Men In Prison Research Articles

Do Men in Prison Have Nothing to Lose but Their Manhood? Masculinities of Prisoners and Officers in a Ukrainian Correctional Colony

The article sets out to show how power and identity intertwine. Its close look at Ukrainian prison culture complements a recent string of studies in the “West” by demonstrating the nuanced role of violence and masculinity in men’s prisons. Whereas much of the extant literature links prison violence to a hypermasculine culture, this article, based on a semiethnographic study in Ukraine, details how a masculine-centered, hierarchical prisoner structure curtails violence. Even so, prisoners are forced to exercise masculine agility, as their provisional manliness determines their place in the hierarchy and thus, by extension, their quality of life. I explore how prisoners and officers construct, prove, and maintain their masculine identities in a milieu of rigid structures and limited resources. I demonstrate how masculine models and discourses are diverse, dynamic, and contested and argue that men as agents tap into them to frame flexible identities to suit their needs.

Simulating Money Management and Life Skills with Prison Populations

Interactive education can help learners retain complicated and sometimes frustrating financial information. For inmate audiences, using traditional education methods is not always feasible. To address this challenge, university faculty and students, state officials, and staff from a minimum-security men's prison began conducting a face-to-face financial capability simulation called That's Life. The simulation promotes development of personal finance skills as well as intangible skills such as decision making, communication, problem solving, and critical thinking. The interactive nature of the simulation allows participants to make personal connections to the information as they physically move through the simulation experience. Inmates instantly become invested in their own financial behaviors.

Prevalence and Incidence of HCV Infection among Prisoners in Central Brazil.

The aim of this multicenter, cross sectional study was to assess the prevalence, incidence and associated risk factors among incarcerated populations from twelve Brazilian prisons. The total of 3,368 individuals from twelve prisons was randomly recruited between March 2013 and March 2014. Participants were interviewed, and provided blood samples which were tested for antibodies to Hepatitis C (HCV ab). One year after the first investigation, a cohort study was conducted with 1,656 inmates who participated the cross sectional study. Positive samples were tested for the presence of HCV RNA. Out of 3,368 inmates, 520 (15.4%) were females, and 2,848 (84.6%) were males. The overall prevalence of HCV was 2.4% (95% CI: 1.9 to 2.9), with 0.6% (95% CI: 0.4 to 0.8) in females, and 2.7% (95% CI: 2.1 to 3.3) in males (p<0.01). HCV RNA was detected in 51/80 (63.7%) samples. Among men prisoners, multivariate analysis of associated factors showed independent associations between HCV exposure and increasing age, inject drug use, length of incarceration, smoking hashish, sharing needle and syringe and HIV positivity. During the cohort study, 7/1,656 new cases of HCV infection were detected, and the incidence rate was 0.4/100 person-year. Once high frequency rates of specific HCV risk behaviors and new HCV infections have been identified inside prisons, effective interventions strategies such as screening, clinical evaluation and treatment to reduce the spread of HCV infection are essential.

Covenants without the Sword? Comparing Prison Self-Governance Globally

Why does prison social order vary around the world? While many of the basic characteristics of prisons are similar globally, the extent and form of informal inmate organization varies substantially. This article develops a governance theory of prison social order. Inmates create extralegal governance institutions when official governance is insufficient. The size and demographics of the prison population explain why inmates produce extralegal governance institutions in either decentralized ways, such as ostracism, or through more centralized forms, such as gangs. Comparative analysis of Brazil, Bolivia, England, Scandinavia, and men's and women's prisons in California provide empirical support.

“We’re like community”: Collective identity and collective efficacy among transgender women in prisons for men

Recognizing that prisons house diverse populations in equally diverse types of environments, we utilize a unique data set and employ two well-known sociological concepts—collective identity and collective efficacy—to examine overlapping communities in which transgender women in prisons for men are situated and experience prison life. Findings from our mixed-methods analysis reveal that despite their considerable diversity, transgender prisoners embrace a collective identity and perceive collective efficacy as transgender prisoners more so than as prisoners per se; their collective identity and perceptions of collective efficacy are predicated on social-interactional factors rather than demographic characteristics and physical features of the carceral environment; and the more time a transgender inmate spends in prison, the more likely she is to identify with a community of transgender prisoners, but the less likely she is to feel an affective commitment to the transgender prisoner community or to expect other transgender prisoners to act on her behalf in prison. This novel application of dynamics generally understood to operate in social movements and residential neighborhoods—collective identity and collective efficacy, respectively—to the transgender community in California’s prisons sheds insight into the ways in which transgender women in prisons for men experience prison life, the loyalties around which prison life is organized, and the complexities around which communities in prison are structured.

