California State Prison Research Articles

“It's a Race War:” Race and Leisure Experiences in California State Prison

The purpose of this research study was to use critical race theory to guide the exploration of leisure experiences of men in prison. Ten men reflected upon the time they spent in various California State Prisons, in specific reference to their perceptions of race and power behind bars. The analysis revealed that every decision in prison is made with survival in mind and race is central to determining survival strategies and who has access to power. The system of Racially Organized Prison Politics (ROPP) influenced each and every decision behind bars, including leisure decisions. The supportive themes of indoctrination, maintenance, and structural support were found to reinforce and regulate ROPP. Further research is needed to learn more about the influence of race on institutional support systems.

Response: Pathways to Recovery and Reintegration

Harry K Wexler: When I started out, there was very little treatment for offenders. Prisons were seen as warehouses, and “nothing works” was the prevailing belief. Then research started to demonstrate reductions in recidivism with therapeutic communities (TCs). Policymakers and legislators became very interested. TC became the dominant model throughout prisons. It is still prominent throughout the United States, especially in the California prison and parole system. However, there is now much diversity in these programs and curricula, with elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), criminal thinking therapy, and Twelve Steps. Flo Stein: As Dr. Prendergast (2009) writes, a number of therapeutic models have now been shown to be effective for offenders and parolees. In North Carolina, the State Department of Corrections provides CBT training for custody personnel who use it in the prison system. Part of the model’s appeal is that CBT learning can be reinforced by community treatment providers and extended each time an offender re-enters the criminal justice system. The offender doesn’t have to start over each time. Deanne Benos: In Illinois, we’ve been working on a program called Operation Spot-light that uses CBT to address criminogenic factors among high-risk parolees. When parolees violate parole rules, have difficulty complying with the community treatment program, or show a high level of risk of returning to prison, we use a graduated sanctions process that includes sending them to Spotlight Re-Entry Centers. The centers—there are seven of them spread across the State—provide services, including individual counseling sessions, to parolees seeking assistance upon release from prison as well as to high-risk offenders. They have contributed to an 18 percent drop in new offense incarcerations between 2004 and 2007, resulting in the lowest annual rate on this measure in State history. In addition, the centers have helped reduce parole technical offense violations by nearly 40 percent from 2006 to 2008. Stein: We’re implementing a large-scale contingency management (CM) program in North Carolina. Some of our legislators went to a National Conference of State Legislatures meeting where CM was presented. They came back very enthusiastic and passed legislation that requires each of our programs to use up to 1 percent of its money for rewards and other incentives. Wexler: That’s quite an experiment. How’s it working? Stein: We’re in our first year, so time will tell. I think some are using the model well, and others are still learning. I do think CM is an important strategy: Rewarding appropriate behaviors, such as showing up on time for treatment, participating in the group effectively, and things like that, can improve client motivation. Wexler: The CM concept makes sense: Using positive rewards and counterpunches is simply Learning Theory 101. The National Development and Research Institute participated in a CM project that obtained positive results as part of NIDA’s Criminal Justice–Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJ-DATS) project. However, CM’s effect is limited in the offender population. As with any specialized intervention that does not treat the “whole” person, CM needs to be delivered in conjunction with other services. Although it certainly has a place in treatment of these patients, overreliance on it would be a mistake. Pharmacotherapy, which Dr. Prendergast mentions only briefly, holds a lot of promise but has been ignored and unfairly criticized. Several studies have identified high death rates among releasees who are addicted to opioids. Members of this population are good candidates for methadone and buprenorphine. We should explore ways to identify these individuals pre-release and to begin pharmacotherapy before they are paroled. With careful vetting and explicit guidelines, we can avoid a lot of the criticism and resistance to pharmacotherapy.

Unintended consequences: experimental evidence for the criminogenic effect of prison security level placement on post-release recidivism

Most prison systems use quantitative instruments to classify and assign inmates to prison security levels commensurate to their level of risk. Bench and Allen (The Prison Journal 83(4):367-382, 2003) offer evidence that the assignment to higher security prisons produces elevated levels of misconduct independent of the individual’s propensity to commit misconduct. Chen and Shapiro (American Law and Economics Review, 2007) demonstrate that assignment to higher security level among inmates with the same classification scores increases post-release recidivism. Underlying both of these claims is the idea that the prison social environment is criminogenic. In this paper we examine the theoretical premises for this claim and present data from the only experiment that has been conducted that randomly assigns inmates to prison security levels and evaluates both prison misconduct and post-release recidivism. The experiment’s results show that inmates with a level III security classification who were randomly assigned to a security level III prison in the California prison system had a hazard rate of returning to prison that was 31% higher than that of their randomly selected counterparts who were assigned to a level I prison. Thus, the offenders’ classification assignments at admission determined their likelihood of returning to prison. There were no differences in the institutional serious misconduct rates of these same prisoners. These results are contradictory to a specific deterrence prediction and more consistent with peer influence and environmental strain theories. These results also raise important policy implications that challenge the way correctional administrators will have to think about the costs and benefits of separating inmates into homogeneous pools based on classification scores.

Therapeutic Community in a California Prison: Treatment Outcomes After 5 Years

Therapeutic communities have become increasingly popular among correctional agencies with drug-involved offenders. This quasi-experimental study followed a group of inmates who participated in a prison-based therapeutic community in a California state prison, with a comparison group of matched offenders, for more than 5 years after their initial prison release. Contrary to successes reported elsewhere, this study found no difference in new arrests and returns to prison between therapeutic community participants and the comparison participants after 5 years. Overall, more than 60% of both groups were returned to prison within 2 years following their initial release. After 5 years, the return-to-prison rate reached about 73% for both groups. The average time spent in prison following initial release was about the same for both groups. Rearrest offenses were also similar in both groups. Policy implications are discussed.

Editor's Column: Prisons, Activism, and the Academy—a Roundtable with Buzz Alexander, Bell Gale Chevigny, Stephen John Hartnett, Janie Paul, and Judith Tannenbaum

tors appear on page 567. America’s prisons and jails house more than two million inmates. At least half the prisoners released in 2008 are likely to be returned to “correctional” facilities by 2010 (“Second Chance”).1 What is the academy’s responsibility to the men, women, and children who live behind bars? What is its responsibility to those who are released? Over the last fifteen years federal and local governments in the United States reduced or ended funding for educational programs in prison. These programs helped reduce recidivism and offered lifers and other long-­term inmates the resources to invent more mean-­ ingful lives. This Editor’s Column features a conversation among educational activists who have confronted these tough financial and ideological facts and who continue to work with prisoners against all odds. Judith Tannenbaum is a poet who worked through California’s Arts-­in-­Corrections, a statewide program that for more than twenty years has paid professional artists to make art with people locked up in California state prisons. With the help of University of Michigan undergraduates, Buzz Alexander started the Prison Creative Arts Project in 1990, and PCAP has facilitated hundreds of workshops, readings, exhibitions, and performances throughout Michigan. Janie Paul, a curator of PCAP’s Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners, has facilitated art workshops in Michigan prisons and teaches PCAP courses that train and supervise art students who are sent into Michigan juvenile facilities and prisons. The author of Incarceration Nation, Stephen John Hartnett has spent eighteen years teaching and protesting at America’s prisons; he also runs a weekly poetry workshop at the Champaign County jail in Illinois. Finally, Bell Gale Chevigny is the editor of Doing Time: Twenty-Five Years 1 2 3 . 3 ]

Chicana(O)/Latina(O) Prisoners: Ethical and Methodological Considerations, Collaborative Research Methods and Case Studies

