The English Prison Health System After a Decade of Austerity, 2010-2020


Book Description

Austerity has reconfigured and scaled back the governance and delivery of public services and negatively affected society’s most vulnerable groups. This book opens up the closed world of English prisons to examine its impact on prison health governance and healthcare delivery. It argues that austerity has been a decade-long, large-scale political experiment that has caused debt to balloon, eroded the prison health system and perpetuated a cycle of punishment resulting in sicker prisoners. In short, austerity has violated prisoners’ human rights. Drawing on interviews and data from existing longitudinal and economic analyses, the book demonstrates how austerity has resulted in high rates of recidivism, diminished what remains of the welfare state, and increased inequality and punitiveness. Despite a decade of failure, there is a marked political reluctance to dispense with austerity, and the governmental juggernaut continues to produce the same result. As the spectre of recession increases, caused in part by Brexit and COVID-19, these failures are ever more perilous. This book blends the interdisciplinary perspectives of criminology, public health, sociology, law, social policy, politics, and economics to enable greater understanding of the impact of austerity on health governance, prison healthcare, the prison workforce, and prisoners’ health and safety. It challenges current policy, practice and thinking, and is a must read for anyone who wants to reflect on how the political economic structure can affect the governance and delivery of healthcare services in marginalised settings, beyond prisons, and indeed beyond England.




Austerity Bites 10 Years On


Book Description

Austerity has proven deadly. Over the last decade, the damage caused by austerity measures in the UK has had a long-lasting and profound effect on many lives. The first edition of Austerity Bites offered on-the-ground reportage of one of the most significantly regressive economic strategies of any post-war government. Over a year Mary O’Hara toured the UK to gauge the immediate impact – and expectations of people affected – and found many clinging to the hope that austerity cuts would not last long as the damage became increasingly apparent. Alas, this was not how things unfolded. Instead, much of the Welfare State had its vital support systems systematically undermined. The public sector, including the NHS, is now on its knees. Schools are buckling under multiple structural and budgetary pressures. Councils – even big ones – are going broke. Homelessness is rampant. While Brexit, the pandemic, and war have no doubt impacted the economic health of the country, previous austerity cuts left the UK less prepared to weather such extraordinary events. With new commentary, Austerity Bites 10 Years On assesses on the true scale of the damage these policies have inflicted on the country’s most vulnerable groups, public institutions and on the wider society. It reflects on where we have been, where we are now and what needs to happen next to undo the damage and avoid the same mistakes again.




Peer Support in Prison


Book Description

This book explores the profound impact of peer support within the bleak landscape of incarceration. In a system bereft of opportunities for personal growth, the narratives within these pages reveal how individuals who have committed offences rebuild their lives by ‘giving back’ and establishing meaningful connections with their fellow inmates. Peer Support in Prison draws on rich phenomenological interviews conducted with prisoners who assumed altruistic social roles while serving time. In doing so, it highlights the value of peer support in fostering hope, making meaning, and cultivating prosocial identities. By adopting empathic and mutually supportive roles within the prison community, individuals forge a pathway to a more meaningful future, defying unfavourable odds. The text unfolds to demonstrate that, even for those denigrated and rejected as ‘evil’, change is possible when motivated by principles of compassion, reciprocity, and connectedness. This book attests to the adaptability of humans, offering a unique perspective on how incarcerated individuals can find redemption, build trust, and reconstruct their lives through the transformative power of generativity and active citizenship. This has great implications for a stagnant carceral system which does not work as a restorative mechanism. Within the frame of ‘generative justice’, the findings from this book offer hopeful alternatives to the cruel hegemony of prison.




Mental Health and Well-being Interventions in Sport


Book Description

Now in its second edition, this book provides a focused, comprehensive overview of up-to-date mental health research, models, and approaches in sport, with expertise from global experts in the field. Mental health remains a widely growing area in the field of sport psychology, which requires expert guidance and care in promoting effective well-being for athletes, coaches and sport officials. Fully updated throughout, Mental Health and Well-being Interventions in Sport is an indispensable guide for researchers, practitioners and students wanting to understand and implement sport-based intervention processes. This important book adopts an evidenced based approach, discussing the context of the intervention, its design and implementation, and its evaluation and legacy. Exploring areas such as injury, rehabilitation, depression, eating disorders, verbal and physical abuse, and athletic burnout, this insightful volume dissects emerging research into straightforward accessible chapters. Offering a cutting-edge overview of the key issues involved in this burgeoning area, as well as example cases of how sport has been used in extreme environments such as prisons as a method to improve mental health, the book will benefit practitioners, policy makers and researchers. Written for newcomers and established practitioners across a variety of sports setting and contexts, the authors highlight the need for "another call to action" to support the mental health and wellbeing of all involved in sport. Presenting current research, theory and practice in the field, the text is an essential read for researchers, practitioners, and coaches to better understand sport-based intervention processes.




Fair Society, Healthy Lives


Book Description




The Lost Decade


Book Description

An authoritative survey of 2010-20: what went wrong, what went right, and what's next for Britain.







Freedom in the World 2011


Book Description

Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 194 countries and 14 territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.




Austerity Bites


Book Description

Since taking power in 2010, the Coalition Government in the United Kingdom has pushed through a drastic program of cuts to public spending, all in the name of austerity. The effects on large segments of the population, dependent on programs whose funding was slashed, have been devastating and will continue to be felt for generations. This timely book by journalist Mary O'Hara chronicles the real-world effects of austerity, removing it from the bland, technocratic language of politics and showing just what austerity means to ordinary lives. Drawing on hundreds of hours of first-person interviews with a wide range of people and, in the paperback edition, featuring an updated afterword by the author, the book explores the grim reality of living amid the biggest reduction of the welfare state in the postwar era and offers a compelling corrective to narratives of shared sacrifice.




World Protests


Book Description

This is an open access book. The start of the 21st century has seen the world shaken by protests, from the Arab Spring to the Yellow Vests, from the Occupy movement to the social uprisings in Latin America. There are periods in history when large numbers of people have rebelled against the way things are, demanding change, such as in 1848, 1917, and 1968. Today we are living in another time of outrage and discontent, a time that has already produced some of the largest protests in world history. This book analyzes almost three thousand protests that occurred between 2006 and 2020 in 101 countries covering over 93 per cent of the world population. The study focuses on the major demands driving world protests, such as those for real democracy, jobs, public services, social protection, civil rights, global justice, and those against austerity and corruption. It also analyzes who was demonstrating in each protest; what protest methods they used; who the protestors opposed; what was achieved; whether protests were repressed; and trends such as inequality and the rise of women’s and radical right protests. The book concludes that the demands of protestors in most of the protests surveyed are in full accordance with human rights and internationally agreed-upon UN development goals. The book calls for policy-makers to listen and act on these demands.