Prison and Community Populations at Ultra-High Risk of Psychosis: Differences and Challenges for Service Provision.

The aim of the study was to explore the feasibility of expanding a community service for early detection of psychosis into a local London prison for men in the United Kingdom. All new receptions to a local prison for men in South London were approached for routine screening. Those who met criteria for being at ultra-high-risk of psychosis were compared with a help-seeking sample from the community who met the same criteria. Clinical and sociodemographic characteristics were compared to determine whether the prison and community populations had similar profiles and mental health needs. Of 891 prisoners screened, 44 (5%) met criteria for being at ultra-high risk of psychosis. The community sample consisted of 42 participants. Compared with the community group, prison participants had lower scores on almost all symptom measures, were less likely to have remained in school and completed exams, and were more likely to be in short-term accommodations and to be of black race-ethnicity. Lifetime use of illicit drugs was similar between the groups, but recent use was much higher in the prison group. Expanding community services into custodial settings should take into account the different environment and needs of the prisoner population. Specifically, early detection and intervention services should target a broad range of mental health problems rather than psychosis alone.

Same Difference: The “Dilemma of Difference” and the Incarceration of Transgender Prisoners

This article examines the “dilemma of difference” transgender prisoners pose and face within a sex-segregated prison system organized around the pursuit of safety and security. Our analysis uses data from a study of the culture and experiences of transgender prisoners in four men's prisons. Using qualitative data from interviews with transgender prisoners, focus groups with prisoners, and focus groups with staff, our findings reveal a common contention that transgender prisoners are (according to staff) and should be (according to prisoners) treated like everyone else, despite their unique situations. This further demonstrates the stakes that this dilemma carries for the prison regime and transgender prisoners' roles in challenging it without engaging in overt resistance—which carries high stakes for them. Accordingly, we elucidate how the rigidity of an institutional structure built on inherent contradictions can have the potential to complicate the achievement of institutional goals.

The Effect of Representation-Centered Literatherapy on Men Prisoners’s Self-Compassion

The Effect of Representation-Centered Literatherapy on Men Prisoners’s Self-Compassion

The Negotiated Identities of Long-Term Inmates: Breaking the Chains of Problematic Integration

How long-term inmates perform any number of identities across the span of a prison career is a question that must be negotiated by each individual as he struggles with the perils of life behind bars. With a phenomenological and grounded theory approach, this study sought to demonstrate how inmates in a men's maximum security prison enact their evolving identities across the span of their incarceration and what challenges they experience in doing so. Problematic integration further clarifies these challenges. Namely, negotiating multiple divergent identities results in significant uncertainties, ambivalence, and divergence as inmates struggle with how best to communicate.

‘Indelible Characters’

ABSTRACTSince the late nineteenth-century works of criminologists Lombroso and Lacassagne, tattoos in Europe have been commonly associated with deviant bodies. Like many other studies of tattoos of non-indigenous origin, the locus of our research is the convict body. Given the corporeal emphasis of prison records, we argue that tattoos form a crucial part of the power dynamic. Tattoos in the carceral context embody an inherent paradox of their being a component in the reidentification of ‘habitual criminals’. We argue that their presence can be regarded as an expression of convict agency: by the act of imprinting unique identifiers on their bodies, convicts boldly defied the official gaze, while equally their description in official records exacted power over the deviant body. Cursory findings show an alignment with other national studies; corporeal inscriptions in Ireland were more prevalent in men's prisons than women's and associated, however loosely, with certain occupations. For instance, maritime and military motifs find representation. Recidivists were more likely to have tattoos than first-time offenders; inscriptions were described as monotone, rudimentary in design and incorporated a limited range of impressions. Further to our argument that tattoos form an expression of convict defiance of prison authority, we have found an unusual idiosyncrasy in the convict record, that is, that the agency of photography, while undermined in general terms, was manipulated by prison officers.

A macro-level perspective on prison inmate deviance

A macro-level perspective for understanding differences in levels of inmate assaults and nonviolent offenses across US prisons is presented which emphasizes the greater relevance of population composition as opposed to environmental and managerial controls over inmates. We argue that population effects are more relevant due to a heavy reliance on custodial risk assessments which place high concentrations of the most dangerous offenders within particular facilities or units within facilities, rendering these environments less effective for controlling inmate misconduct regardless of tighter security and greater use of administrative controls relative to lower security environments. A partial test of our model was conducted with a national US sample of 247 state prisons for men and women. Results indicate that while both facility and population factors are relevant predictors of offense levels, population effects are stronger and more prevalent. The implications of specific findings are discussed.

