Laura S Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe, Compassionate Confinement: A Year in the Life of Unit C
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474513494698 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Author | Kate Shade |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
But several important themes are definitely raised – themes that also give rea-
sons for worries: the EU as an increasingly powerful actor expanding penal control;
increasing prison populations across the EU; the expansion of prison privatization;
the remaining high prison populations in the former communist countries; the risk
of net widening through alternatives to prison; and the criminalization of migrants.
At the same time welfare juvenile justice seems to prevail, prison populations are
stagnating in some states and human rights are watched by European institutions.
A concluding chapter could have analysed these different tendencies. Will the puni-
tive turn continue or has it come to an end? Will the leaders of a weakened EU
resort to law and order for legitimation? Should new and other forms of control
than imprisonment be the object of analysis?
And finally, questions remain about the sympathetic idea of common liberal
values grounding European states, put forward both as description and prescrip-
tion. Is it a likely development in view of the analyses presented? What is required
to make the image of a tolerant and non-punitive Europe attractive to citizens and
politicians? And how concretely could criminologists contribute to such a process?
Thus far there does not seem to be a strong correlation between the number of
criminologists in a country and a non-punitive policy.
References
Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics. Available at: http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/
space/space-i/
European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics (2010, 4th edn.) By
Marcelo F Aebi, Bruno Aubusson de Cavarlay, Gordon Barclay, Beata
Gruszyn
´ska, Stefan Harrendorf, Markku Heiskanen, Vasilika Hysi, Ve
´ronique
Jaquier, Jo
¨rg-Martin Jehle, Martin Killias, Olena Shostko, Paul Smit, and
Rannveig o
´risdo
´ttir. Den Haag: Boom Juridische uitgevers.
Henrik Tham
Professor emeritus, Stockholm University, Sweden
Laura S Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe, Compassionate Confinement: A Year in the Life of Unit C,
Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 2012; 188 pp. (including index): 9780813554129,
$62.10 (cloth), $23.95 (pbk)
I was delighted to be asked to review Compassionate Confinement by Laura
Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe. I had already read several publications that
originated from their ethnographic project (Abrams and Aguilar, 2005; Abrams
and Hyun, 2009; Abrams et al., 2005, 2008) and was eager to see how they
summarily analyzed and presented their research in this work. The book provides
a rich, contextualized view of the everyday treatment of many youthful
offenders in the justice system: extended confinement provided in concert with
compassionate care.
566 Punishment & Society 15(5)
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