Showing papers on "Prison published in 1972"

Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison

Abstract: : Interpersonal dynamics in a prison environment were studied experimentally by designing a functional simulation of a prison in which subjects role-played prisoners and guards for an extended period of time. To assess the power of the social forces on the emergent behavior in this situation, alternative explanations in terms of pre-existing dispositions were eliminated through subject selection. Many of the subjects ceased distinguishing between prison role and their prior self-identities. When this occurred, a sample of normal, healthy American college students fractionated into a group of prison guards who seemed to derive pleasure from insulting, threatening, humiliating, and dehumanizing their peers--those who by chance selection had been assigned to the 'prisoner' role. The typical prisoner syndrome was one of passivity, dependency depression, helplessness, and self- deprecation.

The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka

Abstract: The Nobel Prize-winning African writer, Wole Soyinka, was imprisoned without trial by the federal authorities at the start of the Nigerian Civil War. Here he records his arrest and interrogation, the efforts made to incriminate him, and the searing mental effects of solitary confinement.

Inmate Rights and Prison Reform in Sweden and Denmark

Abstract: Sweden's Osteraker prison outside of Stockholm is a walled, maximum custody facility for 195 prisoners. Confined in Osteraker are men who have committed serious crimes, such as homicide, robbery, and sale of narcotics; recidivists who did not "profit7' from terms in open institutions;1 and men who escaped from open institutions or did not return from home leaves. This prison was the site, in early 1971, of unprecedented bargain-

The English prison officer since 1850: A study in conflict

Abstract: What do you do to start reading the english prison officer since 1850 a study in conflict? Searching the book that you love to read first or find an interesting book that will make you want to read? Everybody has difference with their reason of reading a book. Actuary, reading habit must be from earlier. Many people may be love to read, but not a book. It's not fault. Someone will be bored to open the thick book with small words to read. In more, this is the real condition. So do happen probably with this the english prison officer since 1850 a study in conflict.

The Disruption of Prison Administration: An Investigation of Alternative Theories of the Relationship among Administrators, Reformers, and Involuntary Social Service Clients

Abstract: AUTHOR'S NOTE: Prepared for delivery at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 7-11, 1971. Copyright 1971, the Americas Political Science Association. This research was partially supported through grants from the National Science Foundation and from the Joint Center for Urban Studies of M.I.T. and Harvard University. Although full responsibility for errors is my own, I am indebted to James Q. Wilson and to Lloyd Ohlin for their comments on the manuscript, which is revised and abridged section of a doctoral dissertation titled "Collective Violence in America, 1863-1963" (Harvard University, Department of Government, 1969).

Ch'en Tu-hsiu's Unfinished Autobiography

Abstract: There are two sources of world civilization: one is the study, another is the prison. We the youth must make up our minds to enter the prison once out of the study, and enter the study once out of the prison. Only these provide the most lofty and sublime life. And only those civilizations born in these two places are true civilizations with life and value.

Force versus Restraint in Prison Riots

Abstract: The 1971 tragedy at Attica has prompted a controversy over whether a policy of force or restraint should be used to settle prison riots. Many prison administrators maintain that restraint encourages further resistance. This article analyzes the official policy (restraint or force) adopted at each nationally reported prison riot since the Civil War. According to this historical analysis, a policy of restraint does not encourage further rebel lion, and it is almost without exception more successful than force in preserving human life.

The Prison Welfare Officer--A Case of Role Strain

Abstract: The Probation Service in England and Wales is currently faced with a crisis of identity. All around great changes are taking place with the emergence of unitary local authority social work departments; of a united professional association for social workers; of new strategies which stress participation and client power. Far from taking part in these developments the probation service has found itself increasingly involved with the penal system-more pre-sentence reports to higher courts, responsibility for voluntary after-care and parole supervision,and most tangible of all the provision of a welfare service within prisons themselves. There is evidence of considerable strain within the service which has for a long time teetered along the ideological tightrope between control and 'client-centred therapy'. Voting on the proposals for unification of social workers' associations revealed probation officers almost evenly divided between going in and staying out of the British Association of Social Workers. Some argued that they were 'caseworkers' whose professional identity and capacity to help 'clients' can only be safeguarded by public assertions of unity with other social work specialisms. Others welcomed the growing involvement with the prison system as a way of retaining a measure of independence. A unified penal service, embracing prisons, probation and courts, has been projected either within the Home Office or as part of a Lord Chancellor's Department. The implications of this idea have not been worked out in detail but the prison welfare function can be seen as the beginning of a collaborative process between prison and probation to be administratively consummated as soon as decency permits. It is proposed in this paper to examine the role of the prison welfare officer with particular emphasis on the clash between the competing belief systems of 'casework' and 'custody'. There is a vast and growing literature devoted to role theory. Its attraction for sociologists is that it offers a way of describing individual behaviour which d6es not rely on biological or psychological theories of motivation. No clear consensus exists about a precise definition of role

