Showing papers on "Prison published in 1968"

Programmed instruction for institutionalized offenders: contingency management and performance contracts.

Abstract: Contractual agreements and contingency management procedures were used in an attempt to increase the productivity of 16 prison inmates studying programmed educational materials. Programmed instruct...

Patterns of management and adaptations to organizational roles. A study of prison inmates.

Abstract: A common finding in organizational research is that individuals supervised with "participative" management practices tend to have better relations with superiors and closer relations with peers than do individuals under "bureaucratic" supervision. As an explanation it is proposed that the way subordinates are involved in decisions affecting them influences their attitudes toward themselves in relation to their organizational roles and that these attitudes, or "adaptations," in turn affect subordinates' behavior toward superiors and peers. These hypotheses are investigated in a study of prison inmates' adaptations and relations with staff and fellow inmates. As anticipated, adaptations are systematically related to exposure to bureaucratic or participative management, and, in addition, adaptations account for much of the association between management parctices and inmates' relations with others. In addition, viewing organizations in terms of structures of decision making suggests that the effects of manag...

Chromosomes of Male Patients in a Security Prison

Abstract: A chromosomal survey of 204 male inmates from a security prison for the psychiatric treatment of offenders revealed five individuals of abnormal karyotype. Both XYY subjects were homosexual with schizoid personalities. Arson was part of the offence or previous convictions of both XYY and one XXY subject.

Civil Commitment for Addicts: The California Program

Abstract: The California civil commitment program for addicts has achieved a modest degree of success On parole, one out of three outpatients remains in good standing at the end of one year and one out of six at the end of three years The value of even this degree of success is tempered by the problems posed by repeated incarceration and the fact that the program has been largely an alternative to jail or prison

The Forensic Examination of Paints and Pigments

Abstract: The recent Parliamentary debates on the abolition of the death penalty lend an added interest to this fascinating little volume of eighteen essays published for the Howard League for Penal Reform. Eminent people from different walks of life give their reasons for opposing the return of capital punishment. These include a psychiatrist, psychologists, a magistrate, three professors and a prison doctor.

The Mentally Retarded in Penal and Correctional Institutions

Abstract: Rapidly expanding interest in the many facets of mental retardation has not, until recently, included the varied problems posed by mentally retarded offenders. The authors report on the results of a nationwide survey to determine the extent of retardation in prison populations, the criminal offenses committed by retardates, and the problems encountered by those responsible for dealing with the incarcerated retardate. An intensive case study also revealed significant data regarding crimino-legal issues and problems.

Social structure, identification and change in a treatment-oriented institution.

Abstract: IN recent years, sociologists have focused a good deal of attention on what Goffman (1961) has called the "total institution," and especially on correctional institutions. As these studies have accumulated, our knowledge of the complexity of such institutions and their related sub-systems has increased. Earlier studies, such as those of Clemmer (1958), McCorkle and Korn (1958) and Sykes (1958), described what came to be known as the "solidary opposition" model of inmate culture, with inmates aligned almost as one body against the formal organization and its goals. Newcomers to the inmate world were soon socialized into this inmate culture, and the process of "prisonization" was thought to increase with length of incarceration. Wheeler's (1961) study, however, indicated that inmate values tended to follow a U-shaped pattern, being most conventional at the beginning and end of one's sentence. He suggested that those nearing the end of their sentence were experiencing anticipatory socialization which would prepare them for life in the outside world. Garabedian (1963) noted a similar pattern in his study, but also noted that not all prisoners' values changed in the same manner. The type of role one adopted during his incarceration determined in part the extent and point of greatest impact of the prison culture on his initial values. The relatively simple "solidary opposition" model of inmate culture has now been replaced by a more complex model which finds inmate organization dependent in large part upon the location of the institution's primary goals along a custodial-trainingtreatment continuum. This development owes much to the work of Vinter and Janowitz (1959), Grusky (1959), Street (1965) and Berk (1966), and has culminated in a volume by Street, Vinter and Perrow (1967) which reports the results of these and related studies which examine the effect of organizational goals not only on inmate culture, but also on staff-inmate relations, staff-staff relations, staff-parent organization relations, and institution-local community relations. All of the aforementioned studies have dealt with institutions serving males. Until recent years, comparatively few sociological studies have been made of institutions for females. The work of Heffernan (1964), Ward and Kassebaum (1965) and Giallombardo (1966), however, serves to close this gap. Studying three different institutions serving adult females, they all find pseudofamily and homosexual ties to be an important aspect of inmate social organization, although Heffernan especially notes two other major adaptations to prison life, relating prison roles to criminal career prior to incarceration. Kosofsky and Ellis (1958) and Konopka (1966), among others, note similar patterns in institutions serving adolescent females. The particular appeal of the correctional institution for the sociologist, of course, is not only that it is a society-in-miniature, whose structure and functioning he may describe, but also that it is what Vinter (1963) has called a "people-changing organization." Such organizations, he points out, "are usually concerned with effecting new and diffuse modes of behavior, new self-images or personalities" in the people who come to it. This they attempt to do by deliberately structuring staff-client relations in a manner * The authors wish to express their thanks to the Department of Sociology, Purdue University for providing travel funds and other expenses incidental to this research.

