Sheldon L. Messinger's Books

Strategies of Control

By: Sheldon L. Messinger

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This groundbreaking study of transitions and control in the California prison system has been extensively read, cited, and quoted in unpublished form—and is finally easily available worldwide. Already a compelling part of the canon of studies in penology, criminology, sociology, and organizational theory, this new edition of STRATEGIES OF CONTROL adds a 2016 foreword by Howard S. Becker and afterword by Jonathan Simon, both contributing substantive and meaningful views of this important work. Considered influential to two generations of scholars worldwide, Messinger's thesis examining prison systems' organization and reform—or in some ways, regression—is said to anticipate Erving Goffman's and Michel Foucault's writings on "total institutions" by many years, and raised themes that only years later would become influential in criminology and sociology. Its new digital edition features quality formatting, active Contents, linked notes and cross-references, and all of the tables and charts of the original study. Writing in the new foreword, Becker notes that this book is a "a masterful analysis of a systematically connected group of organizations, seeing them not as separate entities, but as a system whose organizational routines and peculiarities we couldn't understand if we didn't know their external connections as well as their internal workings." Its research methodology was painstaking: "The officials of the new system's components, especially the wardens of the individual prisons, had [many] questions on their minds. You couldn’t answer those questions by observing one of those prisons for a year or two." Not so in the author's decade of research leading up to this work. Indeed, Becker concludes, "Messinger's study provides the blueprint for more accurate and persuasive analyses of large organizations of every kind." Simon writes in the new afterword that this book remains "an important contribution to understanding the nature of imprisonment and more broadly to the study of punishment in modern society," providing "a crucial background for rethinking the recent history of prisons and particularly the rise of mass incarceration, which has seen the proliferation of multi-prison systems, extensions of bureaucratic management within prisons, and the abandonment of rehabilitation as a central justification for punishment." Simon adds: "Creating a sociological analysis for such a complex extended network required a break with traditional sociological thinking," and going further in "suggesting another analytic shift from studying the 'prison system' to studying the broad array of agencies and authorities that made up 'the correctional establishment.'" Policymakers, practitioners, and scholars who are interested in a better understanding of the relationship between correctional systems, their comprising organizational components, and practices will learn much from this study. It provides a truly original contribution to our sociological understanding of how formal organizations comprising a correctional system evolve and operate through a series of relationships ultimately producing control of the system itself, its prisons, and its inmates. Given the current focus on evidence-based justice, Messinger's documentation and unique interpretation of the organizational dynamics, interconnections, and dependencies within correctional systems are clearly relevant and crucial to the successful implementation of such “translational criminology” reforms. — Thomas G. Blomberg Dean and Sheldon L. Messinger Professor of Criminology College of Criminology and Criminal Justice Florida State University Author, Advancing Criminology Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series from Quid Pro Books, this foundational book is at last available to a general audience, researchers, and students in eBook form. Also available in new paperback and hardcover editions (2016).

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232

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Quid Pro Books

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ISBN 10

1610273583

ISBN 13

9781610273589

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Search for Community in Prison

By: Elliot Studt,Sheldon L. Messinger,Thomas P. Wilson

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Search for Community in Prison

By: Elliot Studt,Sheldon L. Messinger,Thomas P. Wilson

One of the most detailed reports ever made on an effort to establish a therapeutic community within a California prison. This work describes how the program was launched, gives a number of examples of its operation, and outlines the new problems and prospects created for inmates, staff, and the broader prison administration by this attempt to redefine the roles within the prison.

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381

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Russell Sage Foundation

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ISBN 10

1610444981

ISBN 13

9781610444989

Schizophrenic Women

Studies In Martial Crisis

By: Harold Sampson,Sheldon L. Messinger,Robert D. Towne

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Schizophrenic Women

Studies In Martial Crisis

By: Harold Sampson,Sheldon L. Messinger,Robert D. Towne

Schizophrenic Women is a fascinating report on the lives of seventeen families that suffered the experiences associated with the hospitalization of the wife and mother for mental illness. A description and analysis of representative experiences is presented here in an attempt to investigate various key issues--the patterns of family living preceding the crisis leading to medical hospitalization; how the patterns fell apart; how personal and family crises became psychiatric emergencies; how the hospital experiences modified both the immediate crises and the earlier patterns of living--and how durable those changes were once the patients had returned home. The book goes beyond the immediate lives of the women and their families--the authors direct attention to patterns of psychiatric care and to the ways in which such crises as those experienced by these women and their families come to professional attention and are managed. The authors explore how help is found and used and some of the functions hospitalization serves for patients and their families. They point out some of the ways that traditional patterns of psychiatric care limit the power to observe, understand, and effectively influence a pathological course of events. In her new introduction to Schizophrenic Women, Rita J. Simon notes that, "Although the study was conducted in the 1950s, readers will recognize its current relevance and importance for scholars and the lay public interested in the problem of mental illness and intrafamily relationships." Harold Sampson is president and co-founder of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group. He is a member of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute as well as being on the Institute faculty. He is also Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco, and is in private practice in San Francisco. Sheldon L. Messinger was professor emeritus, and vice-chair of the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the Law School, University of California, Berkeley. He died in 2003. Robert D. Towne was a psychiatrist and member of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society. Rita J. Simon is University Professor in the School of Public Affairs at the Washington College of Law at American University. She is the editor of the journal Gender Issues, published by the Transaction Periodicals Consortium.

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198

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Transaction Publishers

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0202368718

ISBN 13

9780202368719

Strategies of Control

By: Sheldon L. Messinger

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Strategies of Control

By: Sheldon L. Messinger

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Quid Pro Books

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ISBN 10

1610273583

ISBN 13

9781610273589

Book's by Sheldon L. Messinger

Strategies of Control

Strategies of Control

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Schizophrenic Women

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Strategies of Control

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