Routledge Alternatives to Prison

As the UK and many other western societies face up to the consequences of a rapidly increasing prison population, so the search for alternative approaches to punishment and dealing with offenders has become an increasingly urgent priority for government policy and society as a whole. This book reports the results of the research programme commissioned by the Coulsfield Inquiry into Alternatives to Prison, which was funded by the Esmée Fairbairn 'Rethinking Crime and Punishment' initiative. It is written by leading authorities in the field, and provides a comprehensive, authoritative and wide-ranging review of the range of issues associated with the use of noncustodial sanctions, examining experiences in Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as England and Wales. Review 'Alternatives to Prison: options for an insecure society will prove to be a quite valuable title in the field of criminology, and specifically it will come to be seen as an invaluable text in the domain of penology and sentencing. Not only have the editors drawn a strong indictment of the multiple drawbacks to imprisonment save in the cases of violent offences or offenders, they have done so in a way that is sensitive to and responsive to the needs of a collectivity that believes itself to be 'insecure', whatever may be the true state of affairs, at least as may be judged by statistics and surveys'. – Gilles Renaud, Ontario Court of Justice, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice