Prison

Abstract: At a political moment when democracy, dissent and participation are under siege, especially in low-income communities of color, we write this article to reveal how participatory action research (PAR) can be joined with a larger democratic project to re-member institutions and communities exiled today in neoliberal society. This article draws on two large-scale PAR studies conducted in a women's maximum security prison and in a series of racially desegregated public high schools to explore the power, strategic moves and difficulties of PAR within public institutions. Arguing that PAR offers a theory of method for democratic research, we enter two participatory research collaboratives: a four year, qualitative and quantitative study of the impact of college in prison on the women students, the prison environment, prisoners' postrelease outcomes and civil society, and an ongoing qualitative and quantitative study of how race, ethnicity, class, and academic opportunities and outcomes are (inequitably) distrib...

Abstract: Current research concludes that participation in postprison aftercare is critical to the effectiveness of prison-based therapeutic community (TC) treatment. This conclusion makes it imperative to understand the client determinants of retention in prison treatment, particularly continuance in postprison aftercare. Currently, however, little data exist as to client predictors of seeking and remaining in prison-based TCs or entering postrelease aftercare. In the present study, significant relationships were obtained between initial motivation (i.e., Circumstances, Motivation, Readiness [CMR] scores), retention, aftercare, and outcomes in a sample of substance abusers treated in a prison-based TC program. Implications are discussed for theory, research, and treatment policy.

Abstract: This article summarizes some of the main results from two long-term research projects carried out between 1987 and 1992 on suicide and suicide attempts in prison. Its focus is on those results relating to prisoners. Limitations inherent in the use of statistical data on prison suicide and suicide attempts are demonstrated. The use of long semi-structured interviews, supplemented by observational methods, participation, statistical data, and informal discussions with staff and prisoners is a more appropriate approach to this type of research. The two studies showed that important differences could be found between suicide attempters and other prisoners. Those differences relating to criminal justice histories and background characteristics were differences of degree-suicide attempters had suffered more severe disadvantage, violence, and family problems in their histories and they had had more frequent contact with social services and criminal justice agencies. The more important differences were found in their descriptions of life in prison, which was seen as more difficult for the suicide attempters in almost everyrespect. The article concludes by elaborating on the concept of poor coping in prison and by showing how distinct types of prison suicide can be identified for whom the significance of the immediate environment may differ. Finally, links are drawn between prison suicide and other related literature on prison life.

Abstract: The decision to give up crime is generally triggered by a shock of some sort, by a delayed deterrence process, or both. Offenders give up crime almost as often as they get into it. The impetus to think seriously about retirement from crime altogether seemed to come in many cases from a gradual disenchantment with the criminal life in its totality: the inability to trust people; the frequent harassment by the police; the effects on wives and children when the offender is in prison. Sometimes a new crime is committed when the ex-prisoner is idle, bored, and despondent. Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson convincingly made the point that there is a direct connection between age and crime. In the case of those individuals who stop committing crimes at the end of adolescence, one can speak of normal maturation. The study of the abandonment of crime calls for recapitulation of the genesis of criminal habits in reverse.