Understanding the Educational Experiences of Imprisoned Men explores how adult male prisoners interpret and give value to their experiences of education, presenting an opportunity to consider how education can be beneficial to prisoners including and beyond the enhancement of employability skills. While the primary aim for education in prison has been to increase employability skills to prevent reoffending, further attention needs to be given to the broader outcomes of educational experiences and the importance of the development of other personal attributes including self-confidence, empowerment and the ability to engage in positive relationships. This book considers how education is also used by men in prison to cope with prison life, to reconsider their identity and to develop and maintain relationships. It also discusses the relationships that prisoners have with their teachers and other prison staff as well as the relationships that different types of prison staff have between each other. In addition, the role that education can play in the process of desistance from crime is discussed to provide an understanding of what changes occur in men who participate in educational courses. This book will be of interest to not only students and scholars with an interest in imprisonment, rehabilitation and criminal justice practice, but also educationalists, those who work in the prison setting and in social work. It may also appeal to those involved in community development programmes and broader sociological research.

Understanding prisons and the policies surrounding them is of fundamental importance to students and practitioners of criminology and related fields. This concise and accessible guide offers a compendium of key information, theories, concepts, research and policy, presenting a rounded and critical overview of the prison system in England and Wales. Covering the historical and contemporary context of prisons, the text guides the reader through the work of prison officers, a tour of international prisons and how prison life is experienced by different groups, such as women. Focusing on the experiences of stakeholder groups and the themes of power, legitimacy and rehabilitation, the book concludes with an overview of the future challenges for prisons. Each chapter includes key learning features: - end of chapter questions; - definitions of key terms and concepts; - examples and illustrative case studies; - learning outcomes; - summary boxes of major research studies and further reading.

This book addresses the challenges within teaching Criminology and Criminal Justice, for students studying and academics involved in designing and delivering courses at an undergraduate and postgraduate level. The book highlights a number of contemporary issues through a wide context of themes and reflections of practice. The chapters are arranged in thematic parts: firstly ‘the challenges of diversity and inclusion’ secondly ‘challenges of creating authentic learning environments', and lastly ‘the challenge of creating transformative conversation’. These themes discuss different teaching approaches and present materials which address questions relevant for meeting the challenges. The book focuses on the role and impact of teaching Criminology and Criminal Justice in the real world and explores debates which have autonomy in their questioning and overlapping themes. The narratives reflect upon others’ experiences and explore transformative learning and innovation in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

This collection presents a unique and diverse range of contributions on challenges faced by criminal justice in England and Wales in the wake of the Covid-19 global pandemic. The book brings together leading experts to examine the impact of the pandemic on policing and criminal procedure, prisons, and the post-conviction stage of the system. The work further explores the lessons that may be learned and explores the relevance of these lessons for the wider criminal justice system. The reader will gain substantial insight into contemporary challenges in these areas, through original analysis and argument. The experience of England and Wales during the pandemic will also be of interest to the wider international community who will have encountered many of the issues raised in this collection. The book will be essential reading for researchers, academics, and policymakers involved in criminal justice.

Long-term prisoners need to be given the space to reflect, and grow. This ground-breaking study found that engaging prisoners in philosophy education enabled them to think about some of the ‘big’ questions in life and as a result to see themselves and others differently. Using the prisoners’ own words, Szifris shows the importance of this type of education for growth and development. She demonstrates how the philosophical dialogue led to a form of community which provided a space for self-reflection, pro-social interaction and communal exploration of ideas, which could have long-term positive consequences.

Drawing on extensive research from Australia, this book examines the experiences of sexual offence victims who submit a victim impact statement. Victim impact statements are used in sentencing to outline the harm caused to victims. There has been little research on the impact statement experiences of sexual offence victims. This book fills this gap, examining the perspectives of six adult female victims and 15 justice professionals in Australia. This is supplemented by analysis of 100 sentencing remarks, revealing how courts use such statements in practice. This book examines victims’ experiences of preparing and submitting statements, justice professionals’ experiences of working with victims to submit statements, and the judicial use of impact statements in sentencing. It identifies an overarching lack of clarity around the purpose of impact statements, which affects the information that can be included and the way they can be used by the court. It consequently explore issues associated with balancing the expressive and instrumental purposes of such statements, and the challenges in communication between professionals and victims of crime. The findings highlight several issues with the operation of impact statement regimes. Based on these findings, the book makes recommendations to clarify such regimes, to improve communication between justice professionals and victims of crime, and to enhance the therapeutic goals of such statements. An accessible and compelling read, this book is essential reading for all those engaged with victimology, sentencing, and sexual violence.

Policing Child Sexual Abuse provides a historical overview of the evolution of policing child sexual abuse in Queensland, tracing a legacy of failure (even corruption) in the decades leading up to the foundation of Task Force Argos, a branch of the Queensland Police Service created in part as a response to criticisms of police shortcomings in this area. The book uses archival material as a foundation to trace the shifting approach to policing child sexual abuse (CSA) from the 1960s, when juvenile justice first became a central focus of policing in Queensland, to the 2010s, at which point Task Force Argos made international headlines for its primary role in bringing major international CSA offenders like Shannon McCoole, Benjamin "Warhead" Faulkner and Richard Huckle to justice. Examining archival material to pinpoint the reasons that CSA was not dealt with effectively in the past, the book shows that often these reasons were political, unrelated to the policing of CSA at all. Policing Child Sexual Abuse stands as a testament to the victims of CSA who have been failed by the system in the past. In addition, the book acts as a case study of how a police force with such a negative track record in policing this area was able to correct its path and reform its practices, to the point that it could emerge as a world leader in policing CSA. Though nominally focused on policing in one Australian state, the implications are global, with Task Force Argos’s work naturally impacting on the CSA investigations of all of its partner agencies, both in Australia and internationally. Demonstrating how, even in contexts where police responses to CSA have been met with significant criticism, an opportunity still exists to reject historical failures in favour of a renewed commitment to proactive policing, this book will be of great interest to scholars of policing, historical criminology, and child sexual abuse.