Problems in Parole Prediction: A Historical Analysis

Abstract: A review of past efforts to predict parole outcome indicates that, although there have been some recent improvements in the methodology, there has been no appreciable increase in predictive power. Two related reasons for this are evident. First, the prevalent use of prison files as a data source limits the kind of research question which can be asked. Second, the non-theoretical nature of this research has prevented a systematic accumulation of knowledge relative to this problem. The success of future efforts depends on whether parole prediction research conforms to the basic requirements of scientific investigation which include utilizing theoretical guidelines and selecting variables on the basis of their theoretical relevance instead of on their availability in prison files.

Reducing Discrepancies in Professional and Custodial Perspectives

Abstract: Conflict between custodial and professional treatment person nel has been a persistent problem in correctional institutions. It has been suggested that a possible solution of this problem lies in reducing the discrepant views of custodians and professionals by providing some overlap in their respective roles. The question investigated in the present study was whether such overlap would reduce this discrepancy. Prison custodial officers who volunteered to counsel inmate groups were found to have attitudes toward inmates significantly more congruent with those of professionals than those of custodians who were not counselors; in addition, they were slightly more positive toward treatment personnel. The results suggest that overlap in custodial and treatment roles may be a viable device for more congruent perspectives and expectations among those carrying out these roles.

Attitudes toward Law Enforcement in Greece and the United States

Abstract: Attitudes toward law, legal institutions, and law enforcement authorities may indicate a level of criminality. Such attitudes are the internalized residues of critical experiences fed back into the arena of behavior. A pioneer study found that attitudes toward law varied in expected directions with criminal and noncriminal samples in the United States and that a very definite and discernible gradient existed when the attitude inventories of maximum-security prisoners, probationers, labor-union members, and Mormons were compared. Does a similar gradient exist among criterion groups in other countries, based on their as sessed attitudes toward law, law enforcement, and legal institu tions ? After the American research schedule was pretested in Greece, it was administered to a sample of two hundred prison ers, two hundred laborers, and two hundred police officers (known to be the most law-abiding of Greek groups). A gradient was also discernible among the three Greek samples in the expected direction: the pr...

X Chromosome Errors in Female Criminals

Abstract: To the Editor:— Since W. M. Court Brown 1 first raised the broad question of whether individuals with abnormal sex-chromosome complements "could be held in law to suffer from diminished responsibility," much attention, both lay ( New York Times , April 21, 1968) and scientific, 2 has been accorded the legal status of criminal XXY and XYY males. We are not aware that the same question has been asked with explicit reference to criminal females; we would like to ask it and to demonstrate its relevance. In Pennsylvania correctional institutions for women, we have recently performed buccal smears on 117 juvenile delinquents, confined largely for chronic truancy, and 133 adults incarcerated for more serious offenses including murder, larceny, and burglary. Only one abnormality was found; among the adults, a 22-year-old woman held as an incorrigible, guilty of defiant behavior and prison breach, repeatedly gave buccal smears containing nuclei displaying two, and occasionally

