Revolution in Penology: Rethinking the Society of Captives [Hardcover]

Arrigo (Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte) and Milovanovic (Northeastern Illinois Univ.) provide a provocative and critical examination of the US penal system. Highly theoretical (postmodern), . . . it is nonetheless very well argued. Recommended.This is an important book....The great strength of the book is that it refrains from trying to offer a comprehensive theory of penological institutions and their effects, and instead attempts to ignite debate as well as a particular praxis.This book is, in my view, quite simply the most important penological text since Discipline and Punish. It should be read by all involved or implicated in the penological enterprise, and that means every one of us.By developing 'constitutive penology,' Arrigo and Milovanovic offer a sophisticated theoretical foundation to an emerging anti-penal harm movement critical of the 30 years prison boom and mass incarceration.... Revolution in Penology offers a fresh perspective on penology, develops a new theoretical perspective on the prison experience, and deepens the critique of penal harm.Revolution in Penology is a thoroughly original and thought-provoking critique of penal harm, the recursive pains of imprisonment cycle, and the normalization of violence.Revolution in Penology is a thoroughly original and thought-provoking critique of penal harm, the recursive pains of imprisonment cycle, and the normalization of violence. Relying on selected insights derived from continental philosophy, cultural studies, and chaos theory, internationally renowned social theorists, Bruce A. Arrigo and Dragan Milovanovic, deconstruct the human agency/social structure duality that sustains the prison form, its parts and segments understood as correctional principles/practices, and the prison industrial complex that is informed by and stands above them all.ForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I. Developments In Constitutive Theory and PenologyChapter 1: From Constitutive Criminology to Constitutive Penolol£3