Prison

About: Prison is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25120 publications have been published within this topic receiving 470474 citations. The topic is also known as: jail & gaol.

A Comparison of Programming for Women and Men in U.S. Prisons in the 1980s

Abstract: This article examines programming for women in U.S. prisons in the 1980s, a decade marked by an increased number of incarcerated women and by court pressure to correct biases in programming. Data from a census of facilities and a sample of inmates reveal that regardless of gender, the prison experience does little to overcome marginalization from the workforce and leaves many who have history of drug abuse, or who are parents, untouched by relevant programming. Moreover, gender stereotypes shape the nature of the work and vocational training, and women disproportionately receive psychotropic drugs for mental health treatment.

Is In-Prison Treatment Enough? A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Prison-Based Treatment and Aftercare Services for Substance-Abusing Offenders

Abstract: This study performed a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of the Amity in-prison Therapeutic Community (TC) and Vista aftercare programs for criminal offenders in California. For the average treatment participant, the cost of treatment was $4,112, which led to approximately fifty-one fewer days incarcerated (36% less) than the average individual in the control group. This implies that, for the average offender, treatment reduced recidivism at a cost of $80 per incarceration day. For participants who received both in-prison treatment and aftercare services, an additional day of incarceration was avoided at a cost of $51 per day relative to those that received in-prison treatment only.

The Purposes, Practices, and Problems of Supermax Prisons

Abstract: At least thirty-four American states in the late 1990s operated supermaximum security prisons or units, providing nearly 20,000 beds and accounting for 1.8 percent of the state prison population. Although conditions vary from state to state, many supermaxes subject inmates to nearly complete isolation and deprivation of sensory stimuli. Surprisingly little is known from research on who is sent to supermaxes, why, and for how long; the effects of supermaxes on security and conditions in other prisons; or the effects of supermax confinement on the mental conditions and social skills of inmates. Deleterious effects are likely to be especially acute for mentally ill and subnormal inmates. The recent proliferation of supermaxes appears premised on a belief that prison disorder is the product primarily of disruptive inmates rather than the characteristics of prison regimes; the best evidence suggests otherwise.

Architectures of incarceration: The spatial pains of imprisonment:

Abstract: This article considers the contribution that physical environment makes to the pains of imprisonment. Synthesizing concepts and theories from critical organization studies with those that have informed criminological studies of prison design and the lived experience of imprisonment, the article discusses the ways in which the architecture and aesthetics of penal environments might be better understood with reference to the restricted economies of space found in industrial and bureaucratic organizations. It is argued that a grasp of the limits historically placed on the subjective growth of individual workers (workspaces frequently being characterized as ‘iron cages’ or ‘psychic prisons’) can enhance our understanding of the physical and psychological confinement of those in custody. Moreover, critical organization studies can inform emerging debates about what future prisons should look like and alert us to the potential fallacy in assuming that ‘modern’ equates to ‘better’. While clean, humane and safe e...