Hostage taking in prisons in England and Wales presents risks to both staff and prisoners and understanding such incidents is important to inform the development of appropriate management tactics and ...strategies. There has been no published data on this topic in over 30 years, moreover current explanations for prison hostage taking inadequately account for the behaviour observed by prison staff. This thesis aims to fill the gap by addressing three main areas, i) exploring the situational and participant characteristics of prison hostage incidents, ii) considering prison hostage incidents as a type of prison indiscipline influenced by prison strain and iii) examining the phenomenon of collaboration (collusion) between participants, framing it as a form of co-offending. Using secondary data from Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service* (HMPPS) incident recording system, all hostage incidents in prisons in England and Wales were analysed, using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed strong parallels between community and prison incidents and systematic differences between perpetrators, hostages and those who collude. Furthermore, there are associations between variables linked to prison strain and the incidence of hostage takings. The study concludes that prison hostage takings and collusion can be thought of as a response to prison strain, providing an explanation consistent with the instrumental/expressive continuum used to explain community incidents. Implications for professional practice are discussed and recommendations for further research are made.
Having gained unique access to California prisoners and corrections officials and to thousands of prisoners' written grievances and institutional responses, Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness take us ...inside one of the most significant, yet largely invisible, institutions in the United States. Drawing on sometimes startlingly candid interviews with prisoners and prison staff, as well as on official records, the authors walk us through the byzantine grievance process, which begins with prisoners filing claims and ends after four levels of review, with corrections officials usually denying requests for remedies.Appealing to Justiceis both an unprecedented study of disputing in an extremely asymmetrical setting and a rare glimpse of daily life inside this most closed of institutions. Quoting extensively from their interviews with prisoners and officials, the authors give voice to those who are almost never heard from. These voices unsettle conventional wisdoms within the sociological literature-for example, about the reluctance of vulnerable and/or stigmatized populations to name injuries and file claims, and about the relentlessly adversarial subjectivities of prisoners and correctional officials-and they do so with striking poignancy. Ultimately,Appealing to Justicereveals a system fraught with impediments and dilemmas, which delivers neither justice, nor efficiency, nor constitutional conditions of confinement.
In Argentina, more than half of the public universities carry out some kind of academic activity inside prisons. Together with their remarkable extension, these heterogenous programs have emerged in ...a context that could be considered adverse: alarming increases in incarceration rates, overcrowding, budget cuts and a wider socio-political climate prone to hardening penal responses. This article focuses on three programmes and their potential to build academic communities and alternative modalities of citizenship--both inside prison and postrelease, through diverse collective social, political, productive and/or cultural projects. In so doing, it engages in dialogue with the notion of carceral citizenship, which originated in the United States. In Argentina, I contend, this modality of citizenship is not defined so much by top-down formal processes of subjectivation and exclusion, but rather constructed from below and from the outside-in, through the work of in-prison university programmes and their students. Keywords: Citizenship, prison, university, Argentina. La mitad de las universidades publicas en Argentina desarrolla algun tipo de actividad academica dentro de las prisiones. Junto a su notable extension, estos programas heterogeneos surgieron en contextos adversos: entre el alarmante incremento en las tasas de encarcelamiento, el hacinamiento, los recortes presupuestarios y el clima sociopolitico proclive al endurecimiento de las respuestas penales. Este articulo se centra en tres programas concretos y su potencial para construir comunidades academicas y ejercicios de ciudania--tanto dentro de la prision como a traves de proyectos colectivos sociales, politicos, productivos y culturales una vez recuperada la libertad. A traves de una descripcion de estas experiencias, se busca dialogar con la nocion de ciudadania carcelaria, construida originalmente en Estados Unidos. En Argentina, demuestro, esta modalidad de ciudadania no se define tanto por procesos de subjetivizacion y exclusion formales, impuestos desde arriba, sino que se ejerce y define "desde abajo" por los estudiantes privados de libertad y "desde afuera" por la labor de los programas academicos dentro de la prision. Palabras clave: Ciudadania, prision, universidad, Argentina.
By examining the history of prison architecture in colonial Senegal, the book adds a new dimension to the processes and motives behind the production of architectural styles in colonial Africa and ...help insert Africa into a more global history by providing a uniquely comparative study of colonialism, architecture, and punishment.
