While many studying criminology learn to examine offenders, offending, and its consequences, few actually journey into the physical world of prisons to meet offenders face-to-face. Created specifically for criminology students and equally useful for current researchers and practitioners, this book serves as a step-by-step toolkit on how to humanely conduct research with populations in the correctional system. The authors’ combined 60+ years of experience allows them to provide field-tested practical advice for researching youth and adults on probation, on parole, or incarceration. The book guides readers through practical concerns, such as gaining access and building rapport with offenders and those who monitor them; the types of correctional data that can be collected; informed consent process and research ethics; and the logistics of doing research. Through personal stories, “what if” scenarios, and case studies, as well as examples of real-world tools like checklists and sample forms, the authors share methods of how to overcome the obstacles that criminologists must face as they learn to work with those behind bars.

While many studying criminology learn to examine offenders, offending, and its consequences, few actually journey into the physical world of prisons to meet offenders face-to-face. Created specifically for criminology students and equally useful for current researchers and practitioners, this book serves as a step-by-step toolkit on how to humanely conduct research with populations in the correctional system. The authors’ combined 60+ years of experience allows them to provide field-tested practical advice for researching youth and adults on probation, on parole, or incarceration. The book guides readers through practical concerns, such as gaining access and building rapport with offenders and those who monitor them; the types of correctional data that can be collected; informed consent process and research ethics; and the logistics of doing research. Through personal stories, “what if” scenarios, and case studies, as well as examples of real-world tools like checklists and sample forms, the authors share methods of how to overcome the obstacles that criminologists must face as they learn to work with those behind bars.

A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record. Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths. Recently released individuals are faced with jobs that are off-limits, apartments that cannot be occupied and votes that cannot be cast. As The Color of Law exposed about our understanding of housing segregation, Halfway Home shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate. Parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they've paid their debt to society. Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of incarcerated men, captures the stories of the men, women, and communities fighting against a system that is designed for them to fail. It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens. PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist Winner of the 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences 2022 PROSE Awards Finalist 2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner for Cultural Anthropology and Sociology An NPR Selected 2021 Books We Love As heard on NPR’s Fresh Air

This report finds that an estimated 5.7 million adult residents of the U.S. were under some form of correctional supervision in 1997. Seven in 10 were supervised in the community, through probation or parole. About 2.8% of all adult residents of the U.S. were under correctional supervision in 1997, up from 1.7% in 1985. About 9.0% of black adults, 2.0% of white adults, and 1.3% of adults of other races were under correctional supervision in 1997. This report provides statistics for: jails; probation; prisons; parole and post-release supervision; capital punishment; military confinement; and 1997 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities. Includes numerous tables and graphs.

"[The report] finds that supervision -– probation and parole -– drives high numbers of people, disproportionately those who are Black and brown, right back to jail or prison, while in large part failing to help them get needed services and resources. In states examined in the report, people are often incarcerated for violating the rules of their supervision or for low-level crimes, and receive disproportionate punishment following proceedings that fail to adequately protect their fair trial rights."--Publisher website.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.