Showing papers on "Prison published in 1999"

Collateral Consequences of Imprisonment for Children, Communities, and Prisoners

Abstract: Analyses of the effects of America's experiment with vastly increased use of imprisonment as a penal sanction typically focus on crime reduction and public spending. Little attention has been paid to collateral effects. Imprisonment significantly reduces later employment rates and incomes of exprisoners. In many urban communities, large fractions of young men attain prison records and are thus made less able to contribute to their communities and families. Less is known about the effects of a parent's imprisonment on children's development, though mainstream theories provide grounds for predicting those effects are substantial and deleterious. Until research begins to shed light on these questions, penal policy will continue to be set in ignorance of important ramifications of alternate policy options.

Race to incarcerate

Abstract: In this revised edition of his seminal book on race, class, and the criminal justice system, Marc Mauer, executive director of one of the United States' leading criminal justice reform organizations, offers the most up-to-date look available at three decades of prison expansion in America. Including newly written material on recent developments under the Bush administration and updated statistics, graphs, and charts throughout, the book tells the tragic story of runaway growth in the number of prisons and jails and the overreliance on imprisonment to stem problems of economic and social development. Called "sober and nuanced" by Publishers Weekly, Race to Incarcerate documents the enormous financial and human toll of the "get tough" movement, and argues for more humane--and productive--alternatives.

Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis

Abstract: Consider the following: Over 1.7 million Americans live in prison, a three hundred percent increase since 1980; In some US cities, one third of all young Black men are in jail, on probation or awaiting trial; In California, spending on prisons has eclipsed allocations for higher education; Starbucks, Jansport and Microsoft all use prison labor to package their products; Corrections Corporations of America, the nation's largest private jailer, has been dubbed a 'theme stock for the 90s.' Why is criminal justice so central to American politics? Lockdown America not only documents the horrors and absurdities of militarized policing, prisons, a fortified border, and the federalization of the war on crime, it also explains the political and economic history behind the massive crackdown. Written in accessible and vivid prose, Lockdown America will propel readers toward a deeper understanding of the links between crime and politics in a period of gathering economic crisis.

A theory of life in the round

Abstract: This study addresses ways in which inmates at the only maximum-security prison for women in Neuse City (in the northeastern United States) redefine their social world in order to survive incarceration. An aim of the project is to engage in theory building in order to examine the experiences of a world that is “lived in the round.” A life in the round is a public form of life. It is a lifestyle with an enormous degree of imprecision. Yet, it is this inexactitude that provides an acceptable level of certainty. This way of life sets standards by which one constructs everyday meaning from reality. It is a “takenfor-granted,” “business-as-usual” style of being. Relying on ethnographic research and interviews with 80 women at the prison, the findings revealed that a life in the round was sustaining a “normative” existence.

Interpersonal Violence and Social Order in Prisons

Abstract: The incidence of acts of interpersonal violence in prisons is influenced by the characteristics of inmates but also by aspects of the prison environment and by the continual dynamic interaction between prisoners, prison staff, and the physical and social context within which they are placed. Enhanced physical restrictions can often reduce levels of violence due to restrictions on opportunity but may also sometimes lead to a loss of legitimacy that can escalate violence. Previously understudied aspects of prison social life include routines and staff-prisoner relationships, both of which are central to the maintenance of everyday social order. Prisoner-staff assaults are particularly associated with the potential "friction points" of the prison regime and the prison day, but some officers seem more skilled at handling these friction points in ways that avoid violence. The study of prisoner-prisoner violence presents a paradox, with a frequently described pervasiveness of the rule of force within inmate soc...

Three-Year Reincarceration Outcomes for Amity In-Prison Therapeutic Community and Aftercare in California

Abstract: The study assessed 36-month recidivism outcomes for a prison therapeutic community (TC) program with aftercare using an intent-to-treat design with random assignment. Outcomes for 478 felons at 36 ...

Engendering Resistance: Agency and Power in Women's Prisons

Abstract: Contents: Introduction Agency and power in womena (TM)s prisons: an overview Reading the prison: a review of the literature Re-evaluating difference: the gender of justice, care and power Towards legitimate research methods, or working a /by, on, fora and with women Gender, identity and the prison: punishing their bodies, punishing their selves Voices of agency, voices of resistance: negotiating power relations in prison Conclusion: womena (TM)s imprisonment: conclusions and new directions Appendix References Index.

Doing Research in Prison: Breaking the Silence?