The status of prisoners of war was firmly rooted in the practice of ransoming in the Middle Ages. By the opening stages of the Hundred Years War, ransoming had become widespread among the knightly ...community, and the crown had already begun to exercise tighter control over the practice of war. This led to tensions between public and private interests over ransoms and prisoners of war. Historians have long emphasised the significance of the French and English crowns' interference in the issue of prisoners of war, but this original and stimulating study questions whether they have been too influenced by the state-centred nature of most surviving sources. Based on extensive archival research, this book tests customs, laws and theory against the individual experiences of captors and prisoners during the Hundred Years War, to evoke their world in all its complexity.
The Torture Papers Greenberg, Karen J; Dratel, Joshua L; Lewis, Anthony
01/2005
eBook
The Torture Papers document the so-called 'torture memos' and reports which US government officials wrote to prepare the way for, and to document, coercive interrogation and torture in Afghanistan, ...Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib. These documents present for the first time a compilation of materials that prior to publication have existed only piecemeal in the public domain. The Bush Administration, concerned about the legality of harsh interrogation techniques, understood the need to establish a legally viable argument to justify such procedures. The memos and reports document the systematic attempt of the US Government to prepare the way for torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices, forbidden under international law, with the express intent of evading legal punishment in the aftermath of any discovery of these practices and policies.
The effect of family visits on prisoner well-being and future behavior is an important consideration in the development of prison policy. This review systematically examines current research findings ...that explore the impact of prison visits from family members on three specific offender outcomes: prisoners’ well-being, rule breaking within the prison, and recidivism. The review focuses on visits by family and does not duplicate earlier reviews but rather extends them into current literature, through identification of empirical studies conducted post 1989, published since 1991. Ten studies met the stipulated inclusion criteria. All are case–control and cohort studies. The review of studies used a standardized quality assessment tool. Results show considerable variation in study quality, methods, and findings. However, studies consistently reported positive effects of prisoners receiving visits. Prison visits reduced depressive symptoms in women and adolescent prisoners. There was some evidence of reduction in rule-breaking behavior. One high-quality study suggested that visits reduced recidivism and increased survival in the community. Although there were positive outcomes associated with prison visits, it was not possible to draw strong conclusions for the outcomes of interest due to a lack of research, methodological discrepancies, and variability in outcome measures and results. The discussion considers the implications of the findings for policy, practice, and research.
The statistics are startling. Since 1973, America's imprisonment rate has multiplied over five times to become the highest in the world. More than two million inmates reside in state and federal ...prisons. What does this say about our attitudes toward criminals and punishment? What does it say about us?
This book explores the cultural evolution of punishment practices in the United States. Anne-Marie Cusac first looks at punishment in the nation's early days, when Americans repudiated Old World cruelty toward criminals and emphasized rehabilitation over retribution. This attitude persisted for some 200 years, but in recent decades we have abandoned it, Cusac shows. She discusses the dramatic rise in the use of torture and restraint, corporal and capital punishment, and punitive physical pain. And she links this new climate of punishment to shifts in other aspects of American culture, including changes in dominant religious beliefs, child-rearing practices, politics, television shows, movies, and more.
America now punishes harder and longer and with methods we would have rejected as cruel and unusual not long ago. These changes are profound, their impact affects all our lives, and we have yet to understand the full consequences.
O trabalho possui um papel fundamental na vida das pessoas e influencia não somente o âmbito profissional, mas é capaz de gerar impactos em diversos aspectos da vida humana. O objetivo desta pesquisa ...foi analisar os sentidos do trabalho para os internos do Sistema Penitenciário do Estado do Ceará. Realizou-se um estudo empírico, qualitativo, por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas realizadas com três internos do sistema prisional cearense que participam do projeto Cadeias Produtivas. Para os entrevistados, o trabalho prisional é essencial na vida dentro da prisão, pois possibilita que o recluso seja deslocado de sua cela para o ambiente de trabalho, o qual oferece melhores condições físicas, além de manter sua mente ocupada e permitir a remição de pena. Assim, a visão positiva do trabalho prisional (atribuída pelos internos) converge para os resultados apresentados por Morin, Tonelli e Pliopas (2007), apesar das limitações do contexto social pelo qual os internos são submetidos, produzidas pelas instituições prisionais.
Abstract
While prisons are often described as places of pain, despair and hopelessness, studies show that some prisoners under certain conditions report positive life changes happening in prison. ...This paper explores the connections between trust and desistance processes, specifically between the experience of being trusted and ‘tertiary desistance’. I argue that trust can be an engine of positive change in prison and that the experience of being trusted might even acquire additional value from the low-trust and risk-sensitive environment that most prisons normally offer prisoners. Finally, I discuss whether prisons that manage to get this balance right deserve to be called ‘reinventive prisons’.
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