Showing papers on "Prison published in 1969"

Arson: the criminal and the crime

Abstract: Arson is often a manifestation of mental abnormality. Such cases, where the offence is committed without financial motive, have been interpreted as the result of unconscious sexual conflicts, or as obsessive compulsive or passive-aggressive behaviour. Perhaps because the use of fire to destroy makes the crime specific in law, or because firesetters may be more attracted by fire than by its damage, psychological ex planations have concentrated on linking the criminal with the crime and differentiating arsonists from other offenders. Although " pyro mania " as a diagnosis is obsolete, " firebug " is still a popular word. In this paper we attempt a psychiatric, sociological and psycho logical assessment of fifty male arsonists who were diagnosed as psychiatrically abnormal either at trial or in prison, and referred to Grendon Psychiatric Prison for investigation and treatment. Grendon receives cases from all the prisons in England and Wales. Most admissions are in the diagnostic categories of psychoneurosis and personality disorder. The small number of receptions who are psychotic, mentally subnormal or psychopathic within the meaning of the Mental Health Act 1959 are transferred to National Health Service hospitals. Our sample, therefore, is a diagnostically limited group. This study arose from the observation that many arsonists behave in the Grendon milieu as " model prisoners," superficially polite, undemanding and co-operative, in contrast with many of their more obtrusive fellow-inmates. We proceeded to examine our sample descriptively and comparatively, to test the hypothesis that non profit incendiary fire-setters have specific behavioural and social characteristics.

Capital Punishment in Texas, 1924-1968

Abstract: This is a preliminary report of a study of the 483 persons sent to the death house in Huntsville, Texas, since the electric chair was installed in 1924. Background data for each case were obtained from prison records; reports of appealed cases pub lished in the Texas Criminal Reports; case histories in the files of the Boa.rd of Pardons and Paroles; newspaper accounts in the Houston Post and Houston Chronicle; and interviews with men in the death house, their keepers, the prison officials, and the sheriffs and district attorneys who were instrumental in sending them to the chair.

Parental deprivation and attempted suicide in prison populations.

Abstract: Three gaol populations were studied. 1. Short-term male prisoners. From a total gaol population of about 1,200. a random selection of 247 prisoners was examined. These prisoners were vartoustv charged or convicted of offences mostly against property and against the currency; a small number came into the category of offences agalnst the person. Twenty-nine (12%) of these prisoners gave a history of an attempt at suicide. 2. Long-term male prisoners. Virtually the total population of a second gaol was examined; the prisoners consisted of persons variously convicted of offences against property. currency, and a few against the person. The majority were recidivists and were serving long-term sentences. Two hundred and seventy-three prisoners were examined; 31 (12%) gave a history of an attempt at suicide. Each male prisoner who gave a history of an attempt at suicide was randomly matched with five prisoners with DO such history. The matching was with respect to age, sex, marital status, social isolation (whether the prisoner habitually lived alone or not before imprisonment) and socio-economic status (as advised by the Bureau of Census and Statistics, Canberra). The group who attempted suicide consisted of 56 male prisoners; 60% were aged under 30 years; 21%, 30 to 39 years; 11% between 40 and 49 years; and 8% were aged over 50 years. Sixty per cent were single, 32% were married, 8% were divorced or separated, and none were widowed. Thirty per cent of the group were socially isolated. The socio-economic status was as follows: 1% belonged to the professional or technical class; 3%, administrative or managerial: 3%, clerical or office workers; 66%, labourers or craftsmen; 18%, service or recreational workers; and 9% were unemployed or students. (Four prisoners who attempted suicide were rejected because it was impossible to match them adequately

How I changed my mind

Abstract: Tom Porter, talking to me about the substance of what you might want to hear, mentioned a series of articles in The Christian Century , by prominent theologians, called “How I Changed My Mind.” I remember especially Karl Barth's three contributions to the series, over a period of thirty years. Ed Gaffney, years ago, introduced me to Barth—and did it with a perfect reference: to the prison sermons Barth gave when he turned, at least a little bit, from being a theologian and returned to being a pastor. Barth said the jail was his favorite pulpit. “There are but few theology professors,” he said, “whose sermon listener one can become only after having committed a serious violation of the civil order.” My own changes of mind are not unique. I am one of a small group of law teachers who have, over the last thirty years, become clearer in formulating an Hebraic legal ethic. We are a minority who have become bolder. We owe such courage as we have located for that to modern pioneers, most notably Harold Berman, and, more lately, Emily Hartigan. What has changed most for us has been the clarity of our public witness; the substance all along has been old-time religion. When I say “clarity” I mean that we have come to see this substance in our work, more than we did in, say, 1970.

Corrections and the Violent Offender

Abstract: Improper attention is given to the diagnosis and classification of offenders sent to prison. An effort should be made to distinguish violent from nonviolent persons sen tenced to prison in order better to provide a more appropriate treatment setting for each. Past and current management of correctional institutions is based primarily on the image, behavior, and potential risk of the violent offender, much to the detriment of the nonviolent inmates who numerically pre dominate in prison.

Psychiatry's New Role in Corrections

Abstract: The traditional role of the psychiatrist in correctional institutions has been limited to diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. The authors describe an experimental program at Clinton Prison which, under psychiatric direction, is directed toward rehabilitating the persistent offender, training correctional personnel, and doing research into the causes and treatment of criminal behavior.

We are the products of our experiences: the role higher education plays in prison

Abstract: As of 2012, an estimated 2.2 million people were incarcerated in jails and prisons in the United States. Prisoners are disproportionately likely to come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, to be members of racial/ethnic minority groups, to have held a low-skill, low-paying job (if any at all) at the time of arrest, and to be less educated than their counterparts in the general population. Data suggest that better educated prisoners are less likely to relapse into criminal behavior after release from prison. Education leads to jobs and trades which help people step away from crime. This paper reflects on life and prison experiences for some prisoners that led to shifts in perceptions of the role of higher education in prison. This article draws on the importance of higher education in prisons, but also adds a new dimension by drawing on the benefits of inside-out college courses in prison that include university students, requires the same course work, and provides college credit for both sets of students. This article seeks to demonstrate that experience and education are the most effective tools for change. If penal policy is left as it stands, there will be no change for the overwhelming majority of men and women who are eventually returning to prison communities. In this article [the authors] address how their experiences shaped their understanding of the 'fast life', their prison and educational experiences, as well as those of former and current prisoners, the glaring connections between education and recidivism, and possible solutions for penal education policies.

Newcastle Miners and the Master and Servants Act, 1830-1862

Abstract: One of the problems facing the labour historian working on mid nineteenth-century NewT South Wales is the difficulty of assessing the impact of the Master and Servants Act on the labouring classes.1 The terms of the Act are well known but it is clear that they were not uniformly administered in the various parts of the State. It is also apparent that there was considerable difficulty in the interpretation of the Act and frequent amendments were made to try to make it more effective. In the Newcastle district, in particular, coal miners had come to believe, by 1860, that they were not bound by the Act and it was not until August 1862 that the New South Wales Supreme Court decided that they were. To elucidate these developments it will be necessary to trace the application of the Master and Servants Act in the Newcastle district during the two previous decades. As court records have not survived and newspaper reporting of Newcastle Police Court cases was haphazard before 1861 it is necessary to rely upon the records of the Newcastle and Maitland Gaols for this period.2 Unfortunately, the gaol records only provide information about miners who were sentenced to prison for offences under the Act: they do not provide information about unsuccessful prosecutions nor do they provide the details of prosecutions which resulted in penalties other than gaol terms. These are serious omissions but they do not destroy the significance of the evidence as to gaol sentences. Though the Australian Agricultural (henceworth A.A.) Company introduced a small party of free coal miners in 1826 and continued to bring colliers to the colony after 1830, it was not until January 1846 that a free miner was committed to Newcastle Gaol for any offence.3 John Lindsay had been found guilty of using abusive language to his superior, Mr. Alexander Brown of the A.A. Company, and was sen tenced to fourteen days' gaol under section two of the Master and Servants Act of 1845, i.e., 'that if any servant shall ... be guilty of disobedience or of any . . . misconduct or misdemeanour . . .' he may be committed to gaol for up to three months. This appears to have been the only occasion on which a free miner received a gaol sentence for such an offence and no other free miner was to enter the gaol for a further eighteen months.

