This book provides in-depth, orignal and critical analyses by leading scholars of the penal systems of 16 nations around the world, focusing on changes in social structure, culture and punishment since 1975. Contributors provide an international and comparative context in which to understand the impact of recent profound economic, social and political changes on penal theory and practice.
Crime, punishment and the state of prisons in a changing world; punishment in the American democracy - the paradoxes of good intentions; Canadian prisons; the crisis in Mexican prisons - the impact of the United States; power, punishment and prisons in England and Wales - 1975-1996; Germany - ups and downs in the resort to imprisonment; strategic or unplanned outcomes?; facing difference - relations, change and the prison sector in contemporary China; the Japanese experience; penality and imprisonment in Australia; change and continuity in South African prisons.
