Product Description: Punishing the Other draws on the work of Zygmunt Bauman to discuss contemporary discourses and practices of punishment and criminalization. Bringing together some of the most exciting international scholars, both established and emerging, this book engages with Bauman’s thesis of the social production of immorality in the context of criminalization and social control and addresses processes of ‘othering’ through a range of contemporary case studies situated in various cultural, political and social contexts...read more

Why do some modern societies punish their offenders differently to others? Why are some more punitive and others more tolerant in their approach to offending and how can these differences be explained? Based on extensive historical analysis and fieldwork in the penal systems of England, Australia and New Zealand on the one hand and Finland, Norway and Sweden on the other, this book seeks to answer these questions. The book argues that the penal differences that currently exist between these two clusters of societies emanate from their early nineteenth-century social arrangements, when the Anglophone societies were dominated by exclusionary value systems that contrasted with the more inclusionary values of the Nordic countries. The development of their penal programmes over this two hundred year period, including the much earlier demise of the death penalty in the Nordic countries and significant differences between the respective prison rates and prison conditions of the two clusters, reflects the continuing influence of these values. Indeed, in the early 21st century these differences have become even more pronounced. John Pratt and Anna Eriksson offer a unique contribution to this topic of growing importance: comparative research in the history and sociology of punishment. This book will be of interest to those studying criminology, sociology, punishment, prison and penal policy, as well as professionals working in prisons or in the area of penal policy across the six societies that feature in the book.

Product Description: This book provides a unique account of the high-profile community-based restorative justice projects in the Republican and Loyalist communities that have emerged with the ending of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Unprecedented new partnerships between Republican communities and the Police Service of Northern Ireland have developed, and former IRA and UVF combatants and political ex prisoners have been amongst those involved...read more