Nepal: Compromise and Liberalization

Abstract: On the evening of October 30, 1968, Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, leader of the Nepali Congress and Prime Minister of the first elected government in Nepal (1959-1960), and his close associate, Ganesh Man Singh, were released from prison after nearly eight years in detention. On the following day King Mahendra granted pardon to 23 leading Nepali Congress exiles living in India, including Subarna Shamsher, Deputy Prime Minister in the Nepali Congress government and head of the party in exile. As the news was received in towns and villages, festive oil lamps were lit, and the Nepali press breathed a sigh of relief that the deadlock over Nepal's most knotty political problem had at long last been resolved. The deadlock had its inception on December 15, 1960. On that day the uncomfortable alliance between King Mahendra and Koirala's popularly elected government was abruptly terminated when the King, backed by the army, imprisoned Koirala and other party leaders. He abrogated the parliamentary constitution and substituted for it "Panchayat Democracy," a system which gave him absolute power and direct control over the instruments of government. While the King steadfastly refused to release Koirala until he agreed to support the Panchayat system, Koirala just as resolutely refused to do so. The stalemate sapped national morale and split the loyalties of the small but important educated segment of Nepal's population, that politically motivated elite which generates the leadership for most aspects of Nepali life and is the key to Nepal's development. Among the factors contributing to a resolution of the stalemate, the most important were the King's heart attack in March, the effects of long-term confinement on Koirala's health, the deteriorating morale and fading prospects of the exiles, and the inability of the government to rally the people behind its development program. On March 15, while on tour in the southwest corner of the country, King Mahendra suffered a heart attack from which he spent the next seven months recuperating. In Kathmandu it was widely rumored that the King had suffered permanent disability. However, he flew to London in November for a complete medical checkup, and after doctors had pronounced him fully recovered he returned to Kathmandu to resume his duties. Nevertheless, it was during the period of the King's illness that the elements which were needed to effect a solution of the deadlock fell into place. The temporary leadership vacuum appears to have intensified efforts to find a solution. During Koirala's imprisonment there were periodic rumors that the throat cancer for which he had undergone an operation during the 1940s had be.

Outcasts and Conformers in a Girls' Prison

Abstract: EVERY social group has its deviants, some of whom exceed acceptable boundaries in their behavior and are cast out. Juvenile delinquents are deviants in general society, and some of them become outcasts when they are incarcerated in a prison (euphemistically called a training school).Some inmates in the prison become deviants by violating rules that the rest of the inmates follow. The most extreme deviants are transformed into prison outcasts by being further segregated in a jail within the prison. The "Adjustment Cottage" was the name of the jail within the prison at the Illinois State Training School for Girls in Geneva, Ill. It was operated with maximum security; each girl was confined almost all the time to her own cell. Meals were served in the cell. Since each cell contained a washbasin and toilet, the girls only had to be let out for a biweekly shower, and

Prison Life in Eighteenth Century Peking

Abstract: Fang Pao (1668-1749), a well known Chinese scholar and official, because of involvement in an allegedly subversive piece of writing produced by a fellow scholar, spent a year (171213) in the prison of the highest Chinese judicial organ, the Board of Punishments, in Peking. His Yzz-chung tsa-chi (Notes on Prison Life) is a short but very graphic account of the prison conditions he experienced. It was first published only in 1851 and is an exceedingly rare document of its sort in the history of Chinese literature. The present article provides additional information concerning the prison of the Board of Punishments during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, translates Fang's Notes, and discusses its reliability and significance.

A research project in teaching in a women's prison.

Abstract: The purpose of this project was to discover new goals and techniques for teaching commercial subjects to women inmates at the House of Detention for Women in New York City. Formerly, this program had been judged a failure, since almost none of the inmates went on to secretarial work after release. With long histories of recidivism, these women were generally out of touch with themselves and with reality; their behavior was evasive and manipulative both in and out of prison. A typewriter, however, cannot be manipulated; typing cannot be faked. The confrontation with the inflexible reality produced by the black symbol can thus be used by a well-trained teacher to impart new insights, encourage firmer reality orientation, and strengthen selfconcepts. The redirection must be from emphasis on the acquisition of technical skill to the understanding of behavior and the therapeutic value of autonomous achievement.

