Series:

New Perspectives on the History of the South

2 total works

Cover of Hard Labor and Hard Time

"There are few, if any, state-level prison histories that are as impressively researched. This is an authoritative account that contributes a great deal to our understanding of the politics and practice of modern punishment."--Joseph F. Spillane, University of Florida

"Miller's extraordinary research into the history of Florida's prisons illustrates the fundamental disjuncture between a rural southern penal system that grew from chain gangs, turpentine camps, and a Jim Crow penal farm and the carceral needs of a modernizing urban sunbelt state. Yet, as her book demonstrates, the unsavory history of punishment still hangs over the Sunshine State like a dark cloud."--Alex Lichtenstein, author of Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South

Hard Labor and Hard Time is a history of continuity and change in Florida's state prison system between 1910 and 1957, exploring conditions at the state prison farm at Raiford (the third largest prison farm in the South at this time) as well as in the chain gangs and road prisons.
Vivien Miller examines the experiences of the prisoners as well as the guards and other prison personnel in this comprehensive, groundbreaking study. She demonstrates that despite progressive changes in the treatment of inmates (better diet, better structuring of work and leisure activities, better medical provision, and the like), these improvements were matched by continued brutality and mistreatment, unequal or discriminatory treatment according to race and/or gender, and neglect.

Cover of Crime, Sexual Violence and Clemency
From 1889 to 1918, more than 11,000 persons were convicted and sentenced to the hard labour camps of Florida's piney woods region. Vivien Miller presents the first intensive examination of the workings of Florida's pardon board and penal system during this period, often called the Progressive Era. Where most previous works on southern crime and criminal justice have focused on the arrest, trial and sentencing stages, Miller instead follows cultural prejudices through the workings of the penal system and pardon board. She explains how such notions as ""respectability"" and ""proper"" behaviour were interpreted, selectively applied, and finally considered to be of paramount importance in evaluating clemency appeals. By comparing letters, petitions and endorsements from prisoners and their supporters, Miller demonstrates that Florida's criminal law and its prosecution often functioned as an ideological instrument reinforcing white middle-class male dominance and restricting black and lower-class freedom. She also explores the effects of gender, race and class on offenders after conviction and sentencing. This book should be an important source of information for scholars interested in the workings of criminal justice during the era, as well as for anyone interested in the history that lies behind current debates on crime and punishment.