In this rare firsthand account, Lorna Rhodes takes us into a hidden world that lies at the heart of the maximum security prison. Focusing on the "supermaximums"-and the mental health units that ...complement them-Rhodes conveys the internal contradictions of a system mandated to both punish and treat. Her often harrowing, sometimes poignant, exploration of maximum security confinement includes vivid testimony from prisoners and prison workers, describes routines and practices inside prison walls, and takes a hard look at the prison industry. More than an exposé,Total Confinementis a theoretically sophisticated meditation on what incarceration tells us about who we are as a society. Rhodes tackles difficult questions about the extreme conditions of confinement, the treatment of the mentally ill in prisons, and an ever-advancing technology of isolation and surveillance. Using her superb interview skills and powers of observation, she documents how prisoners, workers, and administrators all struggle to retain dignity and a sense of self within maximum security institutions. In settings that place in question the very humanity of those who live and work in them, Rhodes discovers complex interactions-from the violent to the tender-among prisoners and staff.Total Confinementoffers an indispensable close-up of the implications of our dependence on prisons to solve long-standing problems of crime and injustice in the United States.
Jiang discusses her zine More Than This: Meditations on Abolition, Presence, and Staying Soft, which dwells on the roles that presence and experimentation play in abolition and transformative ...justice. The zine is anchored by the two quotes which appear on page two: Ruth Wilson Gilmore's assertion that "abolition is about presence, not absence" and Mariame Kaba's framing of abolition as "building a million different little experiments." She notes that she wanted to convey through this zine there is nothing natural or inevitable about the expansion of prisons across the American landscape--and that their contingency provides an opening toward transformation. The space the prison takes up could have been (indeed, can be) filled instead with places which support and sustain communities.
When most people think of prisons, they imagine chaos, violence, and fundamentally, an atmosphere of overwhelming brute masculinity. But real prisons rarely fit the Big House stereotype of popular ...film and literature. One fifth of all correctional officers are women, and the rate at which women are imprisoned is growing faster than that of men. Yet, despite increasing numbers of women prisoners and officers, ideas about prison life and prison work are sill dominated by an exaggerated image of men's prisons where inmates supposedly struggle for physical dominance.In a rare comparative analysis of men's and women's prisons, Dana Britton identifies the factors that influence the gendering of the American workplace, a process that often leaves women in lower-paying jobs with less prestige and responsibility.In interviews with dozens of male and female officers in five prisons, Britton explains how gender shapes their day-to-day work experiences. Combining criminology, penology, and feminist theory, she offers a radical new argument for the persistence of gender inequality in prisons and other organizations. At Work in the Iron Cage demonstrates the importance of the prison as a site of gender relations as well as social control.
Contrary to the stereotypical images of torture, narcotics and brutal sexual behaviour traditionally associated with Ottoman (or ‘Turkish’) prisons, Kent F. Schull argues that these places were sites ...of immense reform and contestation during the 19th century. He shows that they were key components for Ottoman nation-state construction and acted as 'microcosms of modernity' for broader imperial transformation. It was within the walls of these prisons that many of the pressing questions of Ottoman modernity were worked out, such as administrative centralisation, the rationalisation of Islamic criminal law and punishment, issues of gender and childhood, prisoner rehabilitation, bureaucratic professionalisation, identity and social engineering. Juxtaposing state-mandated reform with the reality of prison life, the author investigates how these reforms affected the lives of local prison officials and inmates.
Palabras clave Prosopografía; Franquismo; Represión; Mujeres; Prisiones; Víctimas Abstract In this article we present the conclusions of our research about the mortal repression against the women ...during the first years of the francoism. In this way, we have been able to obtain a clear image of the socio economic characteristics of those victims, and also of the prison policy of the francoist dictatorship, that not only deprived these people of their liberty, but also forced them to live in unfortunate conditions that sometimes caused their death. En el cementerio de Derio de la capital vizcaína fueron ejecutadas 11 mujeres, dentro de los más de 500 fusilamientos que allí se produjeron. Lo mismo se puede afirmar sobre las fuentes extraídas del libro de bajas del Hospital de Basurto, en Bilbao, o del Archivo General de la Administración de Madrid; fuentes primarias que han permitido completar los espacios en blanco de los expedientes penitenciarios.