Prisoners' Rights to Medical Care

Abstract: prisoners' rights, including the right to medical care, is reflected not only in the statutes3 and tort law4 of most states, but also in the recent erosion of the "hands-off" doctrine. In its tersest legal formulation, "the hands-off doctrine represents a denial of jurisdiction over the subject matter of petitions from prisoners alleging some form of mistreatment or contesting some deprivation undergone during imprisonment." 5 This lack of subject matter jurisdiction has no statutory basis but is instead a judge-made limitation. Underlying the doctrine is an assessment that the deprivations prisoners complain of are necessary conditions of imprisonment. A more important basis for the hands-ofE doctrine is a profound reluctance by the courts to interfere with prison administration. Part of this reluctance is the fear that judicial interference would create a flood of litigation and

Integrating correctional and family systems.

Abstract: The Community Reintegration Project is a prison prerelease program that works with incarcerated men and their families to prepare both for reunion. Continuing problems are referred to appropriate Community agencies. Coordinated treatment and planning, in contrast to the traditional mode of treating prisoners as if they existed in a vacuum isolated from Community influences, has proven effective in reducing recidivism.

A Clockwork Orange in a California Prison

Abstract: Alex enjoyed his bit of ultra-violence. Rape, mugging and murder were a way of life until he ended up in prison. Up to this point Stanley Kubrick's movie, "A Clockwork Orange," is almost mundane and perfectly acceptable because violence-saturated audiences have come to accept this type of action as entertainment. But the tale takes a Gothic turn when Alex is told he can be released within two weeks. All he has to do is submit to some government-sponsored experiments that will cure him of his penchant for violence. Psychological and chemical methods of behavior modification were then used to make Alex violently ill at the mere thought of any kind of violence. On release he was not an uncontrollable Frankenstein monster but an over-controlled helpless human at the mercy of every violent element in his society. In other words, he was as queer as a clockwork orange or a three-dollar bill. Fortunately for Alex, if not for his society, the chemicals and the mind conditioning wore off after some severe beatings and a suicide attempt. He was free again. The fictional adventures of Alex were told by Anthony Burgess in 1962. They took place in a London of the near future. This fictional future, however, seems to show some strong resemblances to a set of events that have come to public knowledge recently in California. The California prison system consists of prisons within prisons. The toughest, most violent prisoners are often sent to prison adjustment centers for special attention, but a super adjustment center was set up at the Vacaville prison. Called the Maximum Psychiatric Diagnostic Unit, it is intended for diagnosis, treatment and research on prisoner volunteers from all the adjustment centers. (The California Department of Corrections annual research report for 1970 describes prison research for the U.S. Army on diseases endemic to Vietnam, on a vaccine for the plague and on the toxicity of DDT, organic phosphates and various other chemicals.) In addition to the ongoing research, the California Department of Corrections has made a proposal to seek funding for experimentation involving a complex neurosurgical evaluation and treatment program for the violent inmate. Surgical and diagnostic procedures would be performed to locate centers in the brain that may have been previously damaged and that could serve as the focus for episodes of violent behavior. If these areas were located and it was verified that they were the source of aggressive behavior, neurosurgery would be performed. Last November Edward Opton Jr., senior research psychologist at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif., was asked to sit in on a discussion of the proposal. He learned that the request was for $300,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and for $189,000 from the state of California. He objected when he found that the proposal called for experimentation on prisoners (including a mention of chemical castration of aggressive persons). It was later discovered that in February 1968 three Vacaville prisoners actually did undergo brain surgery to have violent seizures controlled. The results were mixed. "The proposal to continue this work has been shelved for the time being," says Opton, "probably because of the publicity stink that followed the hearings." The revelation of the California proposal and the Vacaville brain surgery may have been shocking, but according to Washington, D.C., psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, "We are actually in the midst of a resurgence of the old lobotomy technique." This particular type of brain surgery started in Portugal in 1936. A researcher discovered that removal of parts of the brain could relieve anxiety. After the operation the patient was described as a buffoon or clown but he was no longer bothered by anxieties or fears. The surgeon who initiated the technique performed only 20 such operations before the Portuguese Government outlawed lobotomies. Six months later the operation was being performed in the United States. Breggin describes these first operations as "swishing an ice pick around behind the eyeballs to destroy portions of the brain's frontal lobe." The father of this type of surgery in America, says Breggin, was Walter Freeman. He performed 4,000 such operations. Finally William Allison White, at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, prohibited Freeman from operating there on the grounds that he was not a surgeon and that the operation was a mutilation. Breggin says that Freeman then began preaching his technique at various state mental institutions and probably stimulated 20,000 more lobotomies in those institutions. "Follow-up on these patients," says Breggin, "showed that they were not helped at all. All were severely brain damaged, there was a high mortality rate and chronic brain disease." After perhaps 50,000 lobotomies in the United States, and 15,000 in England, the fad died down in the 1950's, probably because of developments in electroshock and drug therapy. Now there may be a resurgence, and Breggin has been working for eight months to document it. In a paper titled "The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery" Breggin describes (with 98 entries in his bibliography) the state of the art in the United States and abroad. The current estimate is 400 to 600 cases per year in America and, "every psychosurgeon