Collective Behavior in Total Institutions: The Case of the Mental Hospital and the Prison

Abstract: The analyses of incidents of collective behavior or collective disturbances in the mental hospital and the prison have yielded apparently contradictory and inconclusive findings. The conceptual framework employed by Turner and Killian for analysis of collective behavior in civil society is applied to the reported cases of collective disturbances in mental hospitals and to the prison riots discussed by McCleery, Schrag, Hartung and Floch, and Sykes. The argument is made that a consideration of the complex inter-relationship between the division of labor, channels of communication, and the normative and cultural systems of the mental hospital and the prison provides a useful framework for systematizing and organizing prior research findings. Similarly, it is argued that these concepts have more than heuristic value, and if systematically explored in future investigations could lead to a profitable theory of collective behavior as it occurs within the walls of total institutions.

Brief Criminal Attitude Scale

Abstract: Dr. Taylor is Head of the Student Counselling Service at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and a part-time psychotherapist to an institution for delinquent girls. He is a former university lecturer in psychology, prison psychologist, and probation officer who has authored many papers on various aspects of clinical and criminal psychology. In the research paper presented here, Dr. Taylor gives the results of a brief criminal attitude scale. It consists of a number of items that criminals were heard to express, and it was administered to various administratively classified groups of convicted offenders. The scale was also given to noncriminal groups in which reasonable precautions were taken to ensure that they were in fact noncriminal in behaviour as well as in law.

Book Reviews : Women's Prison—Sex and Social Structure, David A. Ward and Gene G. Kassebaum. Pp. 269. Chicago, Aldine, 1965. $7.50. The Love Seekers, Beverly Byrne. Pp. 155. Westminster, Md., Newman Press, 1967. $4.95:

Abstract: neophyte social worker, correctional worker, and parole or probation worker-valuable because it would enable him to put aside his profitless conjectures about homosexuality in women’s prisons and direct his mind to some much more serious questions. What other serious questions? One would be the incidence of psychosis among inmates of women’s prisons. Dr. Emasue Snow, a psychiatrist working out of the House of Detention for Women in New York City, found that the incidence of overt psychosis on initial interview, in an unse-

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the Dominican Crisis

Abstract: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was present in the Dominican Republic continuously from June 1, 1965, to July 7, 1966. During this period the Commission worked diligently and effectively to protect basic human rights which were being threatened and abused daily. The Commission had visited the Dominican Republic twice in the past for short periods of several days. During these visits, which occurred at times of relative tranquillity, it received claims from private citizens concerning human rights violations, reported its observations, and made recommendations to the government. The Commission's role in 1965–1966 was of a different nature. It was called upon by two rival governments to come to a country in the midst of a civil strife in which human rights were being violated on a massive scale. In these circumstances the Commission proved willing to act vigorously to defend these rights. It succeeded in improving prison conditions for political prisoners, played a key role in securing the release of many detainees who had been held without charge, assisted persecuted individuals in finding asylum, tried to locate missing persons, and worked to bring the perpetrators of crimes against human rights to justice. Although by means of interpretation and practice the Commission had to some extent laid the groundwork for the role it was to assume in the Dominican Republic, its performance as an “action body” operating in an American state continuously for more than one year was unprecedented.

A Prisoner Looks at Writ-Writing

Abstract: I WAS BORN IN CALIFORNIA forty-four years ago of Danish parents who emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century to escape the poverty of Europe. The poverty and strong old-country orientation of my youth fostered many conflicts with the revolutionary ideas of America as it plunged into the twentieth century. I allowed my resentments to play out in an antisocial manner. A long police record is all that I gained from my behavior. I was first committed to the custody of the California Department of Corrections in 1953 for second degree burglary. Paroled in 1957, I was returned to jail 75 days later for robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery. While imprisoned I studied law in the prison law library and read every case and textbook I was able to lay my hands on. I used every conceivable remedy to attack my judgments of conviction and tried to redress other infringements of my rights which have occurred since being jailed. Although a number of published and unpublished decisions have been rendered by the courts in disposing of actions I filed, the important question-the validity of my imprisonment-has never been satisfactorily settled.