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.

Crack and the Political Economy of Social Suffering

Abstract: A comparison of cocaine, crack and heroin epidemics documented through participant-observation methods in the United States and Canada reveals dramatically distinct patterns of abuse across differentially vulnerable population groups. Political economic and cultural forces, rather than pharmacology shape the trajectory of drug epidemics. The de facto apartheid of the U.S. inner city and its associated prison industrial complex spawned the massive epidemic of crack smoking in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A contradictory Canadian public policy of police repression combined with centralized, paternalistic social services explains that country's particularly destructive intravenous cocaine epidemic, particularly among its aboriginal and francophone urbanized populations. The United States suffers from the iatrogenic consequences of its failed war on drugs. Heroin and cocaine have never been purer or cheaper despite the massive investment of U.S. public resources in repression at great humanitarian cost.

Drug use and initiation in prison: results from a national prison survey in England and Wales.

Abstract: Aims To investigate heroin and cocaine use in a sample of British prisoners, and to explore the characteristics of inmates who use these drugs for the first time while in prison. Design, participants A cross-sectional survey of all prisons in England and Wales conducted as part of a major national study of psychiatric morbidity. A total of 3142 prisoners (88.2% of those selected) completed a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. Measurements Interview measures of personal demographics, social history, psychiatric morbidity and drug use. Personality disorders were diagnosed via the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-II) and neurotic symptoms were assessed using the revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R). Findings More than 60% of the heroin users and cannabis users reported that they had used these drugs in prison compared with less than a quarter of the life-time cocaine users. More than a quarter of the heroin users reported that they had initiated use of this drug in prison. The extent of an individual’s experience of prison was related more consistently to heroin and/or cocaine use in and out of prison than other personal background, social history or psychiatric variables assessed. Conclusions The findings indicate that prisons are a high-risk environment for heroin and other drug initiation and use. Although related to drug use, psychiatric variables were not generally associated with initiation in prison, which was dominated by prison exposure. There is a need to explore ways of reducing heroin initiation in prison as part of a broader risk-prevention strategy.

The Effectiveness of Art Therapy in Reducing Depression in Prison Populations

Abstract: Major obstacles block the effectiveness of therapy in prison. Many inmates have an inherent mistrust for verbal disclosure. Rigid defenses exist for basic survival. Despite these defenses, there has been support for art therapy as a valuable tool. Unfortunately, there has been little research to measure the effectiveness of art therapy in prison. Two quantitative studies were initiated in a North Florida prison to measure the effectiveness of art therapy with inmates, specifically in decreasing depressive symptoms. This article will present a pilot and follow-up study. The methods, including the Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale (FEATS) and the Beck Depression Inventory–Short Form, will be delineated. What was revealed was that although the FEATS proved more effective as a measurement tool for the pilot than for the follow-up study, ultimately, the results reflected a significant decrease in depressive symptoms in those inmates who participated in the program.

The effect of criminal background checks on hiring ex‐offenders*

Abstract: Research Summary The rapid increase in the nation's incarceration rate over the past decade has raised questions about how to reintegrate a growing number of ex-offenders successfully. Employment has been shown to be an important factor in reintegration, especially for men over the age of 27 years who characterize most individuals released from prison. This article explores this question using unique establishment-level data collected in Los Angeles in 2001. On average, we replicate the now-common finding that employer-initiated criminal background checks are negatively related to the hiring of ex-offenders. However, this negative effect is less than complete. The effect is strongly negative for those employers that are legally required to perform background checks, which is not surprising because these legal requirements to perform checks are paired with legal prohibitions against hiring ex-offenders. However, some employers seem to perform checks to gain additional information about ex-offenders (and thus hire more ex-offenders than other employers), and checking seems to have no effect on hiring ex-offenders for those employers not legally required to perform checks. Policy Implications One public policy initiative that has received considerable attention is to deny employers access to criminal history record information, which includes movements to “ban the box” that inquires about criminal history information on job applications. The assumption underlying this movement is that knowledge of ex-offender status leads directly to a refusal to hire. The results of this analysis show that policy initiatives aimed at restricting background checks, particularly for those firms not legally required to perform checks, may not have the desired consequences of increasing ex-offender employment. This result is consistent with an alternative view that some employers care about the characteristics of the criminal history record and use information about criminal history in a more nuanced, nondiscrete way.

Alternative Views of Crime: Legislative Policymaking in Gendered Terms

Abstract: A potential policy problem based on an actual study of prisons and recidivism rates was presented to 47 Colorado legislators during a taped interview that was later transcribed. Men and women in this study conceptualized the origins of and solutions to crime differently. These differences can be understood in terms of gendered socialization, experiences and opportunities in western societies. Women tended to see criminals as people interacting within the context of societal opportunities, while men tended to see criminals as autonomous individuals responsible for choosing a life of crime. These fundamentally different views of the origins of crime lead to distinctive policy solutions. Finally, the self-articulated orientations were compared with all the actual crime and prison bills proposed in the 1989 session. The gender differences uncovered in the interviews were also found in actual policy proposals. However, women were less successful than men in passing their legislation.