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.

Punishment in Disguise: Penal Governance and Federal Imprisonment of Women in Canada

Abstract: In .Punishment in Disguise., Kelly Hannah-Moffat presents a look at some current forms of penal governance in Canadian federal women's prisons. Hannah-Moffat uses women's imprisonment to theorize the complexity of penal power and to show how the meaning and content of women's penal governance changes over time, how penal reform strategies intersect and evolve into complex patterns of governing, how governing is always gendered and racialized, and how expert, non-expert, and hybrid forms of power and knowledge inform penal strategies. The author posits that although there has been a series of distinct phases in the imprisonment of women, the prison system itself, given its primary functions of custody and punishment, is consistent in thwarting attempts at progressive reform. While each distinct phase has its own corresponding ideology and discourse, the individual discourses have internal complexities and contradictions, which have not been adequately recognized in the general literature on penology. Avoiding universal and reductionist claims about women's oppression, Hannah-Moffat argues that relations of power are complex and fractured and that there is a need to explore the specific elements of institutional power relations. Backed by solid research, .Punishment in Disguise. makes a strong contribution to criminology and feminist theory by providing an alternative approach to analysing the governance of women by other women and by the state.

Violent geographies : fear, terror, and political violence

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Bare Life, Political Violence and the Territorial Structure of Britain and Ireland 3. 'An Unrecognizable Condition Has Arrived': Law, Violence and the State of Exception in Turkey 4. Cosmopolitanism's Collateral Damage: The State-Organzied Racial Violence of World War I and the War on Terror 5. Refuge or Refusal: The Geography of Exclusion 6. Imperialism Imposed and Invited: The "War on Terror" Comes To Southeast Asia 7. 'Spaces of Terror and Fear on Colombia's Pacific Coast: The Armed Conflict and Forced Displacement Among Black Communities 8. Fatal Transactions, Conflict Diamonds and the (Anti)Terrorist Consumer 9. The Geography of Hindu Right-Wing Violence in India 10. Revolutionary Islam: A Geography Of Modern Terror 11. Vanishing Points: Law, Violence and Exception in the Global War Prison 12. Groom Lake and the Imperial Production of Nowhere 13. Targeting the Inner Landscape 14. Immaculate Warfare? The Spatial Politics of Extreme Violence 15. 'The Pentagon's Imperial Cartography: Tabloid Realism and the War on Terror 16. Demodernizing By Design: Everyday Infrastructure and Political Violence 17. The Terror City Hypothesis 18. Banal Terrorism: Spatial Fetishism and Everyday Insecurity 19. Situated Ignorance and State Terrorism: Silences, W.M.D., Collective Amnesia and the Manufacture of Fear

Gender Differences in Criminal Sentencing: Do Effects Vary Across Violent, Property, and Drug Offenses?*

Abstract: Objective. Many studies find that females benefit from their gender in sentencing decisions. Few researchers, however, address whether the gender-sentencing association might be stronger for some crimes, such as minor nonviolent offending, and weaker for other offenses, such as serious violent crime. Method. Using a large random sample of convicted offenders in Texas drawn from a statewide project on sentencing practices mandated by the 73rd Texas Legislature, logistic regression and OLS regression analyses of likelihood of imprisonment and prison length illustrate the importance of looking at sentencing outcomes not only in terms of gender but also in terms of crime type. Results. Specifically, we find that the effect of gender on sentencing does vary by crime type, but not in a consistent or predicted fashion. For both property and drug offending, females are less likely to be sentenced to prison and also receive shorter sentences if they are sentenced to prison. For violent offending, however, females are no less likely than males to receive prison time, but for those who do, females receive substantially shorter sentences than males. Conclusions. We conclude that such variation in the gender-sentencing association across crime type is largely due to features of Texas’ legal code that channel the level of discretion available to judges depending on crime type and whether incarceration likelihood or sentence length is examined. The sentencing of criminals has been the subject of repeated exploratory inquiry by social scientists, particularly sociologists. Since the work of Nagel and Weitzman (1971) and Pope (1975), who found that women appear to receive preferential treatment in sentencing over males, efforts to explain this disparity have centered around two theories: chivalry and the more recent focal concerns. As our literature review highlights, efforts to decipher how the sentencing process may benefit females are, at times, inconsistent. We view our study as additional fuel to the sentencing dialogue and, in par

"It's Been Hard to Be a Father": A Qualitative Exploration of Incarcerated Fatherhood

Abstract: This study investigated the experiences of incarcerated fathers, their perceptions of fatherhood, and the nature of their involvement with their children. Fifty-one incarcerated fathers confined at two minimum security correctional facilities were interviewed approximately one month prior to their release from prison. A qualitative content analysis revealed detailed description pertaining to participants’ feelings of helplessness and the difficulties of being a “good father” while in prison. Incarceration represented a dormant period for men in terms of fatherhood, and reentry signified an opportunity to “start over” with their children. Finally, father involvement was profoundly constrained during incarceration, and men were entirely dependent on nonincarcerated mothers or caregivers for contact with children. Many fathers perceived mothers’ gatekeeping, or efforts to prevent contact, as evidence of their powerlessness. Recommendations for future research and intervention are discussed.

Interventions to reduce HIV transmission related to injecting drug use in prison Elements of a comprehensive programme to prevent HIV transmission in prisons

Abstract: The high prevalence of HIV infection and drug dependence among prisoners, combined with the sharing of injecting drug equipment, make prisons a high-risk environment for the transmission of HIV. Ultimately, this contributes to HIV epidemics in the communities to which prisoners return on their release. We reviewed the effectiveness of interventions to reduce injecting drug use risk behaviours and, consequently, HIV transmission in prisons. Many studies reported high levels of injecting drug use in prisons, and HIV transmission has been documented. There is increasing evidence of what prison systems can do to prevent HIV transmission related to injecting drug use. In particular, needle and syringe programmes and opioid substitution therapies have proven effective at reducing HIV risk behaviours in a wide range of prison environments, without resulting in negative consequences for the health of prison staff or prisoners. The introduction of these programmes in countries with an existing or emergent epidemic of HIV infection among injecting drug users is therefore warranted, as part of comprehensive programmes to address HIV in prisons.