This book is designed to acquaint students with some of the main issues associated with the emergence and development of the modern prison. It draws on a range of sociological theorising in order to analyse the organisation and the functioning of the prison. It examines the conditions for the expansion of the prison and explores the possibilities for limiting prison use through the development of alternatives to custody. In particular, it looks in some detail at the relation between imprisonment and class, age, gender and race.

About the Author
Roger Matthews is Professor of Criminology at London South Bank University, UK. He is Head of the Crime Reduction and Community Safety Research Group. He is sole author of Armed Robbery and Prostitution, Politics and Policy . He has also produced joint authored texts on community safety and edited a number of books on criminological theory, imprisonment and crime control.

Reviews

'...a good criminology textbook...should be a well-written volume providing a wide range of reliable data and textual reference, while comprehensively engaging with the main theoretical debates. If, at the same time...[it] manages to conceptualise those theoretical debates in their wider cultural, social political and economic contexts without losing the fluidity of expositional style and vividness of example desirable in introductory texts, then the author might even be congratulated on producing an unusually excellent primer. Such a rare feat has been achieved by Roger Matthews in his book...The most admirable aspect...is the elegant and economic way in which Matthews provides a broad sweep of empirical data and theoretical perspectives in one small volume.' - Pat Carlen, Professor of Criminology, University of Bath

Book Information
ISBN 9780333752302
Author R. Matthews
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Palgrave Macmillan
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan