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"Prisons in Africa" published on by Oxford University Press.

Examines the political & social factors leading to the transformation of the Swedish prison system. Since the 1970s, Sweden had been praised for its humane penal system, which incorporated short prison sentences, welfare benefits, the right to leave prison for special occasions, & emphasis on rehabilitation. However, perceived increases in crime rates & drug abuse led to more restrictive penal policies during the 1980s, & in 1991, a conservative government came into power, boosted by an anticrime compaign that called for longer & more repressive prison sentences. Although an economic crisis brought the Social Democratic Party back into power in 1994, this government has maintained many of the conservative government's innovations, including mandatory incarceration for 66% of a sentence, electronic tagging of certain criminals, & harsher drug policies. However, the Social Democrats have also recommitted themselves to incarceration alternatives & crime prevention through welfare, education, drug programs, etc. It is concluded that the shift toward a more punitive & exclusionary philosophy is the product of recent social, political, & media attitudes that regard crime & criminals (especially drugs) as an external attack on Swedish values. 5 Tables, 40 References. T. Sevier

Draws on prisoner narratives to examine violence in Venezuelan prisons. Data were obtained from fieldwork conducted over 8 months in 1997 at Catia Prison in Caracas. The narratives include oral testimonies & an iconography of religious images found in the prison. It is contended that religious objects reinforce the prisoners' perceptions of themselves as warriors, & this warrior imaginary regulates the behavior of inmates who use intimidation to survive within the penal community. Exploration of the reappropriation of the traditional figure of the warrior in religious imagery calls attention to spirits of African origin associated with the cult of possession, & the combining of the notion of the warrior with other concepts or practices, including crime, making an ethic of criminal violence part of the daily discourse. Imagery in Catia Prison that raises the criminal to the socially motivated outlaw & promotes myths of the criminal as heroic are described & related to acts of violence that are converted into symbols of heroic social protest. Quotations from the narratives are included. J. Lindroth