Correctional Institutions

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Connexions Library

Addiction and Control
Skorodin, Morton
Article
2009
Prisons are very profitable. There are private prisons nowadays. The people that own them have, as their mission, first and foremost, the making of money. They need as many people as possible in priso...
Alternatives
Article
1977
A poster, brochure, and information on jail chaplaincies and the corrections system.
American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination
Williams, Kristian
Book
2006
A damning audit of the US record in underwriting human rights violations around the globe and at home, and about the centrality of rape, racism, and conquest to both the state and US national culture.
Barred from Prison
Culhane, Claire
Article
1979
An account of what occured inside the B.C. Penitentiary during a prison uprising in September 1976.
Canadian Information Sharing Service: Pilot Copy, February 1976
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1976
The first issue of the Canadian Information Sharing Service publication. The name of the publication was later changed to Connexions and then to Connexions Digest.
Connexions: Volume 7, Number 1 - March 1982
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1982
Converse
Article
1976
The role of church people in the correctional system.
Convict Labor in America: Book review
Ortiz, Paul
Article
1998
Convict labour, like antebellum slavery, was an American way of life, a cultural practice that tied northern capitalists, plantation owners, university-trained social reformers, federal officials and ...
Crime and Punishment in America: Why the Solutions to America's Most Stubborn Social Crisis Have Not Worked... and What Will
Currie, Elliott
Book
1998
Currie explores why being 'tough on crime' will only serve to exacerbate the problem.
Criminal Justiice
Bishop, Elaine
Book
1978
Deaths in Custody and Detention: Volume 33, No. 4 (2006) of Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, and World Order
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2006
A special issue on the investigation of, and inquiry into, deaths in custody and detention (including state hospitals and mental health, police and prison custody, and young offenders' institutions). ...
Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits: Six-part article
Fitts, Catherine Austin
Article
2006
Inside the Financial World, Government Agencies and their Private Contractors Lies a Hidden System of Money Laundering, Drug Trafficking and Rigged Stock Market Riches.
Eye for an Eye
Griswold, Jack; Misenheimer, Mike; Powers, Art; Tromanhauser, Ed
Book
1970
Four inmates talk about the American penal system over 50 years of rehabilitation and the corruption inherent of the prison system.
Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime
Rodriguez, Dylan
Book
2005
The dramatic rise and consolidation of America's prison system has devastated lives and communities, but it has also transformed prisons into sites of political discourse and resistance, as they have ...
The Fortress Economy: The Economic Role of the U. S. Prison System
Lichtenstein, Alexander C.; Kroll, Michael A.
Book
1990
The economic role of the US Prison System examined.
Going up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation
Hallinan, Joseph T.
Book
2001
On the prisons in America, their unprofitable nature, and their ineffectiveness. Hallinan also explores the workings of mostly-white towns that host prisons of predominately black inmates.
How Private Prisons Game the Immigration System
Fang, Lee
Article
2013
With huge profits at stake, CCA and the Geo Group are pushing discreetly for enforcement-heavy immigration reform.
Imprisoned Intellectuals: America's Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion
James, Joy (ed.)
Book
2003
Anthology of writings by imprisoned intellectuals.
In Conflict with the Law: Women and the Canadian Justice System
Adelberg, Ellen; Currie, Claudia
Book
1994
Critique of women and the Canadian justice system. Written from a feminist perspective, the collection is organized into three thematic sextions: Federal Imprisonment of Women -- Past, Present and Fut...
Intractable: Hell Has a Name: Life Inside Australia's First Super-Max Prison
Matthews, Bernie
Book
2006
A firsthand account spanning two generations of high-security confinement in the 1970s NSW Australian prison system.
Jails for Jesus
Shapiro, Samantha M.
Article
2003
President Bush wants faith-based programs to take over social services. But what happens when evangelical Christians try their hand at running prisons?
Justice Behind the Walls: Human Rights in Canadian Prisons
Jackson, Michael
Book
2003
An account of the state of justice in Canadian prisons, weaving together the threads of correctional history, penal philosophy, landmark court decisions, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and legisl...
Live From Death Row
Abu-Jamal, Mumia
Book
1995
A collection of prison writing by Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of a police officer after a dubious trial.
Lock 'Em Up: The Prison State
Yates, Michael
Article
2010
Without a doubt, most of those enmeshed in the (in)justice system are not dangers to society and would not have been in it at all in a society that wasn't so racist and so shot through with every kind...
Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis
Parenti, Christian
Book
1999
Why is criminal justice so central to American politics? Lockdown America not only documents the horrors and absurdities of militarized policing, prisons, a fortified border, and the federalization of...
Make the Don a Museum of Horrors
Diemer, Ulli
Article
1977
A museum depicting what prison is really like might motivate us to demand radical changes to the way we deal with offenders.
Mass Incarceration for Profit
Dolinar, Brian; Kilgore, James
Article
2015
In the face of growing public criticism and improved technologies, companies like Securus search for new ways to remain competitive while marketing themselves as providers of a quality service that ke...
Maximum, Minimum, Medium: A Journey Through Canadian Prisons
Melnitzer, Julius
Book
1995
Serving a nine-year sentence, Melnitzer documented his experience in three different prisons, along with his own introspections.
A Microcosm of the Nation - Control Unit Prisons: Out of Control
Jacobs, Ron
Article
2013
A review of 'Out of Control: A Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons' by Nancy Kurshan.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Alexander, Michelle
Book
2010
Argues that Jim Crow and legal racial segregation have been replaced by mass race-based incarceration as a system of social control.
No Longer Barred From Prison
Culhane, Claire
Book
1991
An account of one individual's determined efforts to get inside prisons to see what is actually happening there. As her story makes clear, the penal system cannot tolerate such close scrutiny: she her...
One Thousand Years of Solitude: Life in the SHU
Mariner, Joanne
Article
2012
Indefinite solitary confinement: a large-scale experiment in sensory deprivation and social isolation.
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society
Morris, Norval; Rothman, David J. (eds.)
Book
1997
Thematic chapters explore a variety of aspects and institutions.
Prison Abolition & Alternatives: Nine Perspectives for Prison Abolitionists
Article
1976
A argument for the abolition of prisons and a discussion of alternatives.
The Prison-Industrial Complex
Schlosser, Eric
Article
1998
Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars "the majority of them nonviolent offenders" mean jobs for depressed regio...
Prison Labor: Workin' For The Man: Article in Covert Action Quarterly #54, Fall 1995
Erlich, Reese
Article
1995
Article analysing the roots of prison labour in America.
Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor
Herivel, Tara; Wright, Paul
Book
2002
Essays on the cruelty and inhumanity of the American prison system.
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number
Timerman, Jacobo
Book
1991
The story of Timmerman's 30 months as a political prisoner under the Argentine dictatorship in the 1970s.
Prisoners' Rights Group
Culhane, Claire
Article
1978
Prisons in Canada
Gosselin, Luc
Book
1996
Gosselin provides a political and historical view of the prison system and its inherent contradictions. He argues that the penal system is used by the State to maintain its authority. He remarks on co...
Race, Incarceration, and American Values
Loury, Glenn C., with Pamela Karlan, Tommie Shelby and Loïc Wacquant
Book
2008
Glenn Loury argues that the extraordinary mass incarceration rate in the USA is not a response to rising crime rates. Instead, it is the product of a decision to become a more punitive society. He con...
Rampant Racism in the Criminal Justice System
Quigley, Bill
Article
2010
The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.
The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission
Donziger, Steven R.
Book
1996
A thorough examination of the American criminal justice system.
The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement
Cummins, Eric
Book
1994
A history of California's prison movement from 1950 to 1980, highlighting the role prison reading and writing played in the creation of radical inmate ideology.
Submission to the Sub-Committee on the Penitentiary Systems In Canada Hearings
Article
1977
A list of recommendations on how to fix certain issues in the prison system.
Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire
Perkinson, Robert
Book
2010
A history of imprisonment, race, and politics from slavery to the present, with an emphasis on Texas, the most locked-down state in the USA.
The Violence of Incarceration
Scraton, Phil; McCulloch, Mude (eds.)
Book
2008
Argues that the revelations of extreme brutality perpetrated by allied soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo represent the inevitable end-product of domestic incarceration predicated on the us...
When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A true story in the movement for prison abolition
Bissonette, Jamie
Book
2008
In the months before they took over running the Walople maximum-security facility in 1973, prisoners and outside advocates created programs that sent more prisoners home for good. This account reveals...
The World's Most Fashionable Prison
Mak, C K
Film/Video
2012
Fashion designer Puey Quinones works with inmates in a Philipine prison to teach them how to sew, work with fabrics and see their ideas go from sketch to finished product.

