This book provides the reader with a fascinating insight into the factors that helped shape penal philosophies and approaches of punishment across a variety of different countries.

There are few 'must buy' books for students of criminology and criminal justice, but since its first edition in 1992 The Penal System: An Introduction has been one of them. For accuracy and scope, as well as its remarkable combination of scholarly rigour and readability, the book has no equal, and it has only got better through successive editions.

Preface to the Fourth Edition

Introdudion

1.1 The Criminal Justice System

1.2 Strotegies for Criminal Justice and the Penal Crisis

1.3 A Note on Terminology: 'System'

1 Crisis? What Crisis?

1.1 Is There a Crisis?

1.2 The Orthodox Account of the Crisis

1.3 Improving on the Orthodox Account

1.4 Responses to the Crisis

1.5 A Radical Pluralist Account of the Crisis

2 Justifying Punishment

2.1 Is Punishment Unjust?

2.2 Reductivism

2.3 Retributivism

2.4 Other Justifications

2.5 Schools of Penal Thought

2.6 Philosophies, Strategies and Altitudes

2.7 Conclusions: Punishment and Human Rights

3 Explaining Punishment

3.1 The Sociology of Punishment

3.2 The Marxist Tradition

3.3 The Durkheimian Tradition

3.4 The Weberian Tradition

3.5 Pluralism and Radical Pluralism

3.6 Applying Penal Sociology

4 Court Decisions: The Crux of the Crisis

4.1 The'System'

4.2 The Remand Decision

4.3 The Mode of Trial Decision

4.4 The Sentencing Decision

4.5 A Brief, Tangled Recent History of Sentencing

5 Administering Punishment in the Community

5.1 Community Punishment in a Rapidly Changing Penal Landscape

5.2 Non-custodial Punishment and the Current Sentencing Framework

5.3 The Changing Modalities of Non-Custodial Punishment

5.4 Community Punishment: Strategic Issues

5.5 The Carter Reforms and their Implications for the Prabation Service

5.6 Shifting Patterns of Penality: Theoretical Reflections

5.7 Conclusion: The Future of Punishment?

6 Prisons and the Penal Crisis

6.1 Overview

6.2 The Aims and Functions of Imprisonment

6.3 Anatomy of the Prison System

6.4 Key Phases in Recent Prison Policy-Making

6.5 The Prison System end Its Crises

7 Prison Privatization: Panacea or Pandora's Box?

7.1 Meaning and Forms of Prison Privafization

7.2 The History of Prison Privatization in England

7.3 Claims and Critique: The Theoretical Debate

7.4 Panacea or Pandora's Box? Prison Privatization and the Penal Crisis

8 Early Release: the Penal System's Safety Valve

8.1 Early Release: Useful, Controversial, Troublesome

8.2 From Remission (The Original Safety Valve) to Automatic Early Release

8.3 Parole 1967-1991: From Principle to Pragmatism (and Bifurcation)

8.4 Early Release 1991-2003: Reform and the Threat of Near-Abolition (lifted by New Labour)

8.5 Early Release Today

8.6 Conclusion: Early Release Evaluated

9 Young Offenders: Systems Management or System Disaster?

9.1 Children in Trouble or Troubled Children?

9.2 Young People, Crime and the Penal Crisis

9.3 Responding to Youth Crime: Models of Youth Justice

9.4 New Labour: 'Hew Youth Justice'

9.5 New Youth Justice: New Institutions

9.6 Putting 'Prevention' Into Practice: Extending the Net of Social Control

9.7 Responding to Youth Crime: The Youth Justice System in Operation

9.8 Concluding Assessment: No More Excuses?

10 Bias in the Criminal Justice System

10.1 Introductory

10.2 Class

10.3 Race

10.4 Gender

11 Solving the Crisis?

11.1 A Grim Fairy Tale

11.2 Responses to the Crisis, 1970-2006

11.3 How to Solve the Crisis

A Self-study Guide to Electronic Sources Available on the Internet

Glossary of Key Terms

References

Index