Showing papers on "Prison published in 2012"

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Abstract: In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. The economic changes and growing popular dissent of the 18th century made necessary a more systematic control over the individual members of society, and this in effect meant a change from punishment, which chastised the body, to reform, which touched the soul. Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole. He also reveals that between school, factories, barracks and hospitals all share a common organization, in which it is possible to control the use of an individual's time and space hour by hour.

Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children

Abstract: An estimated 809,800 prisoners of the 1,518,535 held in the nation’s prisons at midyear 2007 were parents of minor children, or children under age 18. Parents held in the nation’s prisons—52% of state inmates and 63% of federal inmates—reported having an estimated 1,706,600 minor children, accounting for 2.3% of the U.S. resident population under age 18. Unless otherwise specified in this report, the word parent refers to state and federal prisoners who reported having minor children. The word children refers to youth under age 18.

Public Health and the Epidemic of Incarceration

Abstract: An unprecedented number of Americans have been incarcerated in the past generation. In addition, arrests are concentrated in low-income, predominantly nonwhite communities where people are more likely to be medically underserved. As a result, rates of physical and mental illnesses are far higher among prison and jail inmates than among the general public. We review the health profiles of the incarcerated; health care in correctional facilities; and incarceration's repercussions for public health in the communities to which inmates return upon release. The review concludes with recommendations that public health and medical practitioners capitalize on the public health opportunities provided by correctional settings to reach medically underserved communities, while simultaneously advocating for fundamental system change to reduce unnecessary incarceration.

Return to drug use and overdose after release from prison: a qualitative study of risk and protective factors

Abstract: Former inmates are at high risk for death from drug overdose, especially in the immediate post-release period. The purpose of the study is to understand the drug use experiences, perceptions of overdose risk, and experiences with overdose among former prisoners. This qualitative study included former prison inmates (N = 29) who were recruited within two months after their release. Interviewers conducted in-person, semi-structured interviews which explored participants' experiences and perceptions. Transcripts were analyzed utilizing a team-based method of inductive analysis. The following themes emerged: 1) Relapse to drugs and alcohol occurred in a context of poor social support, medical co-morbidity and inadequate economic resources; 2) former inmates experienced ubiquitous exposure to drugs in their living environments; 3) intentional overdose was considered "a way out" given situational stressors, and accidental overdose was perceived as related to decreased tolerance; and 4) protective factors included structured drug treatment programs, spirituality/religion, community-based resources (including self-help groups), and family. Former inmates return to environments that strongly trigger relapse to drug use and put them at risk for overdose. Interventions to prevent overdose after release from prison may benefit from including structured treatment with gradual transition to the community, enhanced protective factors, and reductions of environmental triggers to use drugs.

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation

Abstract: Introduction 2 The Problem of Male Violence against Black Women 3 How We Won the Mainstream but Lost the Movement 4 Black Women, Male Violence, and the Buildup of a Prison Nation 5 The Matrix: A Black Feminist Response to Male Violence and the State 6 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

Autoethnography and Emotion as Intellectual Resources: Doing Prison Research Differently

Abstract: In contrast to many other social sciences, criminology has largely resisted the notion that qualitative inquiry has autoethnographic dimensions and remained quiet on the subject of the emotional investment required of ethnographic fieldworkers studying stigmatized and/or vulnerable “others” in settings where differential indices of power, authority, vulnerability, and despair are felt more keenly than most. Emotion appears in criminology in discussions about public sentiments, populist punitiveness, and the emotional motivations behind offending but rarely features as a lens through which one might better understand the process of doing research. This article examines the state of the field, discusses the work of a small minority of ethnographers who acknowledge the emotional content of prison studies, and tells the story of a personal research encounter that changed the author’s methodological and theoretical orientation. It argues that a more frank acknowledgment of the convergence of subject-object rol...

Men Behind Bars: Sexual Exploitation in Prison

Abstract: 1 Introduction.- 1 Introduction.- I Institutional and Cultural Patterns.- 2 Nature of Prison Exploitation.- 3 Prison Setting and Sexual Scene.- 4 Behavior, Sexual Orientation, and Ethnicity.- II The Jockers, Punks, and Sissies.- 5 Male Sexual Relationships.- 6 The Punks in Prison.- 7 Behavior and Attitudes of the Homosexuals.- 8 Types of Homosexuals in Prison.- III Reactions to Sex in Prison.- 9 Inmate Attitudes Toward Homosexuality.- 10 Staff Attitudes Toward Homosexuality.- 11 Prison Policy, Programs, and Change.- Notes.- Appendix A: Questionnaires.- Appendix B: Tables.

