Prisons & Prisoners

Prisons & Prisoners PDF Author: Lady Constance Lytton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prisons
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Book Description
On 14 January 1910 Lytton disguised herself as a working-class seamstress, assumed the name Jane Warton, and led a suffrage demonstration demanding the vote for women. During the demonstration she hurled a rock wrapped in brown paper at the house of the governor of Walton Gaol. For this act, she was arrested, tried, and sentenced to fourteen days in jail. Like many suffragettes, she refused to eat while in custody and was forcibly fed, which involved forcing the mouth open, running a tube down the throat or through the nose, and pouring liquid into it. The procedure was both painful and dangerous. Lytton's decision to conceal her upper-class identity was a deliberately calculated act. She was devoted to the cause of female suffrage and was appalled at the class-differentiated treatment women (regardless of their offence) received in jail. This is an account of her prison experience and the differences when she was arrested as a middle class women and when she was arrested as Lady Constance Lytton, the daughter of an earl.

Health and Incarceration

Health and Incarceration PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309287715
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 67

Book Description
Over the past four decades, the rate of incarceration in the United States has skyrocketed to unprecedented heights, both historically and in comparison to that of other developed nations. At far higher rates than the general population, those in or entering U.S. jails and prisons are prone to many health problems. This is a problem not just for them, but also for the communities from which they come and to which, in nearly all cases, they will return. Health and Incarceration is the summary of a workshop jointly sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) Committee on Law and Justice and the Institute of Medicine(IOM) Board on Health and Select Populations in December 2012. Academics, practitioners, state officials, and nongovernmental organization representatives from the fields of healthcare, prisoner advocacy, and corrections reviewed what is known about these health issues and what appear to be the best opportunities to improve healthcare for those who are now or will be incarcerated. The workshop was designed as a roundtable with brief presentations from 16 experts and time for group discussion. Health and Incarceration reviews what is known about the health of incarcerated individuals, the healthcare they receive, and effects of incarceration on public health. This report identifies opportunities to improve healthcare for these populations and provides a platform for visions of how the world of incarceration health can be a better place.

Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners

Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners PDF Author: Committee on Ethical Considerations for Revisions to DHHS Regulations for Protection of Prisoners Involved in Research
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309164605
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
In the past 30 years, the population of prisoners in the United States has expanded almost 5-fold, correctional facilities are increasingly overcrowded, and more of the country's disadvantaged populations—racial minorities, women, people with mental illness, and people with communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis—are under correctional supervision. Because prisoners face restrictions on liberty and autonomy, have limited privacy, and often receive inadequate health care, they require specific protections when involved in research, particularly in today's correctional settings. Given these issues, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections commissioned the Institute of Medicine to review the ethical considerations regarding research involving prisoners. The resulting analysis contained in this book, Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners, emphasizes five broad actions to provide prisoners involved in research with critically important protections: • expand the definition of "prisoner"; • ensure universally and consistently applied standards of protection; • shift from a category-based to a risk-benefit approach to research review; • update the ethical framework to include collaborative responsibility; and • enhance systematic oversight of research involving prisoners.

When Prisoners Come Home

When Prisoners Come Home PDF Author: Joan Petersilia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199727414
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
Every year, hundreds of thousands of jailed Americans leave prison and return to society. Largely uneducated, unskilled, often without family support, and with the stigma of a prison record hanging over them, many if not most will experience serious social and psychological problems after release. Fewer than one in three prisoners receive substance abuse or mental health treatment while incarcerated, and each year fewer and fewer participate in the dwindling number of vocational or educational pre-release programs, leaving many all but unemployable. Not surprisingly, the great majority is rearrested, most within six months of their release. What happens when all those sent down the river come back up--and out? As long as there have been prisons, society has struggled with how best to help prisoners reintegrate once released. But the current situation is unprecedented. As a result of the quadrupling of the American prison population in the last quarter century, the number of returning offenders dwarfs anything in America's history. What happens when a large percentage of inner-city men, mostly Black and Hispanic, are regularly extracted, imprisoned, and then returned a few years later in worse shape and with dimmer prospects than when they committed the crime resulting in their imprisonment? What toll does this constant "churning" exact on a community? And what do these trends portend for public safety? A crisis looms, and the criminal justice and social welfare system is wholly unprepared to confront it. Drawing on dozens of interviews with inmates, former prisoners, and prison officials, Joan Petersilia convincingly shows us how the current system is failing, and failing badly. Unwilling merely to sound the alarm, Petersilia explores the harsh realities of prisoner reentry and offers specific solutions to prepare inmates for release, reduce recidivism, and restore them to full citizenship, while never losing sight of the demands of public safety. As the number of ex-convicts in America continues to grow, their systemic marginalization threatens the very society their imprisonment was meant to protect. America spent the last decade debating who should go to prison and for how long. Now it's time to decide what to do when prisoners come home.

