Anthony Bottoms

In recent years far more attention has been paid to victims of crime both in terms of awareness of the effect of crime upon their lives, and in changes that have been made to the criminal justice system to improve their rights and treatment. This process seems set to continue, with legislative plans announced to rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of the victim. This latest book in the Cambridge Criminal Justice Series brings together leading authorities in the field to review the role of the victim in the criminal justice system in the context of these developments.

In recent years far more attention has been paid to victims of crime both in terms of awareness of the effect of crime upon their lives, and in changes that have been made to the criminal justice system to improve their rights and treatment. This process seems set to continue, with legislative plans announced to rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of the victim. This latest book in the Cambridge Criminal Justice Series brings together leading authorities in the field to review the role of the victim in the criminal justice system in the context of these developments.

This book presents a substantial new statement on the character of social life in confinement. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in two contrasting English maximum security prisons, the authors systematically compare their institutional order, including the differing control strategies deployed in each, as seen by both custodians and captives, controllers and controlled. The authors discuss the implications of their research for the tradition of sociological concern within the`prison community'. They re-examine the resources of that rich but latterly somewhat dormant field in the light of some of the main currents in contemporary social theory, and thereby provide a new perspective on the `problem of order' in maximum custody. This book will have significant policy implications, and it will be required reading for scholars and students in criminology and criminal justice, as well as for administrators and reformers in penal system.