Aging in Correctional Custody: Setting a Policy Agenda for Older Prisoner Health Care

Abstract: An exponential rise in the number of older prisoners is creating new and costly challenges for the criminal justice system, state economies, and communities to which older former prisoners return. We convened a meeting of 29 national experts in correctional health care, academic medicine, nursing, and civil rights to identify knowledge gaps and to propose a policy agenda to improve the care of older prisoners. The group identified 9 priority areas to be addressed: definition of the older prisoner, correctional staff training, definition of functional impairment in prison, recognition and assessment of dementia, recognition of the special needs of older women prisoners, geriatric housing units, issues for older adults upon release, medical early release, and prison-based palliative medicine programs.

Gender-Responsive Lessons Learned and Policy Implications for Women in Prison A Review

Abstract: The authors review evidence of gender-responsive factors for women in prisons. Some gender-responsive needs function as risk factors in prison settings and contribute to women’s maladjustment to prison; guided by these findings, the authors outline ways in which prison management, staff members, and programming can better serve female prisoners by being more gender informed. The authors suggest that prisons provide treatment and programming services aimed at reducing women’s criminogenic need factors, use gendered assessments to place women into appropriate interventions and to appropriately plan for women’s successful reentry into the community, and train staff members to be gender responsive.

Medication-assisted treatment in criminal justice agencies affiliated with the criminal justice-drug abuse treatment studies (CJ-DATS): availability, barriers, and intentions.

Abstract: Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is underutilized in the treatment of drug-dependent, criminal justice populations. This study surveyed criminal justice agencies affiliated with the Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJ-DATS) to assess use of MAT and factors influencing use of MAT. A convenience sample (N = 50) of criminal justice agency respondents (e.g., jails, prisons, parole/probation, and drug courts) completed a survey on MAT practices and attitudes. Pregnant women and individuals experiencing withdrawal were most likely to receive MAT for opiate dependence in jail or prison, whereas those reentering the community from jail or prison were the least likely to receive MAT. Factors influencing use of MAT included criminal justice preferences for drug-free treatment, limited knowledge of the benefits of MAT, security concerns, regulations prohibiting use of MAT for certain agencies, and lack of qualified medical staff. Differences across agency type in the factors influencing use and perceptions of MAT were also examined. MAT use is largely limited to detoxification and maintenance of pregnant women in criminal justice settings. Use of MAT during the community reentry period is minimal. Addressing inadequate knowledge and negative attitudes about MAT may increase its adoption, but better linkages to community pharmacotherapy during the reentry period might overcome other issues, including security, liability, staffing, and regulatory concerns. The CJ-DATS collaborative MAT implementation study to address inadequate knowledge, attitudes, and linkage will be described.

Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies

Abstract: Detention and confinement-of both combatants and large groups of civilians-have become fixtures of asymmetric wars over the course of the last century. Counterinsurgency theoreticians and practitioners explain this dizzying rise of detention camps, internment centers, and enclavisation by arguing that such actions "protect" populations. In this book, Laleh Khalili counters these arguments, telling the story of how this proliferation of concentration camps, strategic hamlets, "security walls," and offshore prisons has come to be. Time in the Shadows investigates the two major liberal counterinsurgencies of our day: Israeli occupation of Palestine and the U.S. War on Terror. In rich detail, the book investigates Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, CIA black sites, the Khiam Prison, and Gaza, among others, and links them to a history of colonial counterinsurgencies from the Boer War and the U.S. Indian wars, to Vietnam, the British small wars in Malaya, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus, and the French pacification of Indochina and Algeria. Khalili deftly demonstrates that whatever the form of incarceration-visible or invisible, offshore or inland, containing combatants or civilians-liberal states have consistently acted illiberally in their counterinsurgency confinements. As our tactics of war have shifted beyond slaughter to elaborate systems of detention, liberal states have warmed to the pursuit of asymmetric wars. Ultimately, Khalili confirms that as tactics of counterinsurgency have been rendered more "humane," they have also increasingly encouraged policymakers to willingly choose to wage wars.