Abstract: This article reflects on some of the tensions experienced in doing prison research. Both qualitative and quantitative `styles of research'—in so far as they can be characterized as discrete styles—...

Prison Suicide and Prisoner Coping

Abstract: An exploration of prison suicide can offer a variety of significant insights. It can help in the development of suicide prevention policy, but may also help in the broader understanding of the nature of prisons. There is an "additional strain" of imprisonment, and identifiable groups of prisoners are especially susceptible to it. There are discontinuities between the literature on adjustment to imprisonment and the literature on suicides in prison. Bringing together the separate literatures on coping, on suicide, and on the prison experience strengthens our appreciation of the distress suffered in prison and some of the reasons for it. The figures show relatively high and increasing rates of prison suicides, particularly among sentenced, and notably, life-sentence prisoners. Our profile of the suicidal prisoner is incomplete and biased. Different types of prison suicide can be identified, and problems of coping with various aspects of imprisonment take on special significance for some of these groups. App...

The Amity Prison TC Evaluation: Reincarceration Outcomes

Abstract: This article is drawn from an ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of the Amity prison therapeutic community (TC) and aftercare program for substance abusers located in San Diego, California. Da...

Understanding Prison Policy and Population Trends

Abstract: American incarceration numbers increased fivefold between 1973 and 1997. Changes in penal policies and practices, not changes in crime rates, are the primary explanation, but there is disagreement about the causes of penal policy changes. Two prevalent explanations are that rising crime rates led to public demand for harsher policies and that politicians used crime policy to exacerbate public fears and win electoral favor. Both have merit but either is too simple. More likely the causes are some combination of crime policy's broad public appeal in an era of fractionated politics, unintended consequences of the war on drugs, and the increased reflexivity of the justice system that, with improved accountability and efficiency, becomes a major source of demand for its penal services.

Parole and Prisoner Reentry in the United States

Abstract: Discretionary parole release and parole field services have undergone major changes as the nation has embraced more punitive policies. Fourteen states have abolished discretionary parole release for all offenders, and twenty-one others severely limit its use. Parole supervision remains, but needed treatment programs are scarce, and parole officers focus on surveillance more than rehabilitation. About half of parolees fail to complete parole successfully, and their returns to prison represent about a third of incoming prisoners. Given an average (median) prison term served of fifteen months, more than half of all inmates now in prison will be in the community in less than two years. Developing programs to reduce parole recidivism should be a top priority, and a few agencies are operating successful job-training and substance abuse programs. Experts argue that a new parole model is sorely needed, one that incorporates advances in technology, risk prediction, effective rehabilitation, and more "active" forms...

Power, politics, and crime

Abstract: Policing the Ghetto Ethnic Cleansing and the War on Drugs The Politics of Moral Panic Creating Fear and Justifying Oppression The Saints and the Roughnecks Trading Textbooks for Prison Cells Corruption and State Organized Crime Myths, Smokescreens and Racial Oppression

The First Edition

Abstract: Until the 1960s, academic criminology was confined by decades of repression in a theoretical and political cage. Obviously, given the repression, one could hardly have expected things to turn out otherwise. Indeed, considering criminology's organic connections with the most coercive political institutions in our country, it is remarkable that a radical criminology materialized at all. The reader is undoubtedly familiar with the political events energizing radical criminology at Berkeley. It appeared in the Sixties when political movements were scourging American institutions; when the endemic causes of gender, racial, and class inequality were being laid bare; when crimes against humanity and violations of constitutional law were being exposed at the highest levels of government; and when popular rage over the carnage produced by the U.S. government in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa had ruptured the political fabric of our country. Nothing written previously in student dissertations or faculty publications at U.C. Berkeley's School of Criminology would have predicted the radical turn taken, under these conditions, to the left. Yet this change could not endure. California officials and university bureaucrats overwhelmed the radicals even though sympathetic faculty and thousands of students in other departments supported them. A law-and-order alliance formed by liberal academics joined the bureaucrats and validated their decision to deny radicals a place at Berkeley.(1) Crime and Social Justice was born under these circumstances. In the spring of 1973, Hi Schwendinger began to talk about the need for a journal devoted to radical criminology. He reached out to people who might join the editorial collective, although obtaining their support could not be taken for granted. While some consented to join without qualification, others, noting that the student-run Berkeley journal, Issues in Criminology, had shifted to the left, felt that a new radical journal would be redundant.(2) Some declined to join because they were over-committed, coping with academic obligations and antiwar activities, prison reforms, legislative reforms, or fighting for racial and gender equality. Yet a working collective was eventually pulled together. Moreover, Julia Schwendinger and Tommie Hannigan used their funding contacts, made in the early 1970s for the Bay Area Women Against Rape, to obtain seed money for the initial editions.(3) When eliciting support for the journal, Hi tried to explain the role that it would play by distinguishing it from academic journals, including Issues in Criminology. The journal, he said, would certainly want to publish theoretical articles that contributed to the advancement of criminology or innovative research articles regardless of the author's ideological standpoint. However, its form and content, in other respects, would be unique. The lavish use of photos, graphics, and poetry would impart a dramatic character that would make it attractive to students and activists and sharply differentiate it from other criminology journals. Moreover, the contents of the journal would, despite a preference for Marxian theory, provide a vehicle for writers with varying left viewpoints and would be directed at a broader audience. The journal would even reprint works that provided historical evidence for a publication on crime and punishment, but written by people with such standpoints outside of the academy. It would provide space for describing and evaluating agencies and reform movements - writings that were not restricted by technocratic standards or controlled by the government. Finally, he believed that the creation of the journal should be regarded as a vehicle for expanding the corps of radical criminologists in the U.S. Although the journal collective was formed during the spring, it did not commence work immediately. The Schwendingers spent the summer visiting criminologists in England, Germany, Austria, and Netherlands. …

