Edited by Tony Platt and Paul Takagi (2nd printing, 1982). 200 pp., paper, ISBN 0-935206-00-0. $14.95

The present crisis in prison conditions has been decades in the making. What are its real causes? What are the class forces at work in the penal system? This important anthology of 16 essays selected from Crime and Social Justice addresses these and other questions. Sections on: Political Economy and Punishment, Contemporary Penal Discipline, the Prisoners’ Movement, and much more, placing the current penal crisis in a historical and theoretical context. Also included are evaluations of two much-discussed works by Michel Foucault and Michael Ignatieff.
Contributors include: Herman and Julia Schwendinger, Dario Melossi, Ivan Jankovic, Karen Wald, and others.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contributors
Preface
Perspective and Overview

I POLITICAL ECONOMY AND PUNISHMENT
Introduction
GEORG RUSCHE: Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on the Sociology of Criminal Justice
DARIO MELOSSI: Punishment and Social Structure
GREGORY SHANK: J. Thorsten Sellin’s Penology

II THE PENITENTIARY
Introduction
PAUL TAKAGI: The Walnut Street Jail: A Penal Reform to Centralize the Powers of the State
RUSSELL HOGG: Imprisonment and Society Under Early British Capitalism
DARIO MELOSSI: The Penal Question in Capital
MARTIN B. MILLER: At Hard Labor: Rediscovering the 19th Century Prison

III CONTEMPORARY PENAL DISCIPLINE
Introduction
IVAN JANKOVIC: Labor Market and Imprisonment
IVAN JANKOVIC: Social Class and Criminal Sentencing
RICHARD SPEIGLMAN: Prison Psychiatrists and Drugs: A Case Study
STEPHEN J. PFOHL: Deciding on Dangerousness: Predictions of Violence as Social Control

IV THE STRUGGLE INSIDE
Introduction
JOHN PALLAS AND BOB BARBER: From Riot to Revolution
BOB MARTIN: The Massachusetts Correctional System: Treatment as an Ideology for Control
KAREN WALD: The San Quentin Six Case: Perspective and Analysis
DEBBY BEGEL: An Interview with Willie Tate
HERMAN SCHWENDINGER AND JULIA SCHWENDINGER: The New Idealism and Penal Living Standards

LUIS TALAMANTEZ: Poems