Prison Inmates at Midyear 2007

Abstract: On June 30, 2007, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction over 1,595,034 prisoners. Of these, 87.5% were under state jurisdiction and 12.5% were under federal jurisdiction (table 1).1 More than 95% of prisoners under state and federal jurisdiction were sentenced to more than 1 year. At midyear 2007, the imprisonment rate of persons sentenced to more than 1 year was 509 per 100,000 U.S. residents. Jurisdiction refers to the legal authority over a prisoner regardless of where a prisoner is held. Imprisonment rate refers to the number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons per 100,000 U.S. residents.

Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers

Abstract: This article is part of a UCLA Law Review symposium, “Overpoliced and Underprotected: Women, Race, and Criminalization.” It analyzes how the U.S. prison and foster care systems work together to punish black mothers in a way that helps to preserve race, gender, and class inequalities in a neoliberal age. The intersection of these systems is only one example of many forms of overpolicing that overlap and converge in the lives of poor women of color. I examine the statistical overlap between the prison and foster care populations, the simultaneous explosion of both systems in recent decades, the injuries that each system inflicts on black communities, and the way in which their intersection in the lives of black mothers helps to make social inequities seem natural. I hope to elucidate how state mechanisms of surveillance and punishment function jointly to penalize the most marginalized women in our society while blaming them for their own disadvantaged positions.

When Prisoners Take Over the Prison A Social Psychology of Resistance

Abstract: There is a general tendency for social psychologists to focus on processes of oppression rather than resistance This is exemplified and entrenched by the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) Consequently, researchers and commentators have come to see domination, tyranny, and abuse as natural or inevitable in the world at large Challenging this view, research suggests that where members of low-status groups are bound together by a sense of shared social identity, this can be the basis for effective leadership and organization that allows them to counteract stress, secure support, challenge authority, and promote social change in even the most extreme of situations This view is supported by a review of experimental research—notably the SPE and the BBC Prison Study—and case studies of rebellion against carceral regimes in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Nazi Germany This evidence is used to develop a social identity model of resistance dynamics

Addressing the Aging Crisis in U.S. Criminal Justice Health Care

Abstract: The U.S. criminal justice population is aging at a significantly more rapid rate than the overall U.S. population, with the population of older adults in prison having more than tripled since 1990. This increase is at the root of a prison healthcare crisis that is spilling into communities and public healthcare systems because nearly 95% of prisoners are eventually released. The graying prison population is also straining state and local budgets. In prison, older prisoners cost approximately three times as much as younger prisoners to incarcerate, largely because of healthcare costs. In the community, older former prisoners present the least risk of recidivism yet are vulnerable to serious and costly social and medical challenges such as housing instability, poor employability, multiple chronic health conditions, and health-related mortality; however older current and former prisoners are largely ignored in the current geriatrics evidence base. Knowledge about the health, functional, and cognitive status of older prisoners is limited, with even less known about risk factors for long-term poor health outcomes during and after incarceration. This article provides an overview of aging in the criminal justice system. It then describes how geriatric models of care could be adapted to address the mounting older prisoner healthcare crisis and identifies areas where additional research is needed to explore prison-specific models of care for older adults.

Assessing the impact of imprisonment on recidivism

Abstract: There is debate about the extent to which imprisonment deters reoffending. Further, while there is a large literature on the effects of imprisonment, methodologically sound and rigorous studies are the exception due to problematic sample characteristics and study designs. This paper assesses the effect of imprisonment on reoffending relative to a prison diversion program, Community Control, for over 79,000 felons sentenced to state prison and 65,000 offenders sentenced to Community Control between 1994 and 2002 in Florida. The effect of imprisonment on recidivism is examined within one-, two-, and three-year follow-up periods using Logistic Regression, Precision Matching, and Propensity Score Matching. Findings indicate that imprisonment exerts a criminogenic effect and that this substantive conclusion holds across all three methods. The main contribution of this study is that various methods yield results that are at least in a similar direction and support overall conclusions of prior literature that imprisonment has a criminogenic effect on reoffending compared to non-incarcerative sanctions. Limitations and directions for future research are noted.