Appreciative Inquiry and Relationships in Prison

Abstract: Staff-prisoner relationships are at the heart of the prison system and a stable prison life depends to a large extent on getting these relationships right, particularly in long-term maximum securit...

Health Behind Bars: Utilization and Evaluation of Medical Care among Jail Inmates

Abstract: Jail and prison inmates experience disproportionately high levels of chronic and acute physical health problems, resulting in increased utilization of health services in correctional institutions. Variations in both health status and health care utilization are likely, although several important factors have been under-researched. Gender, in particular, is presumed to influence health outcomes and use of medical care in correctional facilities. The current study explores the physical health status of a systematic sample of 198 male and female inmates incarcerated in a large county jail located in a medium-sized Southern city. Using multiple regression analysis, predictors of physical health status, utilization of medical care, and inmates' evaluations of the accessibility and quality of health care are identified. The results indicate that gender and age are the most consistent demographic predictors of health status and medical care utilization, with females and older inmates reporting higher morbidity and concomitantly higher numbers of medical encounters. The experience of incarceration also appears to influence the physical health of inmates, as self-reported health problems increase with inmates' duration of incarceration. Evaluations of jail medical care differ significantly by gender, with female inmates reporting more difficulty accessing health services, yet higher satisfaction with the quality of services received. The results suggest a need for medical care in correctional settings to adapt to the medical needs of older inmates and women, in addition to improving treatment for chronic conditions and preventive services.

How penal common sense comes to europeans

Abstract: This article analyzes the processes whereby a new ‘penal common sense’ aiming to criminalize poverty and thereby normalize precarious wage labor has incubated in America and is being internationalized, alongside the neoliberal economic ideology which it translates and complements in the realm of ‘justice’. Three operations are distinguished in the transatlantic diffusion of this new doxa on ‘security’: (1) the gestation and dissemination of terms, theses, and measures that converge to penalize social insecurity and its consequences; (2) their borrowing, through a work of adaptation to the national cultural idiom and state tradition, by the officials of the different receiving countries; (3) the ‘academicization’ of the categories of neoliberal understanding by pseudo-social research that serves to legitimize the bolstering of the penal state.Denunciations of ‘urban violence’ and increased surveillance of ‘problem neighborhoods’, curfews and the targeting of petty drug offenders, deregulation and p...

Changing Violent Minds: Discursive Correction and Resistance in the Cognitive Treatment of Violent Offenders in Prison

Abstract: Based upon observation in “Cognitive Self-Change” (CSC) treatment groups in a Vermont prison, this paper examines the dynamics of coercion and resistance in the cognitive social control of violent offenders. The program is mandated for violent offenders to correct the “cognitive distortions” that incite their violence. CSC relies upon particular constructions of criminal minds, responsibility, victimization, and choice that become the heart of rhetorical struggles between program facilitators and the inmates who resist the process of self-examination and change. CSC demonstrates Foucault's (1983) idea that dominant discourses (such as notions rooted in psychology) enact governmental power by encouraging self-reflection and self-regulation among citizens. Psychological paradigms about criminal personalities are imposed on inmates; their resistance to these concepts represents an opposing rhetoric and also demonstrates the subtly coercive context in which CSC takes place. Inmate objections are absorbed into and help sustain the dominant discourse about criminality. Examining the implications of coercion and resistance highlights the repressive potential in language.