The Hundred Years’ War: The Etiology and Status of Assaults on Transgender Women in Men's Prisons

A war on transgender women has been waged for hundreds if not thousands of years and is manifest in their treatment in their families, communities, and social institutions. There has been little acceptance of the gender diversity they represent in the rigid and hypermasculine prisons and jails in the United States. As a consequence, transgender women have been targets of abuse by staff and inmates in male prisons. It is only now, as research has surfaced documenting their victimization, that legal imperatives are turning the tenor of the war to a ceasefire. In this article I review the nature of the inflexible corrections system around issues of gender. Much of the rest of the article is then focused on why the protection of transgender women in jails and prisons is important to address and how it might be done, and is being done, in some facilities.

Cooking in prison--from crook to cook.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the principle and practice of self-catering system in a Danish prison. Self-catering is a reflection of the Danish correctional principle of normalisation between prison and community life. Unlike some other jurisdiction, issues of control in meal preparation are subordinate to prisoners' right to choose and prepare their own food. Findings are derived from 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish maximum security prison for men, including in-depth interviews with 68 prisoners. Overall findings showed that thinking about meals and their preparation is time consuming for prisoners who tend to be positive about the system making connections with their ability to exercise responsibility for making healthily choices. The research concludes that prisoners' possibility for developing cooking competences during incarceration could support prisoners change in social identity from crook to cook. Food is a fundamental need and the ability to choose what to eat and to prepare one's own food should be a right for all people, including prisoners. This research shows that Danish prisoners are very pleased about the system of self-catering. Most prisoners are concerned about preparing their own meals according to their taste and cultural diversity. If the prison offers the opportunity to train as a chef during imprisonment it could support the prisoner's change in social identity from crook to cook on the outside.

Does every heart matter? Developing a CVD service at a high-security prison

Working as a nurse in a high-security prison for men is challenging. It requires the health practitioner to think ‘outside the box’ on how to deliver models of care, within the constraints of a secure environment. Such a challenge presented itself when providing cardiovascular disease (CVD) services at a prison. The use of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (to help identify and monitor patients with newly diagnosed hypertension) was not approved by the prison, because of security considerations. Therefore, a new way of working was needed to deliver the service, in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommendations. This article discusses three areas of service development that were implemented within a high security prison; these are hypertension management, cardiac rehabilitation and implementation of NHS Health Checks. Because of the challenging and restrictive environment, the development of these services has been recognised both locally and nationally, obtaining awards and being presented at conferences.

Correctional officers and the incarcerated mentally ill: responses to psychiatric illness in prison.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a U.S. men's prison, I investigate how this social and cultural context structures relations between correctional officers and inmates with severe mental illness. Utilizing interpretivist perspectives, I explore how these relations are structured by trust, respect, and meanings associated with mental illness. Officers' discretionary responses to mentally ill inmates included observations to ensure psychiatric stability and flexibility in rule enforcement and were embedded within their role to ensure staff and inmate safety. Officers identified housing, employment, and social support as important for inmates' psychiatric stability as medications. Inmates identified officers' observation and responsiveness to help seeking as assisting in institutional functioning. These findings demonstrate that this prison's structures and values enable officers' discretion with mentally ill inmates, rather than solely fostering custodial responses to these inmates' behaviors. These officers' responses to inmates with mental illness concurrently support custodial control and the prison's order.

Order Through Honor: Masculinity and the Use of Temporary Release in a Greek Prison

Severe conditions of imprisonment have contributed to a rise in the frequency and seriousness of unrest in Greek prisons over recent decades. Drawing on fieldwork material collected in the largest and most overcrowded prison for men in Greece, this article explores how prison authorities used the prospect of temporary release as a means of incentivizing conformist behavior among prisoners. It is argued that the effectiveness of this seemingly straightforward mechanism was complicated by practical restrictions on the granting of temporary release, thus leading to “behaviorist” efforts on the part of prison authorities to transfer the incentivizing properties of temporary release itself onto praise they extended to prisoners for observing institutional rules and regulations. The content of such praise entailed references to the ideal of a tamed masculinity embodied in the traditional Greek notion of philotimo, or honor, a finding that bolsters the limited body of research on the pacifying potential of masculine identities in carceral settings. While, and at least in part because, the gains made for order through this process have at best been transitory, the broader politico-economic functions of imprisonment have persisted.