This essay compares major social science studies on the experiences of Chicanas(os)/Latinas(os) incarcerated in New York and California state prisons. It reviews researchers' motivations for conducting the studies, major questions posed, research methods, findings and conclusions, and their interrelationship. The discussion highlights ethical and methodological dilemmas confronted by researchers. A main objective is to help scholars formulate the most effective methods for carrying out institutional case studies of Chicana(o)/Latina(o) prisoners in the US that simultaneously yield the type of information most useful to all seeking to change oppressive conditions inside and outside the walls. Underlying questions are: What impact do pre-prison experiences have on imprisoned Chicanas(os)? What effect does imprisonment have on pintas(os)' and their barrios? How do prisons reproduce and, therefore, reinforce, differential power relationships existing on the outside? The essay concludes with a brief review of the major findings and a commentary on the methodologies most likely to generate the desired information.

Permeable Borders and American Prisons: Malcolm Braly’s <i>On the Yard</i>

Permeable Borders and American Prisons: Malcolm Braly’s On the Yard Katy Ryan Malcolm Braly’s fourth novel begins simply enough: “Society Red was the first man on the yard that morning” (3). An account of men living slow days in San Quentin in the 1960s—their fantasies, interactions, supreme boredom—On the Yard (1967) continues in this direct, unembellished style for well over three hundred pages. Braly’s novel is, as Jonathan Lethem notes in his fine introduction to the most recent edition, as -ical as its title” (vii). Our need to have “prisons be one simple thing — either horrific zoos for the irretrievably demented and corrupt, or inhumane machines which grind down innocent men” —is unsatisfied by Braly’s writing (Lethem, vii). Praised by critics and declared by Kurt Vonnegut “the great American prison novel,” On the Yard has been out of print twice and has received little scholarly attention.1 In 2002 the New York Review of Books republished the novel as part of its lost classics series. Braly, who spent much of his adult life in prison for burglary and armed robbery convictions, composed three novels while incarcerated: Felony Tank (1961), Shake Him Till He Rattles (1963), and It’s Cold Out There (1966). After his final release from San Quentin, published, in addition to On the Yard, an autobiography, False Starts: A Memoir of San Quentin and Other Prisons (1976), and another novel, The Protector (1979). At the time of his death in 1980, he was, according to H. Bruce Franklin, “beginning to attain recognition as one of the finest novelists to emerge from America’s prisons” (Prison Writing, 217). On the Yard emerges at a critical moment in U.S. American literary history. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, marks the beginning of what Franklin calls “an unprecedented surge of prison literature” (Prison Writing, 12). Among the more well-known of these works are Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets (1967), Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice (1968), George Jackson’s Soledad, Brother (1970), Robert Beck’s The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim (1971), Manuel Piñero’s Short Eyes (1972), Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide (1973), James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could [End Page 285] Talk (1974), and Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974). Franklin identifies the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s as the motivating context for this literature; Dylan Rodriguez develops his theory of “radical prison praxis” from the same time period; and Michael Hames-García engages with this body of literature in order to theorize and put into practice its ethical and moral insights. Yet Braly’s novel is not political in the way much of this writing is. It does not provide an exposé or analysis of the dire failings of the criminal judicial system. Nor does it attempt to explain, or even represent, the disproportionate impact of mass incarceration on racial minorities. In a 1971 New York Times op-ed piece on George Jackson, Braly expressed his impatience with “the mistaken assumptions, exaggerations, and, sometimes, outright lies on which liberals and radical writers base their current outrage at prison conditions” (35). Braly maintained that there was no “systematic political prejudice” against black Americans in the justice system, though he admitted individual instances of bias in the California prison system. His inaccurate assessments of both the role race plays in judicial processes and the cultural significance of black liberation struggles arguably interfere with his ability to tell a reliable tale about U.S. American prisons.2 Franklin summarizes, “Because his vision did not encompass the historical significance of the changes going on both in the prison and on the outside, Malcolm Braly remained limited in range as a novelist, despite all his profound insights” (Prison Literature, 206).3 What contributions, then, can Braly make to American literary and cultural history? It was to the novel that Braly first turned, a genre utilized less often by writers dealing with prison than autobiography, poetry, oratory, and essay. And it is precisely the dialogic structure of On the Yard that generates its most important social commentary. Franklin credits the artistic success of On the Yard to...