Keeping kids in schools: restorative justice, punitive discipline, and the school to prison pipeline

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Although the use of restorative justice in schools is hardly new globally, the emergence of school-based restorative justice in the United States as an educational practice to address the far-reaching negative impacts of punitive discipline policies is a more recent phenomenon. School-based restorative justice programs in the United States have grown exponentially in the last five years. Within the school context, restorative justice is broadly defined as an approach to discipline that engages all parties in a balanced practice that brings together all people impacted by an issue or behavior.1 It allows students, teachers, families, schools, and communities to resolve conflict, promote academic achievement, and address school safety. Restorative justice practice in schools is often seen as building on existing relationships and complementary with other non-discipline practices, such as peer mediation or youth courts. To understand the powerful impact of school-based restorative justice practice, one must consider the far-reaching negative impacts of zero tolerance and other punitive discipline measures.2 It has been consistently documented that punitive school discipline policies not only deprive students of educational opportunities, but fail to make schools safer places.' The presence of zero tolerance and punitive discipline policies within schools also have negative effects on the offending student, by increasing the likelihood of future disciplinary problems, and ultimately increasing contact with the juvenile justice system.4 For example, in its 2010 report, Test, Punish & Push Out: How "Zero Tolerance" and High Stakes Testing Funnel Youth Into the School-Prison-Pipeline, The Advancement Project documented that punitive discipline policies have led to a tripling of the national prison population from 1987 to 2007. 5 Additionally, in many school districts across the United States, children are more likely to be arrested at school than they were a generation ago,6 and the number of students suspended from school each year has nearly doubled from 1.7 million in 1974 to 3.1 million in 2000.7 In 2006, one in every fourteen students was suspended at least once during the academic year.8 In the same year, according to the Legal Defense Fund, African- American students representing only 17.1 percent of public school students "accounted for 37.4 percent of total suspensions and 37.9 percent of total expulsions nationwide."9 Between the 2002-2003 and 2007-2008 school years, the number of suspensions in New York City schools more than doubled, rising from 31,880 to 72,518, respectively.10 More than one in five (22%) of the students suspended during the 2007-2008 school year in New York City had a superintendent's suspension.11 The first documented use of restorative justice in schools began in the early 1990s with initiatives in Australia.'2 Since this time, school based restorative justice programs have been studied most extensively internationally,13 but more scholars have begun preliminary analysis of United States based programs.14 School-based restorative justice practice is a whole-school approach focused on inclusion in the school community, rather than exclusion, to address issues of student discipline,15 student performance,16 school safety,17 student dropout,18 and the school to prison pipeline19 without a disproportionate reliance on suspensions and expulsions. As restorative justice models have evolved within schools, it is clear they contribute to the aims of education by emphasizing accountability, restitution, and restoration of a community. Similar to restorative justice programs in general,20 school-based restorative justice practices use varying models of conferences, mediations, and circles to repair the relationships between students, teachers, administrators, and the school community.21 Thus, the primary function of restorative practice is to reintegrate the student into the school community, rather than removing the student and increasing the potential for separation, resentment, and recidivism. …

Prison gangs, norms, and organizations

Abstract: Much of the order that exists in the inmate social system is not the result of government action. How do prisoners create order? Inmates use a combination of norms and organizations to provide governance privately. Norms rely on decentralized information transmission and enforcement mechanisms. Organizations, on the other hand, have well-defined memberships and create explicit information transmission and enforcement mechanisms. Inmates cannot rely on norms for governance when the inmate population is large, increasingly crowded, and when fewer inmates arrive with a prior prison commitment. When norms fail, inmates create organizations to protect themselves and provide governance. Once these groups have the power to deter predators, they prey on others. Contemporary and historical evidence from California correctional facilities provide support for these claims and suggest an explanation of the origin and growth of prison gangs.

Children of the American Prison Generation: Student and School Spillover Effects of Incarcerating Mothers