Formal Bargaining in the Prison:In Search of A New Organizational Model

Abstract: In the last few years it has become somewhat unfashionable to be associated with the problems of prison organization. The zealous optimism of those earlier generations which drew up plans for model prisons would be hard to find today. In addition to the increased awareness of the complex organizational issues involved there is a widespread unease about incarcertaion in both mental health and criminal justice systems. Reflected in this unease is a growing dismay concerning post-discharge behaviour combined with a concern about the impact of the experience of incarceration upon the individual's self-definition and upon his role in society. Goffman'sAsylums, 1 appearing in 1961, found an immediate reception. The book became part of a trend, especially in the United States, that led to a view of the criminal justice and social welfare apparatus not as a counter to deviance but as part of the problem, if not its very basis. Of greater practical significance in current challenges to the legitimacy of imprisonment is imprisonment's very high cost. The success of the California probation subsidy scheme in reducing committal rates and closing penal institutions has depended on considerable political support for the savings in State expenditure that the scheme has produced. Despite these developments it would appear that the prison will remain a significant part of the social control apparatus of most countries for many years to come. While acknowledging the importance of finding alternatives to imprisonment, it is also essential that the task of developing more appropriate organizational models is not neglected. Prison organizations have been remarkably inflexible in developing structures suited to the resolution of conflict and to the goal of inmate betterment. It is the argument of this paper that the traditional model, the Caste-Prescriptive Prison, is in need of radical change. Its structure has not been much affected by the arrival of the treatment ideology, and the role position of the inmate has remained that of the passive and subordinate recipient. Attempts to develop an alternative model, based upon milieu therapy, will be reviewed, some suggestive leads will be pursued, and finally the outline of a model, based upon formal bargaining, will be presented.

Keepers of Men Need Keepers of Books

Abstract: Libraries do not receive much stress in correction textbooks, and librarians are not ordinarily scheduled as speakers at correctional conferences or published in correctional journals. For these reasons and because good library services are not generally available in state prison libraries across the nation, administrators may not be aware of the advantages a good library and librarian can offer.A survey of the fifty state institutional library consultants concerning adult correctional institution libraries resulted in forty-two replies representing 223 major libraries and 202 camp libraries.As of the winter of 1970, librarians holding masters' degrees or bachelors' degrees plus school certification served full- or part-time in fifty-eight libraries in twenty-nine states. There were 955,154 volumes in the libraries in the reporting states; however, many of the books were described as old, outdated, or unsuitable. To meet minimum standards, there should have been 1,422,580 books of quality.The lack of qual...

Nursing behind bars.

Abstract: Until recently, prisons have been largely forgotten places. With the advent of prison riots, inmate demonstrations, and inmate hostageholding, however, more and more people are becoming aware of the problems in our penal institutions. My first awareness of prisons and their problems occurred when I was an undergraduate student at Boston University School of Nursing. A professor of mine had been working with a group of inmates at the Norfolk County Jail in Dedham, Massachusetts. I accompanied her several

Program of Psychotherapy for Inmates at the Montana State Prison

Abstract: A program of psychotherapy provided by the Department of Psychology to inmates at the Montana State Prison is described. Graduate students are used as therapists in group and individual therapy sessions. About 25% of the prison population of 250 men is serviced by 2 graduate students who visit the institution twice a week and by 3 faculty consultants who participate in the program approximately once a month. Success of the program as measured by inmates' attendance at the voluntary meetings and by the perceived attitude change of the correctional officers toward the therapists indicates that the program is having a positive effect on the institution.