First Available Cell Trulson, Chad R; Marquart, James W; Crouch, Ben M
2009
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Decades after the U.S. Supreme Court and certain governmental actions struck down racial segregation in the larger society, American prison administrators still boldly adhered to discriminatory ...practices. Not until 1975 did legislation prohibit racial segregation and discrimination in Texas prisons. However, vestiges of this practice endured behind prison walls. Charting the transformation from segregation to desegregation in Texas prisons—which resulted in Texas prisons becoming one of the most desegregated places in America—First Available Cell chronicles the pivotal steps in the process, including prison director George J. Beto’s 1965 decision to allow inmates of different races to co-exist in the same prison setting, defying Southern norms. The authors also clarify the significant impetus for change that emerged in 1972, when a Texas inmate filed a lawsuit alleging racial segregation and discrimination in the Texas Department of Corrections. Perhaps surprisingly, a multiracial group of prisoners sided with the TDC, fearing that desegregated housing would unleash racial violence. Members of the security staff also feared and predicted severe racial violence. Nearly two decades after the 1972 lawsuit, one vestige of segregation remained in place: the double cell. Revealing the aftermath of racial desegregation within that 9 x 5 foot space, First Available Cell tells the story of one of the greatest social experiments with racial desegregation in American history.
En el presente artículo se abordan los programas de intervención socioeducativa de género desarrollados con mujeres privadas de libertad en el medio penitenciario español (en régimen ordinario y ...abierto). Así, a través de un cuestionario dirigido a mujeres (N=310) se denota que el 49%, (152 casos) ha participado en algún programa socioeducativo de género durante su condena. En concreto, se resalta el programa "Ser Mujer.es" (53% participaron en prisión y un 4% en semilibertad) y diversos cursos y talleres educativos para promover "la igualdad de oportunidades entre hombres y mujeres" (48% participaron en prisión y un 6% en semilibertad). A partir del análisis de los datos, se ofrece una descripción de dichos programas, analizando sus objetivos, contenidos y utilidad a través de los testimonios obtenidos en las entrevistas a mujeres (N=75). Por otro lado, se analiza un cuestionario dirigido a las y los profesionales que implementan dichos programas (N=66), para conocer la utilidad, necesidad de la perspectiva de género en la intervención, y los aspectos metodológicos y evaluativos.
En este trabajo se presentan los resultados obtenidos en una investigación realizada en 31 entidades penitenciarias españolas y, tiene por objeto analizar el acceso de las mujeres penadas a los ...distintos niveles educativos, especialmente en los estudios medios o superiores, y su relación con distintos factores de riesgo y protección intervinientes. La muestra global (310 mujeres, 30,1%) se ha seleccionado utilizando muestreo bietápico, de la población de mujeres en cumplimiento de condena en medio abierto. La metodología que se ha usado combina métodos cuantitativos y cualitativos, aplicados a los instrumentos desarrollados diseñados ad hoc (cuestionario de mujeres y entrevistas personales, y cuestionario de profesionales). Los resultados muestran que la mayor parte abandonan los estudios en las enseñanzas básicas, observándose distintos factores de riesgo; sin embargo, las pocas que continúan o retoman los estudios medios o superiores en prisión, lo consideran como un factor de protección frente al ambiente penitenciario, permitiéndoles gestionar de forma inteligente y saludable el tiempo en contextos penitenciarios, mejorando las relaciones entre las presas, con las familias y los trabajadores de prisión. También consideran que les puede resultar útil para el futuro, especialmente, en el ámbito laboral.
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