Abstract: Formal equality and judicial neutrality can lead to substantive inequality for women and children, with social costs that extend beyond individuals and families and spill over into the larger social settings in which they are located. We consider the uniquely damaging effects of an “equality with a vengeance” (Chesney-Lind & Pollack 1995) that resulted from “tough on crime” policies and the 1980s federal and state sentencing guidelines that led to the incarceration of more women and mothers. We argue that legal equality norms of the kind embedded in the enforcement of sentencing guidelines can mask and punish differences in gendered role expectations. Paradoxically, although fathers are incarcerated in much greater numbers than are mothers, the effect threshold is lower and the scale of effect on educational outcomes tends to be greater for maternal incarceration. We demonstrate both student- and school-level effects of maternal incarceration: the damaging effects not only affect the children of imprisoned mothers but also spill over to children of nonincarcerated mothers in schools with elevated levels of maternal incarceration. We find a 15 percent reduction in college graduation rates in schools where as few as 10 percent of other students' mothers are incarcerated. The effects for imprisoned fathers are also notable, especially at the school level. Schools with higher father incarceration rates (25 percent) have college graduation rates as much as 50 percent lower than those of other schools. The effects of imprisoned mothers are particularly notable at the student level (i.e., with few children of imprisoned mothers graduating from college), while maternal imprisonment effects are found at both student and school levels across the three measured outcomes. We demonstrate these effects in a large, nationally representative longitudinal study of American children from the 1990s prison generation who were tracked into early adulthood.

Trying to be Something You Are Not Masculine Performances within a Prison Setting

Abstract: Prisons are social communities where people commonly conform to normative institutional and cultural values and ideologies. Conforming as a man in prison may involve performing or projecting prison...

Dual Loyalty in Prison Health Care

Abstract: Despite the dissemination of principles of medical ethics in prisons, formulated and advocated by numerous international organizations, health care professionals in prisons all over the world continue to infringe these principles because of perceived or real dual loyalty to patients and prison authorities. Health care professionals and nonmedical prison staff need greater awareness of and training in medical ethics and prisoner human rights. All parties should accept integration of prison health services with public health services. Health care workers in prison should act exclusively as caregivers, and medical tasks required by the prosecution, court, or security system should be carried out by medical professionals not involved in the care of prisoners.

The rise of the penal state in Latin America

Abstract: The recent work of Loic Wacquant identified the emergence of the penal state as a core feature of the global expansion of neoliberalism and the neoliberal government urban marginality. Drawing on Wacquant’s theoretical and conceptual reflections, this article analyses the emergence of a Latin American form of penal statecraft. By taking an in-depth look at the increasing criminalization of urban marginality in contemporary Latin America as well as the related developments in the local prison system, the single most important institutional expression of the Latin American penal state, important commonalities and differences between the penal statecraft experiments throughout Latin America and the countries of the ‘developed world’ are highlighted.

Book Review: Queer (In)Justice: Mapping New Gay (Scholarly) Agendas

Abstract: The book Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, by Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, & Kay Whitlock (Beacon Press 2011), surveys involvement of sexual minorities in all phases of the what the authors term the “criminal legal system.” It examines the treatment of LGBTQ people as criminal defendants, victims, and prisoners. Queer (In)Justice moves beyond the typical focus of gay rights activists and scholars in the criminal law area to address the everyday treatment of LGBTQ people by police, prosecutors, courts, and corrections authorities. Relying heavily on prison abolitionist movement thinking, the book calls into question reliance on criminal punishment as a means of combating violence against LGBTQ people. Although largely anecdotal, and sometimes over-heated in its rhetoric, Queer (In)Justice succeeds in constructing a compelling narrative and mapping out largely uncharted territory. This Review provides an overview and critique of Queer (In)Justice, situating the book within current legal scholarship. The Review then suggests topics for further research in this developing area, taking account of recent developments in the LGBTQ rights movement.

Prevalence of mental disorders in a prison population in Durban, South Africa.

Abstract: Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of serious mental disorders in a prison population in Durban, South Africa, one of the largest prisons in the Southern hemisphere. Method: 193 prisoners were interviewed using the Mini Neuro-psychiatric Interview, a screening questionnaire and a demographic questionnaire. Results: The study demonstrated that 55.4% of prisoners had an Axis 1 disorder. The commonest disorder being substance and alcohol use disorders ( 42.0%). 23.3% of prisoners were diagnosed with current psychotic, bipolar, depressive and anxiety disorders. 46.1% were diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. The majority of prisoners diagnosed as having an Axis 1 disorder in this study, were neither diagnosed nor treated in prison. Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of mental disorders among prisoners in a prison population in Durban, South Africa. The majority of these prisoners are untreated in prison, related to non detection of the mental disorder. Greater mental health awareness and provision of mental health services focusing on staff training programmes to detect mental illnesses are needed and further research is recommended throughout South Africa. Keywords: Prevalence; Mental disorders; Prison population; South Africa