As the UK and many other western societies face up to the consequences of a rapidly increasing prison population, so the search for alternative approaches to punishment and dealing with offenders has become an increasingly urgent priority for government policy and society as a whole. This book reports the results of the research programme commissioned by the Coulsfield Inquiry into Alternatives to Prison, which was funded by the Esmée Fairbairn 'Rethinking Crime and Punishment' initiative. It is written by leading authorities in the field, and provides a comprehensive, authoritative and wide-ranging review of the range of issues associated with the use of noncustodial sanctions, examining experiences in Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as England and Wales.

Stephen Stanley and Mary Baginsky examine and evaluate the range of non-custodial sentences available to the courts, discussing their effectiveness, and exploring the often complex issues they raise. Drawing on a wide range research literature, this is both a clear and informative synthesis of thinking on a pressing problem and an important contribution to the wider debate about how society should deal with crime and criminals.

In 2003, there were almost seven million criminals in the United States. But only about two million of them were behind bars. In Alternatives to Prison, you'll learn why those other five million people are out on parole or probation. You'll also learn about: rehabilitation, community service, boot camps, day reporting, house arrest, and what the future may hold for other alternatives to prison.

Originally published: Syracuse, N.Y.: Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976.

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

With a new afterword from the authors, the critically praised indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration” Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But in a searing, “cogent critique” (Library Journal), Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal that many of these so-called reforms actually weave in new strands of punishment and control, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state. Whether readers are seasoned abolitionists or are newly interested in sensible alternatives to retrograde policing and criminal justice policies and approaches, this highly praised book offers “a wealth of critical insights” that will help readers “tread carefully through the dizzying terrain of a world turned upside down” and “make sense of what should take the place of mass incarceration” (The Brooklyn Rail). With a foreword by Michelle Alexander, Prison by Any Other Name exposes how a kinder narrative of reform is effectively obscuring an agenda of social control, challenging us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change, and offering a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.