Social support among releasing men prisoners with lifetime trauma experiences

High rates of lifetime trauma experiences exist among men incarcerated in US state and federal prisons. Because lifetime trauma experiences have been linked to problematic behavioral and psychiatric outcomes for incarcerated populations, trauma-informed interventions could improve post-release well-being of releasing men prisoners with trauma histories. Social support has consistently been found to have a positive impact on trauma-related outcomes in non-incarcerated populations. Therefore, it is reasonable to hypothesize that social support may be an important intervention component for releasing men prisoners with trauma experiences; yet, the relationship between trauma experiences, psychiatric and behavioral factors, and social support has received almost no attention in research with men prisoners. Using a probability sample of 165 soon-to-be-released men, the present study examined differences in certain demographic, criminal justice history, mental health, substance abuse, and social support (type, quality, amount, and source) variables between releasing men prisoners with and without lifetime trauma experiences. Results indicate that men with trauma histories had more negative social support experiences and fewer positive social support resources before prison than their counterparts. Men with trauma histories also had more lifetime experiences with mental health and substance use problems. On further investigation of the subsample of men with trauma histories, those who were older, had substance use disorders, and histories of mental health problems anticipated fewer post-release social support resources. Study findings underscore the nuances of social support for men prisoners with trauma experiences and point to implications for future directions in targeted trauma-informed intervention development for releasing men prisoners.

Pesticides, Prisoners, and Policy

Over the last few decades, a steady stream of books decry the decline of the public intellectual in modern life, while academics continue to express the desire to “make a difference” by producing research that contributes to the amelioration of social problems. In this context, this article draws on basic and applied research on transgender prisoners in California as a case study to address larger questions about the pursuit of knowledge, the creation of policy, the prompting of praxis, and the promise of justice. The empirical research on transgender prisoners in prisons for men presented in this article begins with a decidedly specific policy question (how to keep transgender prisoners safe from sexual assault in prison) and ends with basic research that interrogates the social organization and workings of gender (how is gender accomplished among transgender prisoners in prisons for men). Reviewing this research and presenting a few instructive digressions referred to as “sidebars” leads to two conclusions: (1) The line between basic and policy work cannot be effectively erased (nor should it be), and (2) basic and applied research can be treated as productively interdependent (i.e., take us to new research paths and generate new insights). By operating side-by-side, basic and policy research can provide us with general and particularistic understandings of social processes and structures that ultimately help us make a difference in the lives of those who suffer the most from systems of inequality, in this case transgender women subject to state authority.

Agnes Goes to Prison

Historically developed along gender lines and arguably the most sex segregated of institutions, U.S. prisons are organized around the assumption of a gender binary. In this context, the existence and increasing visibility of transgender prisoners raise questions about how gender is accomplished by transgender prisoners in prisons for men. This analysis draws on official data and original interview data from 315 transgender inmates in 27 California prisons for men to focus analytic attention on the pursuit of “the real deal”—a concept we develop to reference a dynamic related to how gender is accomplished by transgender inmates. Specifically, among transgender inmates in prisons for men, there is competition for the attention and affection of “real men” in prisons: the demonstrable and well-articulated desire to secure standing as “the best girl” in sex segregated institutional environments. Our empirical examination sheds light on the gender order that underpins prison life, the lived experience of gender and sexuality for transgender inmates in prisons for men, and how that experience reveals new aspects of the workings of gender accountability.

Disparities in criminal court referrals to drug treatment and prison for minority men.

We investigated the extent to which racial/ethnic disparities in prison and diversion to drug treatment were explained by current arrest and criminal history characteristics among drug-involved offenders, and whether those disparities decreased after California's Proposition 36, which mandated first- and second-time nonviolent drug offenders drug treatment instead of prison. We analyzed administrative data on approximately 170,000 drug-involved arrests in California between 1995 and 2005. We examined odds ratios from logistic regressions for prison and diversion across racial/ethnic groups before and after Proposition 36. We found significant disparities in prison and diversion for Blacks and Hispanics relative to Whites. These disparities decreased after controlling for current arrest and criminal history characteristics for Blacks. Proposition 36 was also associated with a reduction in disparities, but more so for Hispanics than Blacks. Disparities in prison and diversion to drug treatment among drug-involved offenders affect hundreds of thousands of citizens and might reinforce imbalances in criminal justice and health outcomes. Our study indicated that standardized criminal justice policies that improved access to drug treatment might contribute to alleviating some share of these disparities.