Handbook on Prisons

The second edition of the Handbook on Prisons provides a completely revised and updated collection of essays on a wide range of topics concerning prisons and imprisonment. Bringing together three of the leading prison scholars in the UK as editors, this new volume builds on the success of the first edition and reveals the range and depth of prison scholarship around the world.

The Handbook contains chapters written not only by those who have established and developed prison research, but also features contributions from ex-prisoners, prison governors and ex-governors, prison inspectors and others who have worked with prisoners in a wide range of professional capacities. This second edition includes several completely new chapters on topics as diverse as prison design, technology in prisons, the high security estate, therapeutic communities, prisons and desistance, supermax and solitary confinement, plus a brand new section on international perspectives. The Handbook aims to convey the reality of imprisonment, and to reflect the main issues and debates surrounding prisons and prisoners, while also providing novel ways of thinking about familiar penal problems and enhancing our theoretical understanding of imprisonment.

The Handbook on Prisons, Second edition is a key text for students taking courses in prisons, penology, criminal justice, criminology and related subjects, and is also an essential reference for academics and practitioners working in the prison service, or in related agencies, who need up-to-date knowledge of thinking on prisons and imprisonment.

Yvonne Jewkes is Professor of Criminology at the University of Leicester. She is editor of the first Handbook on Prisons (2007), author of Captive Audience: Media, Masculinity and Power in Prisons (2002), and series editor (with Ben Crewe and Thomas Ugelvik) of Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Yvonne’s publications on prison architecture include (with Philip Hancock) 'Penal Aesthetics and the Pains of Imprisonment’, Punishment & Society; (with Dominique Moran) ‘The paradox of the "green" prison: sustaining the environment or sustaining the penal complex?’, Theoretical Criminology; and ‘The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Prison Architecture’, in Simon, J. et al Architecture and Justice (2013).

Ben Crewe is Deputy Director of the Prisons Research Centre at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. Dr. Crewe has published widely on prisons and imprisonment, and is on the editorial board of the British Journal of Criminology. His current research is on prisoners serving very long sentences from an early age.

Jamie Bennett has been a prison manager since 1996 and is currently Governor of HMP Grendon & Springhill. Dr. Bennett is also a Research Associate at the University of Oxford and has edited Prison Service Journal since 2004. He has written widely on prisons and was awarded a PhD at University of Edinburgh.