his name. One of the key characteristics of Paterson's reform drive was that he brought a much more 'scientific' approach to penology, encouraging psychiatrists and psychologists to work in prison. He was the prime mover behind the rapid expansion and transformation of the Borstal System and the introduction of open prisons, gaining Britain an international reputation for being at the forefront of penal reform. Harry Potter's account is the first biography of Alexander Paterson and it is based on unpublished material from government and family archives. Besides his achievements as prison reformer, Paterson's life encapsulated many trends in English society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: from the influence of Liberalism and Unitarianism in the industrial heartland of his youth, the Idealist philosophy of Thomas Hill Green at Oxford, to the impact of school and university 'missions' in the dark reaches of London. At Oxford he became friends with Clement Atlee. He also knew the radical Winston Churchill and it was Churchill who in 1910 first appointed him to a leading role in the aftercare of prisoners. Paterson's most formative years were undoubtedly spent living in a slum dwelling in South London when he devoted his time and energy to the Oxford and Bermondsey Medical Mission, one of the university settlements so common at the time - Attlee famously spent years in Hailesbury boys' club and Toynbee Hall in the East End. Paterson went on to publish a best-selling book - Across the Bridges - on his experiences in the South London slums. After a distinguished service in the Great War, Paterson devoted the rest of his life to the prison service at home and to penal reform abroad. Given current debates about prison reform and the general challenges the penal system is facing, revisiting Paterson's life and work will be a timely endeavour. Harry Potter - criminal barrister, historian and former prison chaplain - is ideally suited to write this biography.

Handbook on Prisons

Handbook on Prisons PDF Author: Yvonne Jewkes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136308318
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 809

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Book Description
Focusing on prisons, this title is a useful reference for practitioners working in prisons and other parts of the criminal justice system. It explores a range of historical and contemporary issues relating to prisons, imprisonment and prison management.

The Rise and Fall of the Rehabilitative Ideal, 1895-1970

The Rise and Fall of the Rehabilitative Ideal, 1895-1970 PDF Author: Victor Bailey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429663889
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Spanning almost a century of penal policy and practice in England and Wales, this book is a study of the long arc of the rehabilitative ideal, beginning in 1895, the year of the Gladstone Committee on Prisons, and ending in 1970, when the policy of treating and training criminals was very much on the defensive. Drawing on a plethora of source material, such as the official papers of mandarins, ministers, and magistrates, measures of public opinion, prisoner memoirs, publications of penal reform groups and prison officers, the reports of Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees, political opinion in both Houses of Parliament and the research of the first cadre of criminologists, this book comprehensively examines a number of aspects of the British penal system, including judicial sentencing, law-making, and the administration of legal penalties. In doing so, Victor Bailey expertly weaves a complex and nuanced picture of punishment in twentieth-century England and Wales, one that incorporates the enduring influence of the death penalty, and will force historians to revise their interpretation of twentieth-century social and penal policy. This detailed and ground-breaking account of the rise and fall of the rehabilitative ideal will be essential reading for scholars and students of the history of crime and justice and historical criminology, as well as those interested in social and legal history.

Imperial Gallows

Imperial Gallows PDF Author: Stacey Hynd
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350302651
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Not just a method of crime control or individual punishment in Britain's African territories, the death penalty was an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. Imperial Gallows analyses capital trials from Kenya, Nyasaland and the Gold Coast to explore the social tensions that fueled murder among colonised populations, and how colonial legal cultures and landscapes of political authority shaped sentencing and mercy. It demonstrates how ideas of race, ethnicity, gender and 'civilization' could both spare and condemn Africans convicted of murder in colonial courts, and also how Africans could either appropriate or resist such colonial legal discourses in their trials and petitions. In this book, Stacey Hynd follows the whole process of capital punishment from the identification of a murder victim to trial and conviction, through the process of mercy and sentencing onto death row and execution. The scandals that erupted over the death penalty, from botched executions and moral panics over ritual murder, to the hanging of anti-colonial rebels for 'terrorist' and emergency offences, provide significant insights into the shifting moral and political economies of colonial violence. This monograph contextualises the death penalty within the wider penal systems and coercive networks of British colonial Africa to highlight the shifting targets of the imperial gallows against rebels, robbers or domestic murderers. Imperial Gallows demonstrates that while hangings were key elements of colonial iconography in British Africa, symbolically loaded events that demonstrated imperial power and authority, they also reveal the limits of that power.