Deference or Respect? Status Management Practices Among Prison Inmates

Interpersonal and intergroup contention is endemic to the social environment of California prisons. Data from in-depth interviews (N = 74) with prison inmates highlights a conceptual difference between the status behavior understood as signaling “deference” versus those signaling “respect.” Deference behavior signifies ordinal rank distinctions between actors in a power and prestige order. Respectful behavior signifies nominal distinctions rooted in perceived similarities and differences between actors. A theoretical model and typology of respect relations based on the correspondence between an actor's subjective belief and normative expectations is presented. The horizontal, intergroup structure found in the California prison system increases the profile of status behavior as marking nominal distinctions. I propose that the meaning of a given status behavior reflects the instrumentality of social situations and the objectivity or subjectivity of standards actors use in their evaluations of others.

Coccidioidomycosis in California State Correctional Institutions

Coccidioidomycosis (CM) has been recognized in inmates of California State prisons since 1919, where it has been diagnosed in inmates of various correctional facilities inside and outside the known endemic areas. In recent years construction of new prisons within endemic areas has led to an increase in the number of cases of CM. In 2005 and 2006, the Pleasant Valley State Prison (PVSP) near Coalinga and Avenal State Prison (ASP) near Avenal on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley have been particularly affected. In 2005, our serologic testing yielded 150 new cases from PVSP and 30 from ASP. The incidence rate in 2005 for PVSP (population approximately 5,000) was at least 3,000 per 100,000, and this will be exceeded in 2006. Some cases diagnosed in early 2006 likely were infections that were acquired in 2005. Some cases are medically managed on site, but very ill inmates have had care in nonprison facilities. Precise numbers of patients who were hospitalized were not made available to the author. Estimates of the cost per patient have varied from $8,000 in the 1990s to $30,000 more recently. Thus, this disease has important medical, demographic, and financial implications for the state.

Creating and Passing a Successful Sentencing Commission in California: An Examination of Failed Attempts in California and Successful Sentencing Commissions Across the Country

Several organizations have conducted original research regarding the problems facing the California prison system, and credible solutions have been offered. This paper will focus on a solution that has been commonly recommended in policy reports (and even introduced as legislation) for at least fifteen years: the development of a sentencing commission. That various have been created and appointed to analyze the California prison system over time reflects the instinctual need for an insulated group who can monitor and respond to these problems. However despite support from academics, policy organizations, and many state politicians the numerous attempts to establish a sentencing commission in California have failed. This paper offers explanations for those failures, assesses the success of sentencing commissions in other states, and provides recommendations for how to implement a sentencing commission in California that will enjoy both substantive and political success.

Gangs in California's Prison System: What Can Be Done?

Prison gangs pose a significant challenge to the safe administration of California's prison system. This paper examines attempts by various states to curb prison gang activity, and suggests some gang reduction programs California might consider pursuing.

Elderly Prisoners are Literally Dying for Reform

In the last twenty years, the number of older prisoners has increased by 750 percent nationwide. Unfortunately, the prison system's ability to deal with an increasingly geriatric population has not adapted at a similar rate. The current conditions that many older prisoners now face are appalling. Part I of this paper will examine the characteristics of the aging population within the California prison system, the specific problems the population faces, the rising cost of maintaining this population in the absence of reform, and finally, the level of risk these prisoners pose. Part II will examine possible solutions for dealing with the graying of the prison population, including solutions currently implemented in other states. Part III will suggest certain policies for implementation within the California system.