Incarceration and the Law, Cases and Materials

Incarceration and the Law, Cases and Materials PDF Author: Margo Schlanger
Publisher: West Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781683287964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1071

Book Description
In the age of American mass incarceration, a complex legal regime governs prison conditions and presents a host of controversial questions at the intersection of constitutional liberty, statutory interpretation, administrative regulation, and public policy. This is a completely overhauled, re-titled, and much-expanded version of the leading casebook about incarceration. It addresses both pretrial and post-conviction incarceration, presenting Supreme Court and leading lower court case law, statutes, litigation materials, professional standards, academic commentary, and prisoner writing. Topics include conditions of confinement, civil liberties, particular prisoner populations and relevant legal issues (race and national origin discrimination, the particular issues/law governing treatment of incarcerated women, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities). Litigated remedies (injunctive litigation, damages, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and criminal prosecution of prison staff), are also covered in detail, as is non-litigation oversight. The casebook is supplemented by an open-access website that offers additional resources and sources for further reading.

American Prison

American Prison PDF Author: Shane Bauer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735223602
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

Inside Private Prisons

Inside Private Prisons PDF Author: Lauren-Brooke Eisen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542313
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Book Description
When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration—to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue. Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America. From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America’s largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them? This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing carceral landscape.

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States PDF Author: Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 9780309298018
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 800

Book Description
After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States has increased fivefold during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines policy changes that created an increasingly punitive political climate and offers specific policy advice in sentencing policy, prison policy, and social policy. The report also identifies important research questions that must be answered to provide a firmer basis for policy. This report is a call for change in the way society views criminals, punishment, and prison. This landmark study assesses the evidence and its implications for public policy to inform an extensive and thoughtful public debate about and reconsideration of policies.

Convicted and Condemned

Convicted and Condemned PDF Author: Keesha Middlemass
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814724396
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
Winner, W. E. B. DuBois Distinguished Book Award presented by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Examines the lifelong consequences of a felony conviction through the compelling words of former prisoners Felony convictions restrict social interactions and hinder felons’ efforts to reintegrate into society. The educational and vocational training offered in many prisons are typically not recognized by accredited educational institutions as acceptable course work or by employers as valid work experience, making it difficult for recently-released prisoners to find jobs. Families often will not or cannot allow their formerly incarcerated relatives to live with them. In many states, those with felony convictions cannot receive financial aid for further education, vote in elections, receive welfare benefits, or live in public housing. In short, they are not treated as full citizens, and every year, hundreds of thousands of people released from prison are forced to live on the margins of society. Convicted and Condemned explores the issue of prisoner reentry from the felons’ perspective. It features the voices of formerly incarcerated felons as they attempt to reconnect with family, learn how to acclimate to society, try to secure housing, find a job, and complete a host of other important goals. By examining national housing, education and employment policies implemented at the state and local levels, Keesha Middlemass shows how the law challenges and undermines prisoner reentry and creates second-class citizens. Even if the criminal justice system never convicted another person of a felony, millions of women and men would still have to figure out how to reenter society, essentially on their own. A sobering account of the after-effects of mass incarceration, Convicted and Condemned is a powerful exploration of how individuals, and society as a whole, suffer when a felony conviction exacts a punishment that never ends.

Prisoners Once Removed

Prisoners Once Removed PDF Author: Jeremy Travis
Publisher: The Urban Insitute
ISBN: 9780877667155
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
Addresses the issues of parenting behind bars and fostering successful family relationships after release.