Introducing the New School of Convict Criminology

Abstract: That's the reality, and to hell with what the class-room bred, degree toting, grant-hustling "experts" say from their well-funded, air-conditioned offices far removed from the grubby realities of the prisoner's lives (Rideau and Wikberg, 1992: 59). Introduction THE UNITED STATES IMPRISONS MORE PEOPLE THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE Western world. Meanwhile, prison research is dominated by government funding and conducted by academics or consultants, many of them former employees of the law enforcement establishment (ex-police, correctional, probation, or parole officers), who subscribe to conservative ideologies and have little empathy for prisoners. Much of this "managerial research" routinely disregards the harm perpetrated by criminal justice processing of individuals arrested, charged, and convicted of crimes (Clear, 1994; Cullen, 1995). If legislators, practitioners, researchers, and scholars are serious about addressing the corrections crisis (e.g., Clear, 1994; Welch, 1996, 1999; Austin and Irwin, 2001), we need to be more honest and creative with respect to the research we conduct and the policies we advocate, implement, and evaluate. To promote this objective, this essay introduces what we are calling "Convict Criminology," and reviews the theoretical and historical grounding, current initiatives, and dominant themes of this emerging school and social movement. Theoretical and Historical Grounding To appreciate the context of Convict Criminology, we need to understand the steps taken to arrive at this juncture. Four interrelated movements, factors, and methodologies led to the birth of Convict Criminology: theoretical developments in criminology, the failure of prisons, the authenticity of insider perspectives, and the centrality of ethnography. Theoretical Developments in Criminology: The history of criminological theory consists of a series of reform movements (Vold and Bernard, 1996). As early as the 1920s, biologically based arguments of criminal causation were being replaced by environmental, socioeconomic, and behavioral explanations. Even in the field of radical and critical criminology, there have been a series of divisions (Lynch, 1996; Ross, 1998). Since the 1970s, critical criminology has splintered into complementary perspectives including feminism (e.g., Chesney-Lind, 1991; Daly, 1994; Owen, 1998), postmodernism (e.g., Arrigo, 1998a, 1998b: 109-127; Ferrell, 1998), left realism (e.g., Young and Matthews, 1992), peacemaking (e.g., Pepinsky and Quinney, 1991; Quinney, 1998), and cultural criminology (e.g., Ferrell and Sanders, 1995; Ferrell, 1996). This multiplicity of perspectives suggests that radical/critical criminology has broadened its intellectual endeavor. Although these diverse discourses and "metanarratives...open up some new co nceptual and political space" (Ferrell, 1998: 64), they, too, often remain the intellectual products of the well meaning yet privileged, with only minimal reference and relevance to the victims of the criminal justice machine. Perhaps in the new millennium criminologists and other social scientists may realize that convict voices, in many instances, have been forgotten, marginalized, or simply ignored (see Gaucher, 1998: 2-16). The Failure of Prisons: Many prominent criminologists have discussed the failure of prisons to correct criminal behavior. The differential effects of incarceration are well known. According to Sutherland et al. (1992: 524), "some prisoners apparently become 'reformed' or 'rehabilitated,' while others become 'confirmed' or 'hardened' criminals. For still others, prison life has no discernible effect on subsequent criminality or noncriminality." Johnson (1996: xi) suggested that, "prisoners serve hard time, as they are meant to, but typically learn little of value during their stint behind bars. They adapt to prison in immature and often destructive ways. As a result, they leave prison no better, and sometimes considerably worse, than when they went in. …

The Lessons of Norman House

Abstract: Norman House in London is the prototype of the halfway house movement, which works for the resettle ment of homeless offenders. Norman House originated in its founder's visits to a prison where he realized that homelessness was frequently a consequence of repeated imprisonment, and recidivism itself a disqualification for social help on discharge. What the inadequate recidivist was asking for was support and direction so that he could be a useful citizen. What he received, in fact, was advice and admonition and a couple of nights in a common lodginghouse, which amounted to a return ticket to prison. Norman House was started in 1954 as a small family home for twelve adult recidivists who wanted something better than the advice to go straight and the lodg inghouse where they were expected to start the journey. Nor man House was designed as a family home where the isolated offender could feel that he belonged. "Going straight" then began to have purpose because it was related to people who cared for him. Wha...