Golden Gulag


Book Description

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.




Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data


Book Description

Efforts to address the problems of distressed urban neighborhoods stretch back to the 1800s, but until relatively recently, data played little role in forming policy. It wasn't until the early 1990s that all of the factors necessary for rigorous, multifaceted analysis of neighborhood conditions--automated government records, geospatial information systems, and local organizations that could leverage both--converged. Strengthening Communities documents that convergence and details its progress, plotting the ways data are improving local governance in America.




Holistic Disaster Recovery


Book Description

This is an all-purpose handbook on how to build sustainability into a community during the recovery period after a disaster. It has background information, practical descriptions, and ideas about what sustainability is, why it is a good for a community, and how it can be applied during disaster recovery to help create a better community. The book is intended to be used by local officials, staff, activists, and the disaster recovery experts who help the community during disaster recovery -- including state planners, emergency management professionals, mitigation specialists, and others. It is geared mainly toward small to medium-sized communities.




Revitalizing Main Street


Book Description




Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating Health Promotion Programs


Book Description

Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating Health Promotion Programs: A Primer provides students with a comprehensive overview of the practical and theoretical skills needed to plan, implement, and evaluate health promotion programs in a variety of settings. The Fifth Edition features updated information throughout, including new theories and models such as the Healthy Action Process Approach (HAPA) and the Community Readiness Model (CRM), sections on grant writing and preparing a budget, real-life examples of marketing principles and processes, and a new classification system for evaluation approaches and designs. It has been thoroughly reviewed by both practitioners and professors to reflect the latest trends in the field. "I too just took the CHES exam in April and passed...What I found to be most helpful was reading over "Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating Health Promotion Programs: A Primer (4th Ed.)" by Mckenzie, Neiger, & Smeltzer. I think it would give individuals who have been out of school for a while a good "refresher" on not only the terminology, but also core concepts." Joseph D. Visker, MS,CHES, Department of Health Education & Recreation Southern Illinois University, Carbondale







Integrated River Basin Governance


Book Description

Integrated River Basin Governance - Learning from International Experience is designed to help practitioners implement integrated approaches to river basin management (IRBM). It aims to help the coming generation of senior university students learn how to design IRBM and it provides current researchers and the broader water community with a resource on river basin management. Drawing on both past and present river basin and valley scale catchment management examples from around the world, the book develops an integration framework for river basin management. Grounded in the theory and literature of natural resources management and planning, the thrust of the book is to assist policy and planning, rather than extend knowledge of hydrology, biophysical modelling or aquatic ecology. Providing a classification of river basin organizations and their use, the book also covers fundamental issues related to implementation: decision-making. institutions and organizations. information management. participation and awareness. legal and economic issues. integration and coordination processes. building human capacity. Integrated River Basin Governance focuses on the social, economic, organizational and institutional arrangements of river basin management. Methods are outlined for implementing strategic and regional approaches to river basin management, noting the importance of context and other key elements which have been shown to impede success. The book includes a range of tools for river basin governance methods, derived from real life experiences in both developed and developing countries. The successes and failures of river basin management are discussed, and lessons learned from both are presented. The ebook for this title is available to download for free on the WaterWiki.




Individual Income Tax Reductions


Book Description