In The Beautiful Prison incarcerated Americans and prison critics seek to imagine the prison as something better than a machinery of suffering. From personal testimony to theoretical meditation these writers explore and confront the practical and cultural limits the prison places on its
transformation into a socially constructive institution. Long-term prisoner Kenneth E. Hartman engages the reader in his struggle to find beauty inside the increasingly bleak and sterile confines of the California Department of Corrections. Chuck Jackson releases his imagination on Houston's
notorious Harris County Jail to envision a jailhouse transformed into a university, community, and arts center. Between the grip of the CDC and utopian vision, Leder, Ginsburg, Pinkert, and Brown report on their practical and theoretical work to understand what the prison has been and might be. The
Beautiful Prison suggests that any passage from 'ugly prisons' into institutions serving the greater good will only be possible when the will and intellectual capital of their inhabitants are met by free-world critics ready to challenge assumptions of the prison acting solely as an apparatus of
punishment.
This volume in the series Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance edited by Mathieu Deflem addresses contemporary issues of policing with a focus on the characteristics of police power as a coercive force in society and its continued need for legitimacy in a democratic social order. The book brings
scholars together to discuss a variety of important topics concerning police and policing. Developments and problems associated with police power are at the very front of current public debate. In the broader constellation of the culture of modern crime control, police institutions enjoy a
privileged status. Continued developments in technology and surveillance have affected policing as have continued and new crime problems. Not least of all, of course, the legitimacy of policing has recently been questioned because of several highly-publicized incidents involving police violence.
The chapters in this book provide clarification on these and related aspects of police and policing in society. This collection is valuable for students and scholars in sociology, criminology, law, political science, and public policy.
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