Legislating from the Bench: Judicial Activism in California and its Increasing Impact on Adult Prison Reform

California's prison system is operating at 194% capacity and is in drastic need of reform. With the failure of the executive and legislative branches to ameliorate the growing problems, California's judges have taken action and mandated sweeping reforms through their judicial decisions. This paper seeks to explore why California's judges continue to take on this role of activism. First, the major cases that have impacted the adult prison system from 1995-2005 are reviewed. Next, the paper explores national trends to determine whether or not California is an anomaly. Based on a review of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996's impact on prisoner litigation and the judicial trends in New York, Florida, and Texas, the conclusion is that California is, in fact, an anomaly. Accordingly, the paper identifies three factors as the most significant drivers of California's judicial activism: the existence of the Prison Law Office; the personal influence of Judge Thelton E. Henderson; and California's unique political climate. Finally, this paper concludes by identifying the policy implications of a judiciary-dependent path towards prison reform.

Family-Based Re-Entry Programming: A Promising Tool for Reducing Recidivism and Mitigating the Economic and Societal Costs of Incarceration in California

This paper explores the possibility of introducing family-based re-entry programming into California's correctional establishments as a means of facilitating an offender's successful transition from prison into society. Increasing the occurrence of successful reintegration will ultimately decrease the space constraints and costs associated with California's prison system and simultaneously work to mitigate the harmful collateral effects that imprisonment has on families and communities. After examining various models of family-based programming employed in other states, both short-term and long-term incorporation options are proposed, which are designed specifically to dovetail with California's existing structure. This proposal for gradual implementation incorporates the strongest components of the programs studied and is likely to result in higher success rates among offenders exiting prison.

Being Old and Doing Time: Functional Impairment and Adverse Experiences of Geriatric Female Prisoners

The number of older prisoners is increasing exponentially. For example, the number of geriatric female prisoners in California has increased 350% in the past decade. Despite an increasing population of geriatric female prisoners, the degree of functional impairment in this population is unknown. Therefore, the goals of this study were to describe the prevalence and nature of functional impairment in geriatric female prisoners in California and to identify aspects of the prison environment that may exacerbate functional impairments. Questionnaires were analyzed from 120 geriatric women in California state prisons. Functional impairment was defined as impairment in activities of daily living (ADLs) or in prison ADLs (PADLs), including dropping to the floor for alarms, standing for count, getting to meals, hearing orders, and climbing onto the top bunk. The mean age of participants was 62; 16% were dependent in one ADL, and 69% reported one PADL impairment. Increasing severity of functional impairment was associated with worse health status and more adverse prison experiences. For example, fall rates ranged from 33% in women without impairment to 57% with PADL impairment to 63% with ADL dependence (P=.02). Several prison environmental stressors were identified that likely exacerbate functional impairment. For example, 29% of geriatric women were assigned to a top bunk. Geriatric female prisoners report high rates of functional impairment. ADL and PADL impairment were associated with worse health status and adverse prison experiences. Therefore, the evaluation of functional impairment in geriatric female prisoners needs to consider the unique demands of the prison environment.

“You can't do nothing in this damn place”: Sex and intimacy among couples with an incarcerated male partner

In an effort to deepen our understanding of how circumstances of forced separation and the interdiction of physical contact affect women's sexual behavior, we investigated the development and maintenance of heterosexual couples’ intimacy when the male partner is incarcerated. As HIV‐prevention scientists who work with women visiting men at a California state prison, we recognize that correctional control extends to these women's bodies, both when they are within the facility's walls visiting their mates and when they are at home striving to remain connected to absent men. This paper analyzes the impact of a peculiar public “place “—a penitentiary—on couples’ romantic and sexual interactions, drawing out the implications of imprisonment for relationship decision making, sexual health, and HIV risk. Using qualitative interviews with 20 women who visit their incarcerated partners and 13 correctional officers who interact with prison visitors, we examine how institutional constraints such as the regulation of women's apparel, the prohibition of physical contact, and the lack of privacy result in couples forging alternative “spaces” in which their relationships occur. We describe how romantic scripts, the build‐up of sexual tension during the incarceration period, and conditions of parole promote unprotected sexual intercourse and other HIV/STD risk behavior following release from prison.

