Product Description: This collection, from a range of leading international scholars, looks at penal practice in a variety of different European countries. Noting particularities as well as similarities, such as the overuse of imprisonment and the use of harsher sanctions against the poor, this book questions how we justify and deliver punishment in Europe...read more

Product Description: 'I dislike heaping so much praise on a book, as people often imagine another agenda, purpose or friendship is at stake. That makes writing a review of Penal Policy and Political Culture all the more difficult. This really is an excellent book and it is very difficult to put down...read more

Product Description: Policy Networks in Criminal Justice is a comprehensive and challenging collection of studies on the workings of pressure groups in criminal justice and the articulation of pressure group politics and criminal justice policymaking...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This unique and original textbook offers undergraduates and interested professionals a much-needed description of how the penal system, including both prisons and alternatives to custody, is organized in eight major Western European countries. Each chapter provides readers with a critical anatomy and empirical overview of the full range of penal sanctions used in each country and an analysis of how these sanctions are implemented. Using statistical data which are not widely available, contributors examine the nature of the penal population in relation to sentencing, to its class, gender and racial composition and to the nature of the offences for which individuals have been confined. While highlighting seve