The University of Wisconsin Press

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Criminology / Sociology / Anthropology / Public Policy

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Beggars and Thieves Lives of Urban Street Criminals Mark S. Fleisher Winner of the 1995 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Books Award "The most important study of street criminals published in twenty years. After reading this book, I find that neither liberal nor conservative proposals for meeting the growing inner city youth crime problem are persuasive. Likewise, neither conventional family-preservation policies nor more social programs can be taken as serious responses to the crisis. For policy makers, scholars, activists, and average citizens who want to defuse urban America's ticking crime bomb, this book is truly must reading."—John J. DiIulio, Jr., author of No Escape: The Future of American Corrections As the incidence of violent crime rises in the United States, so does the public demand for a solution. But what will work? Mark S. Fleisher has spent years among inmates in jails and prisons and on the streets with thieves, gang members, addicts, and life-long criminals in Seattle and other cities across the country. In Beggars and Thieves, he writes about how and why they become and remain offenders, and about the actual role of jails and prisons in efforts to deter crime and rehabilitate criminals. Fleisher shows, with wrenching firsthand accounts, that parents who are addicts, abusers, and criminals beget irreversibly damaged children who become addicts, abusers, and criminals. Further, Fleisher contends that many well-intentioned educational and vocational training programs are wasted because they are offered too late to help. And, he provides sobering evidence that many youthful and adult offenders find themselves better off in prison—with work to do, medical care, a clean place to sleep, regular meals, and stable social ties—than they are in America's cities. Fleisher calls for anti-crime policies that are bold, practical, and absolutely imperative. He prescribes life terms for violent offenders, but in prisons structured as work communities, where privileges are earned through work in expanded, productive industries that reduce the financial burden of incarceration on the public. But most important, he argues that the only way to prevent street crime, cut prison growth, and reduce the waste of money and human lives is to permanently remove brutalized children from criminal, addicted, and violent parents. Mark S. Fleisher is associate professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University. An anthropologist and a former administrator in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, he is the author of Warehousing Violence. He is also the author of Dead End Kids, published by the University of Wisconsin Press Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@wwwtest.uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)

August 1995   LC: 95-018431 HN 346 pp.  6 x 9 Paper $19.95 x ISBN 978-0-299-14774-7 ADD TO CART

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