In-Custody Therapeutic Community Substance Abuse Treatment: Does It Have an Impact on Custody Personnel?

This study explores the impact of working in correctional settings on custody personnel, examining in particular the differences between quality of professional life issues in substance abuse treatment environments versus general custody settings. The article describes research findings regarding the relationship between differing professional environments and subjective perceptions of physical and psychological health for custody personnel working in Substance Abuse Treatment units located in three separate prisons: the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility (SATF) at California State Prison, Corcoran; California Rehabilitation Center; and R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility. To carry out this study, the authors surveyed 120 custody staff members from treatment units and general population facilities, using three instruments. Also examined were a number of documented indicators of well-being, including inmate disciplinary problems, inmate random urinalysis results, staff sick leave, and occupational injuries. Along with the findings, implications of this research for national policy concerning prison-based substance abuse treatment are discussed.

SELECTIVE INCAPACITATION AND THE PROBLEM OF PREDICTION*

Recent innovations in sentencing policy across the United States reveal a renewed interest in the idea of selective incapacitation of criminal offenders. This is perhaps most evident in the proliferation of “Three Strikes and You're Out” habitual‐offender statutes across the nation. Although the term was first introduced by David Greenberg in 1975, Peter Greenwood and Allan Abrahamse's eponymous 1982 Rand report represents the most fully articulated plan for implementing such a strategy. The report's release stimulated much discussion, because of the AUTHOR'S claims that selective incapacitation could simultaneously reduce crime rates and prison populations. Ethical problems inherent in such proposals as well as methodological inconsistencies in the original research warrant a reexamination of the proposal and of the empirical basis for the conclusions offered therein. Greenwood and Abrahamse's original research is replicated with a representative sample of California state prison inmates (N = 2, 188) in light of these limitations, with specific focus on the methodological issues concerning the construction of the predictive scale. The selective incapacitation scheme advocated by Greenwood and Abrahamse performs extremely poorly in terms of both reliability and validity, thus precluding the implementation of such schemes. The article contains a discussion of other, more ethically acceptable uses of an instrument that identifies “high‐rate” or “dangerous” offenders. In conclusion, some observations on the limitations of incarceration‐based strategies of crime control are offered.

Prison Gang Members' Tattoos as Identity Work: The Visual Communication of Moral Careers

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how symbolic self‐completion and moral careers are identity work by examining prison gang tattoos. Data were derived from one author's six‐year full‐member participation as a correctional officer in the California prison system. We examine tattoos specific to members of the Nuestra Familia, a California‐based prison gang. Tattoos make an individual's self‐definition more complete by visually communicating gang membership, status, rank, and personal accomplishments; they reflect a person's past career accomplishments and possible future career objectives. To analyze the moral careers communicated by these tattoos, we identify and elaborate upon five distinct phases in a prison gang moral career: pre‐initiate, initiate, member, veteran, and superior. The article concludes with discussion of the importance of incorporating symbolic self‐completion into an identity work perspective and consideration of some implications for future research on gang tattoos in particular and identity construction more generally.

Transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a California State Prison, 1991.

An investigation was conducted to determine whether ongoing transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis was occurring in a California state prison. Prison pharmacy records were used to identify cases of active tuberculosis (TB). Ten of the 18 cases of active TB treated at the facility during 1991 were diagnosed at the prison that same year (an incidence of 184 per 100,000). Three inmates were infectious for a total of 7 months while imprisoned. The prevalence of TB skin test-positivity among inmates was 30%, and the incidence of new infection attributable to incarceration was 5.9 per 100 inmates per year. Transmission of M. tuberculosis may be occurring in the California prison system.