Sources Library

Inside Halden, the most humane prison in the world
Amelia Gentleman visits Halden, the high-security jail in Norway
Gentleman, Amelia
2012
A look into the flagship prison of Norway, where recidivism after two years is only 20%, and the focus is on rehabilitation rather than punishment.

From the Connexions Archives

Accord
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1982
Publication for victim offender ministries.
Bulldozer
Periodical profile published 1982
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1982
Intended as a vehicle for prison reform, Bulldozer publishes letters, poems and articles by and about prisoners in North American maximum security institutions.
Bulldozer
Periodical profile published 1984
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1984
Bulletin of the Quaker Jails and Justice Committee
Vol. 1 No. 5
Bishop, Elaine; Harkins, Kathy (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1977
Irregularly published newsletter outlining some of the current concerns and activities of the Quaker Committee.
The Journal of Prisoners on Prisons
Periodical profile published 1989
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1989
Odyssey
Periodical profile published 1983
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1983
Odyssey Newsletter
Periodical profile published 1982
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1982
The Odyssey Newsletter is published by a group of long term prisoners who "feel that prisons and the justice system in Canada must be changed through non-violent means."
Odyssey Newsletter
Periodical profile published 1984
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1984
Odyssey Newsletter
Periodical profile published 1981
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1981
This newsletter is published by "a group of prisoners who feel that prisons and the justice system in Canada can be changed by non-violent means."
A Quaker Committee on Jails and Justice Newsletter
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1979
A newsletter that argues against capital punishment.
Rap About Prisoners
Periodical profile published 1976
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1976
Representing people both inside and outside the prison system.
Tightwire
Vol. III, Edition 1
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1977
Tightwire
Periodical profile published 1983
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1983
Tightwire
Periodical profile published 1984
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1984