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.

Prisoners, Prison, and Religion: Religion and Adjustment to Prison.

Abstract: SUMMARY During the twentieth century there has been much speculation by scholars in the United States about the relationship between religion and prisoners. In spite of the fact that both religion and the prison have been subjected to considerable study, we know little about religion in prison, particularly as it relates to the psychological adjustment of offenders to the prison environment and reduction in problematic behaviors such as disciplinary infractions. Applying a survey methodology which incorporates a recently developed scale of religiousness (the first to be developed with the assistance of inmates specifically for use with inmates) and a previously developed scale of inmate adjustment to prison, this study explores the relationship between inmate religiousness and adjustment to prison and the number of disciplinary confinements they receive. A self-report questionnaire was administered to a non-random sample of 769 inmates in 20 prisons from 12 states in order to determine if an inmate's reli...

Predicting the Prison Misconducts of Women Offenders: The Importance of Gender-Responsive Needs

Abstract: The needs of women offenders may be qualitatively different than the needs of male offenders. The “pathways” and “gender-responsive” perspectives of female offending have recently garnered attentio...

You Can't Go Home Again: Women and Criminal Recidivism

Abstract: In the past decade there has been a 132% increase in the number of women being supervised on parole Nearly all of what is known about recidivism comes from research on male offenders which may not accurately nor adequately explain the post-prison experiences of females that lead to re-incarceration This study reports findings from interviews with 38 women who had served multiple prison sentences Findings from these interviews illustrate the role that drug relapse, inadequate employment, and relationships with children and other family members play in the post-prison adjustment of female recidivists The implications of these findings for programs and policy are discussed

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. …