Book Review: New Visions of Crime Victims

• Published date: 01 May 2005
• Date: 01 May 2005
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016805275704
• Subject Matter: Articles

success. Yet,Santos does include Ellis Rogers’s account of many prison employees’kindness

in helping Rogers find out about his daughter in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the

New York twin towers. He also tells the story of how a series of employees arranged for

Andrew Frison to obtain an educational transfer to acquire computer skills. One correctional

officer prays with Byron Perymoore Nelson even when another officer reminds Nelson that

he is a prisoner who will always be tried by the guards. Ironically, this helps Nelson cope. He

learns again that it is his job to adjust, not theirs.

The major weakness in this book is that Santos expects prisoners to rise above the arbitrary

as well as capricious nature of the formal and informal prison rules and be more like he is.

Somehow he forgets how precarious prison adjustment is.

Profiles From Prison makes an important contribution to prison community literature and

adds to the corpus of information about federal prisons. Written in a journalistic style, it is

accessible to a wide audience. In addition to the usual sociology, political science, and crimi-

nal justice classes, I think this book should be read by the lay public, legislatures, and

employees of the criminal justice system in order to see prisoners as human beings. More-

over, it provides an understanding of the futility of excessivesentences and present punitive

policies. It is clear that some men and women have to be imprisoned for 10 years or more

before they mature and take responsibility for their own behaviors.I have met many men who

observe that they might be dead if they had not been imprisoned. It is also clear that excessive

sentences are purely retributive and beyond any rehabilitativeor redemptive function. I agree

with Santos. Once we imprison people, we must establish positive prison policies that pre-

pare people to be successful in the free world. It cannot be left to individual choice, as in

Santos’s case. As a society, we have a moral and economic responsibility to do things differ-

ently. Profiles From Prison clearly and emphatically illustrates this point. I recommend it

highly.

Marianne Fisher-Giorlando

Grambling State University

New Visions of Crime Victims, edited by Carolyn Hoyle and Richard Young. Oregon: Hart

Publishing, 2002, 243 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016805275704

Victimology is a slow-growing field of social science research. However, victimologists’

borrowing of major theories and concepts and their focus on the more socially accepted vic-

tims of crime keeps the field in an underdeveloped stage. Hoyle and Young’s approach to

studying victims of crime is a unique one in that it focuses on those victims who are typically

not awarded the status of victim, for example, the deviant or criminal or the so-called power-

ful groups in society. Hoyle and Young present an array of original works that examine such

ignored victims as male victims of rape and domestic violence, victim-offenders, and corpo-

rate victims. They also include research examining restorative justice and victim involve-

ment in the criminal justice system, as well as gendered constructions of victims. In all,

Hoyle and Young include eight chapters on ignored victims within victimology and criminal

justice. A major theme presented in most of the chapters is the social construction of the vic-

120 Criminal Justice Review