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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.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: To review the literature on mental health and psychiatric morbidity in prison populations and relate findings to a Danish study on remand prisoners, a review of existing studies is reviewed.
Abstract: Objective: To review the literature on mental health and psychiatric morbidity in prison populations and relate findings to a Danish study on remand prisoners. Method: The literature is reviewed and subdivided in the following section: validity of psychometrics in prison populations, prevalence of psychiatric disorders prior to imprisonment, incidence of psychiatric disorders during imprisonment, psychopathy related to psychiatric comorbidity, dependence syndromes with special emphasis on different administrations of heroin use (smoke vs. injection). The results are compared with a longitudinal Danish study on remand prisoners in either solitary confinement (SC) or non-SC. Results: Many factors must be taken into consideration when dealing with prisoners and mental health, e.g. international differences, the prison setting, demographics and methodological issues. The prison populations in general are increasing worldwide. Psychometrics may perform differently in prison populations compared with general populations with the General Health Questionnaire-28 having a low validity in remand prisoners. Psychiatric morbidity including schizophrenia is higher and perhaps increasing in prison populations compared with general populations with dependence syndromes being the most frequent disorders. The early phase of imprisonment is a vulnerable period with a moderately high incidence of adjustment disorders and twice the incidence in SC compared with non-SC. Prevalence of psychopathy is lower in European than North American prisons. Medium to high scores of psychopathy is related to higher psychiatric comorbidity. Opioid dependence is the most frequent drug disorder with subjects using injection representing a more dysfunctional group than subjects using smoke administration. Many mentally ill prisoners remain undetected and undertreated. Conclusion: There is a growing population of mentally ill prisoners being insufficiently detected and treated.

170 citations

Book
01 Jan 2001

169 citations

Book
20 Nov 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, the author explores the meanings of women's imprisonment and, in particular, the wider meanings of the'moment' of women in prison, using interviews with sheriffs, policemen, and social workers, as well as observation in the prisons, the courts and the lodging-houses.
Abstract: First published in 1983, Women’s Imprisonment explores the meanings of women’s imprisonment and, in particular, the wider meanings of the ‘moment’ of prison. Based on officially sponsored research in Cornton Vale, Scotland’s only women’s prison, the book makes extensive use of interviews with sheriffs, policemen, and social workers, as well as observation in the prisons, the courts, and the lodging-houses. The author quotes from interviews with women recidivist prisoners, the judges who send them to prison, and the agencies which assist them in between their periods of imprisonment. In doing so, questions are raised about the meanings of imprisonment and the penal disciplining of women at the time of original publication. The book also examines the changing and various meanings of imprisonment in general and the invisible nature of the social control of women in particular.

169 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The role of discretion in the distribution of privileges in prison, the results of an exploratory observational research project recently completed in a maximum security prison and the implications of the findings to date for penology are explored in this paper.
Abstract: This article considers the relevance of the policing literature to the work of prison officers. It explores the role of discretion in the distribution of privileges in prison, the results of an exploratory observational research project recently completed in a maximum security prison and the implications of the findings to date for penology. `Policing' in its broadest sense is a term meaning `the whole craft of governing a social order', as Reiner observes in his Oxford Handbook of Criminology review of the policing literature. This craft, of governing a social order, is a key problem of the prison. The policing literature—with its emphasis on `law in action', peacekeeping, the need for community consent and the observed social practices of `low visibility' police officers, offers some useful sensitizing tools to apply to the less researched practices of prison officers. Many relevant issues arise: the use of informal rules, the deployment of authority rather than the rules, the significance of `talk', an...

169 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Pelican Bay project is not, as it appears at first sight, a super high-tech version of the Panopticon, but instead it operates as a factory of exclusion for people habituated to their status as "the excluded".
Abstract: In this paper the author extends his account of fostmodernity and its discontents' to address questions of crime and penal policy in the contemporary period. It is argued that there is a tendency to maintain order by resort to a 'paradigm of exclusion 'and this pattern is exemplified by a discussion of the significance of the Pelican Bay 'super-max' prison in California and the more widespread reliance upon mass incarceration that has emerged in recent years. It is argued that the Pelican Bay project is not, as it appears at first sight, a super high-tech version of the Panopticon. On the contrary, the project is shown to lack the key qualities of work-related discipline and re-subjectification that characterized the latter. Instead it operates as a factory of exclusion for people habituated to their status as 'the excluded'. It is a technique of immobilization, one of several measures of 'space-confinement' that have arisen in response to the postmodern social field and the wasteful, rejecting logic of globalization. The role of prisons in the post-correctional age is shown to be linked to the new forms of anxiety that characterize the populations of postmodern societies, and to the political strategies that express and reinforce these widespread sentiments. Whereas modern liberal societies were organized around a compromise wherein a measure of individual liberty was exchanged for collective economic security, today's tendency is the opposite of this: a trade off of collective security in exchange for the maximization of individual choice, which in turn, focused by the political process upon the problem of crime and its control gives rise to a logic of exclusion and fortification. This feature of postmodemity is, in effect, symptomatic of a failure to face up to the challenge of existential insecurity generated by our sodal and economic arrangements.

169 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20242
20231,347
20222,993
20211,071
20201,271
20191,247