The culture of urban control : jail overcrowding in the crime control era / John P. Walsh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walsh, John P., 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jails--Overcrowding--United States.

Jails.

Corrections--United States.

Corrections.

Jails--Overcrowding.

United States.

Physical Description:

ix, 185 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2013]

Summary:

The Culture of Urban Control: Jail Overcrowding in the Crime Control Era explores and analyzes the growth and expansion of the United States's largest single-site urban jail system. Through an analysis of a United States Federal Court-initiated consent decree, this research provides a narrative of criminal justice policy; John P. Walsh associates politics and legal maneuvering between the years of 1993 and 2003 with overcrowding within the Cook County Jail. As a result of increased policing presence and subsequent arrests during the crime control era of the 1990s, the Cook County Department of Corrections experienced a continually overcrowded correctional facility, with pretrial and post-convicted inmates sleeping on floors in overcrowded and dilapidated facilities. Beginning in the early 1990s and under the supervision of the federal court, Chicago and Cook County undertook the largest expansion of local level incarceration and correctional control in their history. Walsh analyzes the disputing process between local, state, and federal level claims-makers within the legal arena and through media representations in conjunction with infrastructure growth, changing correctional populations, community-level expansion of correctional programming, and the social reality of the inmate experience. He also examines how local level corrections and federal interdiction were shaped by local level politics and criminal justice systems. The analysis presented in this book will be valuable for researchers and policy analysts studying urban jails and state level correctional policy and administration, as well as individuals studying punishment and corrections within the fields of criminal justice, sociology, political science, public administration, cultural anthropology, and urban policy. Book jacket.

Contents:

From past to present: correctional system overcrowding and institutional reform

Conditions of confinement: the social reality of the jail inmate

The city within the city: altering population and space

Expanding the jail into the community: growth, development and mutual interest

Constructing the jail within local media: presenting expansion to the public

The politics of local level punishment: presiding over the culture of control.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739174647

0739174649

OCLC:

828884623