All Blog Posts Tagged 'and' (11)

When most Americans hear the familiar constitutional phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” they can tell you what it means, at least to them. Hanging. Flogging. Chopping a hand off. Chain gangs.

Putting juvenile offenders in solitary confinement is high on my list of “cruel and unusual punishment.” What else do you call locking up fifteen, sixteen year olds, some even younger, in total isolation for 24 hours a day, in some cases for months at a time, never leaving their cells?…

Arizona’s legislature recently passed a law charging prison visitors a onetime $25 fee as a way to help close the state’s $1.6 billion budget deficit. Middle Ground Prison Reform, a prison advocacy group, challenged the law in court as a discriminatory tax, but a county judge upheld its constitutionality.

Fees like that, slapped on prisoners and their families, couldn’t be more…

                 In England and Wales, the Youth Justice System appears to be in a fluid state that is full of controversy, ironies and contradictions, as well as being made up of continuously shifting alliances between policies and practises of the ‘authoritarian, the restorative, the retributive and the productive’ (Muncie, J. 2009: 387). The causes of such fluidity can be attributed to the media’s exacerbations and sensationalisations of certain aspects of youth culture and supposed…

Chapter Three – We Have Been “Tough on Youth Crime and Tough on the Causes of Youth Criminality”, Perhaps it is Now Time for a “Fresh Start”.

3.1 – The Use of Restorative Justice Within the Youth Justice System and the Emphasis Put Upon Alternative Sanctions for Young Offenders. Is This the Beginning of Our ‘Fresh Start’?

                 The criminal justice system in England and Wales is rife with competing views, contradictions…

Chapter Two – Getting Soft on Young Offenders? A Critical Examination into Public Opinion and Attitudes of the Punishment, Welfare and Control of Youth Crime and Young People.

2.1 - Public Opinion and Attitudes towards the Youth Justice System and Youth Offending Service with Regards to Their Methods of Reducing and Preventing Youth Crime and Criminality:

            A common question in England and Wales is whether or not…

1.1  - The Labelling of Young People as ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Deviant’ Criminals in Late Modern Societies:

                 The concept of ‘deviancy’ is at the heart of youth criminality; however, the deviant behaviours and attitudes that young people often adopt are not inherently criminal. These attitudes and behaviours are absorbed by young people through mass labelling and stigmatisation by; society, the media and new trends in fashion, music, gaming and cinema. This…

Chapter One – Past Perceptions of Young Offenders and the Demonisation of Youths by Society as an Exacerbation of Youth Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour.

1.1  - The History of Youth Crime, Previous Public Perceptions of Young People and the Emergence and Development of Youth Cultures in Post War Britain:

                        Becker’s (1963), cited in, Pietersen (1997: 346), labelling theory, describes how…

In this case study I have chosen to look into an area of crime that has been at the centre of the criminal justice systems debate over the contradiction between punishment, restoration and rehabilitation. The subject of Youth Crime and especially Youth Gangs has been a concern of the public and authorities for decades, however only within the past twenty years has the topic been much of a threat or concern with regards to rising crime rates and a change in the public’s idea of what is to be…

I’ve worked with “slow” learners all of my 26 years as a teacher. But nothing matches the lack of understanding, insight and plain common sense that many of our politicians and their constituents show when it comes to the treatment of ex-offenders, people who by the law of the land have served their time, paid their dues, made amends, learned their lesson, been punished—whatever language matches your view of justice.

I’m thinking about ex-offenders and voting rights. In many states…

The statistics are grim, but the reality behind those numbers is even grimmer for the many young people locked up in US adult prisons. Since publishing I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup, about my years teaching in a New York county jail, I spend a lot of time writing, talking and hearing from families, professionals, and the young people themselves about the failures of our child welfare and criminal justice…

Post Originally appeared on my blog Kids in the System

At the beginning of my ten years teaching teenagers in a county lockup, years I chronicle in I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup(Beacon

Press), I was always surprised, and yes, disappointed, when one of my…