In 1777 John Howard wrote The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Observations and an Account of Some Foreign Prisons. Two centuries later, this extraordinary document commemorates his achievements in campaigning for reform. In the spirit of Howard himself, the Howard League for Penal Reform have compiled detailed observations of prisons from Sweden to South Africa, and from India to Nicaragua. The result is a valuable resource which includes unique insights into previously undocumented prison regimes.

A quarter of a century has passed since the Thatcher government launched one of its most controversial reforms: privately run prisons. This book offers an assessment of the successes and failures of that initiative, comparing public and private prisons, analyzing the possible and claimed benefits of competition, and looking closely at how well the government has managed the unusual quasi-market that the privatization push created. Drawing on first-person interviews with key players and his own experience working in prison finance, Julian Le Vay presents the most valuable look yet at the results of prison privatization for government, citizens, and prisoners.

Prison studies has experienced a period of great creativity in recent years, and this collection draws together some of the field's most exciting and innovative contemporary critical writers in order to engage directly with one of the most profound questions in penology - why prison? In addressing this question, the authors connect contemporary penological thought with an enquiry that has received the attention of some of the greatest thinkers on punishment in the past. Through critical exploration of the theories, policies and practices of imprisonment, the authors analyse why prison persists and why prisoner populations are rapidly rising in many countries. Collectively, the chapters provide not only a sophisticated diagnosis and critique of global hyper-incarceration but also suggest principles and strategies that could be adopted to radically reduce our reliance upon imprisonment.

The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Observations, and an Account of Some Foreign Prisons by John Howard (1726-1790) was the first major practical work on prison reform from the standpoint of design, sanitation and methods of operation. Howard embarked on a career of prison reform in 1773, after visiting a local jail in his official capacity as High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, where he was appalled not only by the jail's disease-ridden squalor, but by the fact that persons proven innocent, or not formally accused of crime, could still be forcibly detained until they had paid the jailers their customary delivery fees. He suggested to the justices of Bedfordshire that the jailers be paid a salary from county funds in lieu of fees, and was told to find a precedent for this scheme. An exhaustive search of all the counties in England failed to yield even one, but provided Howard with so much evidence of abuse and misery that in 1774 he was able, by testifying before a committee of the House of Commons, to inspire the immediate passage of bills abolishing jailers' fees and calling for improved prison sanitation. Howard then made two tours of Continental jails-- he was particularly impressed by Dutch criminal rehabilitation programs-- and a second round of English prisons, gathering material for the present volume. Its publication resulted in the passage of another bill establishing two penitentiaries modeled on those Howard had seen in Holland, where brutal treatment of prisoners was replaced by solitary confinement, religious instruction and vocational training.--J. Norman.