The Oxford History of the Prison

The Oxford History of the Prison PDF Author: Norval Morris
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195118148
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Ranging from ancient times to the present, a survey of the evolution of the prison explores its relationship to the history of Western criminal law and offers a look at the social world of prisoners over the centuries.

Prison Construction Plans and Policy

Prison Construction Plans and Policy PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Corrections
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description


Prison Construction Plans and Policy

Prison Construction Plans and Policy PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description


Reflections on Hanging

Reflections on Hanging PDF Author: Arthur Koestler
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820355356
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Reflections on Hanging is a searing indictment of capital punishment, inspired by its author's own time in the shadow of a firing squad. During the Spanish Civil War, Arthur Koestler was held by the Franco regime as a political prisoner, and condemned to death. He was freed, but only after months of witnessing the fates of less-fortunate inmates. That experience informs every page of the book, which was first published in England in 1956, and followed in 1957 by this American edition. As Koestler ranges across the history of capital punishment in Britain (with a focus on hanging), he looks at notable cases and rulings, and portrays politicians, judges, lawyers, scholars, clergymen, doctors, police, jailers, prisoners, and others involved in the long debate over the justness and effectiveness of the death penalty. In Britain, Reflections on Hanging was part of a concerted, ultimately successful effort to abolish the death penalty. At that time, in the forty-eight United States, capital punishment was sanctioned in forty-two of them, with hanging still practiced in five. This edition includes a preface and afterword written especially for the 1957 American edition. The preface makes the book relevant to readers in the U.S.; the afterword overviews the modern-day history of abolitionist legislation in the British Parliament. Reflections on Hanging is relentless, biting, and unsparing in its details of botched and unjust executions. It is a classic work of advocacy for some of society's most defenseless members, a critique of capital punishment that is still widely cited, and an enduring work that presaged such contemporary problems as the sensationalism of crime, the wrongful condemnation of the innocent and mentally ill, the callousness of penal systems, and the use of fear to control a citizenry.

Dress Behind Bars

Dress Behind Bars PDF Author: Juliet Ash
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857712217
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
From nineteenth-century broad arrows and black and white stripes to twenty first-century orange jumpsuits, prison clothing has both mirrored and bolstered the power of penal institutions over prisoners' lives. Vividly illustrated and based on original research, including throughout the voices of the incarcerated, this book is a pioneering history and investigation of prison dress, which demystifies the experience of what it is like to be an imprisoned criminal. Juliet Ash takes the reader on a journey from the production of prison clothing to the bodies of its wearers. She uncovers a history characterized by waves of reform, sandwiched between regimes that use clothing as punishment and discovers how inmates use their dress to surmount, subvert or survive these punishment cultures. She reveals the hoods, the masks, and pink boxer shorts, near nakedness, even twenty first-century 'civvies' to be not just other types of uniform but political embodiments of the surveillance of everyday life.

The Use of Imprisonment

The Use of Imprisonment PDF Author: Seán McConville
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100096812X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
In the previous few years English penal policy had undergone considerable change. Originally published in 1975, the contributors to The Use of Imprisonment focus on the use of imprisonment in such a time of transition, and examine various aspects of penal policy – administrative, organizational, staffing, legal, philosophical. The volume provides a valuable introduction to penal policy and administration, and to some of the central issues in the penological debate at the time. Influenced mainly by events in the United States, interest had been growing in England in prisoners’ legal rights and in the laws affecting imprisonment. This complemented an increasing mood of scepticism among many psychologists, sociologists and other social scientists in relation to the aims and methods of reformatory imprisonment. Such thinking, although still largely divergent and amorphous, had gone far towards undermining the penological axioms and aspirations of the last few generations. The precise direction of new policy was still unclear, but the essays in this book make various informed suggestions as to the future, and also provide an examination of the present state of several key areas. They emphasise the failure of the treatment model of imprisonment, while at the same time recognising the need to be cautious about breaking down the prison walls and bringing treatment ‘into the community’.