Public attitudes toward the treatment of sex offenders

Abstract: Purpose. To investigate public attitudes towards the treatment of sex offenders, and more specifically to investigate attitudes and anticipated behaviour towards a sex offender treatment centre being located in the local community and the acceptance, into the community, of known, convicted, sex offenders who have completed their sentences. Methods. A postal questionnaire sent to a sample (selected randomly from the electoral register) of 500 individuals in a British city, in May/June 1995. Results. Responses were received from 312 members of the original sample (response rate of 65%). Attitudes toward the treatment of sex offenders were often positive, although generally only if this takes place alongside some form of punishment. However, respondents were much less supportive of treatment taking place within their own communities and of accepting known sex offenders back into the community. Conclusions. Respondents tended to endorse the idea of treatment in custodial settings but if treatment is only provided in prison, large numbers of offenders would not be able to receive treatment and the process begun, for some, in prison would not be able to be continued after release. More work is needed to see why some groups (younger respondents and those in the Registrar General's socio-economic groups I and II) are more favourable to treatment in the community, which may then be used to gain the support of a larger section of the community.

What Works in Adult Sex Offender Treatment? A Review of Prison-and Non-Prison-Based Treatment Programs:

Abstract: An evaluation of 21 sex offender prison-and non-prison-based treatment programs was undertaken using the format of the University of Maryland’s 1997 report to the U.S. Congress. Eight of the studies were deemed too low in scientific merit to include in assessing the effectiveness of the treatment. Of the remaining studies, approximately 50% showed statistically significant findings in favor of sex offender treatment programs. Of six studies that showed a positive treatment effect, four incorporated a cognitive-behavioral approach. Non-prison-based sex offender treatment programs were deemed to be effective in curtailing future criminal activity. Prison-based treatment programs were judged to be promising, but the evidence is not strong enough to support a conclusion that such programs are effective. Too few studies focused on particular types of sex offenders to permit any type of conclusions about the effectiveness of programs for different sex offender typologies.

Are Private Prisons More Cost-Effective Than Public Prisons? A Meta-Analysis of Evaluation Research Studies

Abstract: The need to reduce the costs of incarceration to state and federal correctional agencies has allowed the movement to privatize correctional institutions to gain considerable momentum. The empirical evidence regarding whether private prisons are more costeffective than public institutions, however, is inconclusive. To address this question, a meta-analysis was conducted of 33 cost-effectiveness evaluations of private and public prisons from 24 independent studies. The results revealed that private prisons were no more cost-effective than public prisons, and that other institutional characteristics—such as the facility's economy of scale, age, and security level—were the strongest predictors of a prison's daily per diem cost.

HIV transmission in a prison system in an Australian State.

Abstract: OBJECTIVE To investigate possible HIV transmission among prison inmates. SETTING A prison system in an Australian State. PARTICIPANTS 13 ex-prisoners and their prison contacts. METHODS Ex-prisoners who claimed to have been infected with HIV in prison and their prison contacts were interviewed about HIV risk behaviour. Entries in prison and community medical records were used by a three-member expert panel to establish the likelihood of primary HIV infection and its possible timing and location. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Determination of whether HIV infection probably occurred in prison. RESULTS There was a very high probability that at least four of 13 ex-prisoners investigated acquired HIV in prison from shared injection equipment. Another two ex-prisoners most probably acquired HIV infection outside prison. The location of infection for the remaining seven could not be determined. CONCLUSIONS HIV transmission in prison has substantial public health implications as most drug-using prisoners soon return to the community. HIV prevention strategies known to be effective in community settings, such as methadone maintenance treatment and syringe exchange schemes, should be considered for prisoners.

Prison Riots as Microrevolutions: An Extension of State-Centered Theories of Revolution

Abstract: Prisons have long been used as a testing ground for social theory. This article explores the applicability of state‐centered theories of revolution to the phenomena of prison riots. Prison riots are found to have numerous features in common with revolutions, including prior administrative crises, elite (guard) alienation and divisions, and a widespread popular (prisoner) sense of injustice and grievances regarding (prison) administration actions (not just toward imprisonment per se). The state‐centered theory provides a better “fit” to prison riots than current functionalist, rising expectation, or management theories.

