James B Waldram, Hound Pound Narrative: Sexual Offender Habilitation and the Anthropology of Therapeutic Intervention
| Author | Dany Lacombe |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474513490902 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
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While generally written in a clear and engaging style, the terminology employed
in The Black Child-Savers is occasionally of a rather technical nature, which may
prove difficult for students of history and other non-criminologists to access.
Likewise, the repeated use of the first person and phrases such as ‘in my view’,
seem to jar with the otherwise scholarly, critical and reflective style of the narrative.
Overall, though, this is an important, interesting and timely contribution to both
the historical and criminological debates surrounding race, juvenile crime and
youth justice not only in the United States but around the world. It will hopefully
encourage further research into the role of racial distinctions in shaping both youth
justice systems and the experiences of young people caught up in the court system.
It deserves to be read not only by students and scholars but by all those interested
in the history and present of youth crime and juvenile justice.
Reference
Platt A (1969) The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press.
Heather Ellis
Liverpool Hope University, UK
James B Waldram, Hound Pound Narrative: Sexual Offender Habilitation and the Anthropology of
Therapeutic Intervention, University of California Press: Berkeley, 2012; 261 pp.: 9780520272569,
$65 (cloth), $29.95 (pbk)
James B. Waldram, a professor of Anthropology at the University of
Saskatchewan, has had the unique opportunity to spend 18 months in a
Canadian prison observing, following and communicating with incarcerated men
as they undertook a prison treatment program for sex offenders. Waldram’s eth-
nography of the Hound Pound – the term inmates have coined their treatment unit
in reference to the prison slang hound for a sex offender – successfully provides
a richly textured description of the sex offender’s experience of treatment.
Unlike the monsters we read or hear about in the news media, the sex offenders
we encounter in this book appear as...
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