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The Scandinavian penal exceptionalism literature has focused largely on imprisonment but has yet to explore other aspects of the penal field in detail. This chapter provides an overview of the penal field in Norway and how community sanctions and measures have evolved within it. The author uses the work of Wacquant and Bourdieu to argue that there are three important levels within the Norwegian penal field: political, policy and practice. The author also discusses how drivers from the political and policy levels are affecting community-based penal practice. Using McNeill’s dimensions of mass supervision, the author discusses the implications of these changes for three less-explored aspects of punishment in Norway: the serving of short sentences at home on electronic monitoring, supervision of people under 18 and ‘punishment debt’ enforcement.

The paper explores the potential value of urban assemblage theory as a conceptual framework for understanding the role heritage has in social sustainable urban placemaking. The authors conceptualise urban placemaking as a dynamic and complex social assemblage. Heritage is one of the many dimensions of such a complex and dynamic urban assembly. Based on the approach to urban assemblage theory, the authors aim to uncover how postindustrial city-making unfolds. When approaching the case studies, the authors ask the following: Whose city for which citizens are visible through the selected case studies? How is social sustainability achieved through heritage in urban placemaking?

The main research material is derived from theoretical literature and the testing of an assemblage methodological approach through three Norwegian urban regeneration case studies where heritage partake in urban placemaking. The three case studies are the Tukthus wall (what is left of an 19th century old prison), the Vulkan neighbourhood (an 19th century industrial working area) and Sørengkaia (an 19th century industrial harbour area) in Oslo, Norway. The three case studies are representing urban regeneration projects which are common worldwide, and not at least in a European context.

The paper reveals the dynamic factors and processes at play in urban placemaking, which has its own distinct character by the uses of heritage in each of the case study areas. Placemaking could produce “closed” systems which are stable in accordance with its original functions, or they could be “open” systems affected by the various drivers of change. The paper shows how these forces are depending on two sets of binary forces at play in urban placemaking: forces of “assemblages” co-creating a place versus destabilising forces of “disassembly” which is redefining the place as a process affected by reassembled placemaking.

For research, the authors focus on the implications this paper has for the field of urban heritage studies as it provides a useful framework to capture the dynamic complexity of urban heritage areas.

For practice, the authors state that the paper can provide a useful platform for dialogue and critical thinking on strategies being planned.

For society, the paper promotes the significance in terms of fostering an inclusive way of thinking and planning for urban heritage futures.

The paper outlines dynamics of urban regeneration through heritage which are significant for understanding urban transformation as value for offering practical solutions to social problems in urban planning. The assemblage methodological approach (1) makes awareness of the dynamic processes at play in urban placemaking and makes the ground for mapping issue at stake in urban placemaking; (2) becomes a source for modelling urban regeneration through heritage by defining a conceptual framework of dynamic interactions in urban placemaking; and (3) defines a critically reflexive tool for evaluating good versus bad (heritage-led) urban development projects.

This chapter explores how the principles of retribution and deterrence were framed and thus used to justify capital punishment in the early years of the Republic, and how the purposes for capital punishment have changed in the past two centuries. We ask several related questions: (1) Has our understanding of the morality and utility of retributive justice changed so dramatically that the historical argument tying justification for capital punishment to the past now ought to carry less weight? (2) Have our perspectives on the purposes for capital punishment changed in ways that now might call the entire experiment into question? and (3) What, in short, can we say about the historical similarities between arguments concerning retribution and deterrence at the Founding and those same arguments today?As is often true of common law principles, the reasons for the rule are less sure and less uniform than the rule itself. (Justice Marshall's majority opinion in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986))

This paper explores two museums in Taiwan, both former sites of incarceration, and asks how they reflect Taiwan’s evolving relationship with the past. Taiwan has successfully emerged from its authoritarian past into a democratic present; yet, it still bears the scars of its traumatic and violent history in the places where trauma and pain was exacted over Taiwanese people by different regimes. Two of these places are former prisons, now museums with common histories of incarceration, but very different approaches to presentation of traumatic pasts. This paper aims to understand the selective presentation of narratives of punishment in prison museums in Taiwan and what they reflect about Taiwan’s national identity.

This research used a qualitative ethnographic methodology, approaching prison museums as research sites with multidimensional textual, spatial and visual data. This study used a narrative ethnology approach to analyse the content, structure and social context surrounding the stories told about punishment at the sites.

While the Jingmei White Terror Memorial Park documents past abuses under the authoritarian Kuomindang Government (1945–1987), the narratives presented at the Chiayi Prison Museum, constructed under Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945), ignore past colonial violence. This study argues that the invisibility of past colonial violence in Chiayi prison museum acts to strengthen Taiwan’s multicultural national identity, while Jingmei WTMP acts to valorise political prisoners as heroic fighters for Taiwan’s democracy and human rights.

This research makes a contribution to the museum studies literature through extending understanding of the relationship between former carceral spaces and national identity projects.

A survey of 166 women exiting prison in a large mid‐western U.S. state examined the extent to which demographics, family history and relationships, institutional experiences, offence history, and physical and emotional needs were associated with re‐arrest one year after release. Analyses revealed that three independent variables and two interactional effects accounted for 40% of the variability in re‐arrest: employment in the year prior to incarceration, history of psychiatric hospitalization, participation in prison industries programs, and the interaction of prior psychiatric hospitalization with in‐prison substance abuse programming and with employment history. Interviews with 55 women over five points in time revealed important interpersonal and environmental elements for 20 women six months out who had not been arrested. Implications for program and policy development are discussed.

To examine a possible link between substance use and risky sexual behaviour, a cross‐sectional study was conducted among 357 inmates across four South African prisons involved in a pre‐release intervention programme for parolees. About 93% of the participants reported using alcohol and 52% used marijuana prior to imprisonment, while 56% reported previous occurrence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Logistic regression analyses explored the impact of substance use on intention to reduce risky sexual behaviour. Age and inconsistent use of condoms were positively associated with having an STI prior to incarceration, while reported alcohol and marijuana intake had no effect. Never using condoms before was highly associated with lower intention to engage in preventive behaviours upon release. It can be concluded that inmates demonstrate high levels of substance use and engagement in risky sexual behaviours. Targeted pre‐release substance abuse interventions are essential to reduce the burden of disease amongst offenders.