Normalisation in an Abnormal World: A Study of Prisoners with an Intellectual Disability

Abstract: The most appropriate means of dealing with offenders with an intellectual disability has become a contentious issue of postdeinstitutionalisation. Proponents of normalisation argue that offenders should be held accountable and responsible for their actions in the same way as nondisabled citizens. Critics argue that such an approach fails to recognise the multiple disadvantages under which most offenders labour. Unfortunately, much of this debate is carried out at the level of rhetoric only because comparatively little is known about the experiences of offenders within the system. This study examines the characteristics and experiences of two groups of offenders with an intellectual disability held in custody: one within the mainstream prison system, the other within a secure facility on the grounds of an institution. Although not without its disadvantages, the secure facility appears better equipped to meet the multiple and complex needs of this grossly disadvantaged group of offenders.

No Safe Haven: Stories of Women in Prison

Abstract: Incarcerated women in the United States are largely an invisible population because of their small numbers, their involvement in less violent and serious offenses, and their neglect by most criminologists. Yet all too often prison has become a dumping ground for women who lack options for self-support, or who need drug treatment, job training, or a haven from battering. This work draws on the life stories of forty women inmates at a minimum security prison in North Carolina. It explores their lives before imprisonment, enabling the reader to understand their incarceration within the context of childhood and adolescent experiences, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, low education levels, and poor work histories. Lori B. Girshick relates the prisoners' views of doing time, the criminal justice system, and their own rehabilitation. She also interviews family members, friends, and social service providers to show how support networks function or fail. Girshick argues convincingly that the treatment of women in society creates circumstances that lead some of them to break the law, and she makes specific recommendations for policies that address the need for social change and for community programs designed to deter crime.

A Comparative Recidivism Analysis of Releasees from Private and Public Prisons

Abstract: This research compared the recidivism rates of groups of releasees from privately and publicly operated prisons. The study consisted of 198 male releasees from two private facilities in Florida who were precision matched with releasees from public prisons. Recidivism over one year was measured in alternative ways. The private prison group had lower rates of recidivism. Those released from private prisons who reoffended committed less serious subsequent offenses than did their public prison counterparts. The two groups were similar in how long it took for rearrest or for the first recidivism event to occur.

Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran

Abstract: The role of torture in recent Iranian politics is the subject of Ervand Abrahamian's important and disturbing book. Although Iran officially banned torture in the early twentieth century, Abrahamian provides documentation of its use under the Shahs and of the widespread utilization of torture and public confession under the Islamic Republican governments. His study is based on an extensive body of material, including Amnesty International reports, prison literature, and victims' accounts that together give the book a chilling immediacy. According to human rights organizations, Iran has been at the forefront of countries using systematic physical torture in recent years, especially for political prisoners. Is the government's goal to ensure social discipline? To obtain information? Neither seem likely, because torture is kept secret and victims are brutalized until something other than information is obtained: a public confession and ideological recantation. For the victim, whose honor, reputation, and self-respect are destroyed, the act is a form of suicide. In Iran a subject's 'voluntary confession' reaches a huge audience via television. The accessibility of television and use of videotape have made such confessions a primary propaganda tool, says Abrahamian, and because torture is hidden from the public, the victim's confession appears to be self-motivated, increasing its value to the authorities. Abrahamian compares Iran's public recantations to campaigns in Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, and the religious inquisitions of early modern Europe, citing the eerie resemblance in format, language, and imagery. Designed to win the hearts and minds of the masses, such public confessions - now enhanced by technology - continue as a means to legitimize those in power and to demonize 'the enemy'.

Reducing Postrelease HIV Risk among Male Prison Inmates A Peer-Led Intervention

Abstract: Male prison inmates within 2 weeks of release were recruited to evaluate a prerelease HIV prevention intervention. A total of 414 inmates were randomly assigned to receive the intervention or to a comparison group. All participants completed a face-to-face survey at baseline; high rates of preincarceration at-risk behavior were reported. Follow-up telephone surveys were completed with 43% of participants; results support the effectiveness of the prerelease intervention. Men who received the intervention were significantly more likely to use a condom the first time they had sex after release from prison and also were less likely to have used drugs, injected drugs, or shared needles in the first 2 weeks after release from prison. Implications for the development, implementation, and evaluation of prison-based HIV prevention programs are discussed.