Prison Crisis Research Articles

Probation is not a panacea for the prison crisis

Probation is not a panacea for the prison crisis

Criticism of the mandatory nature of preventive detention for recidivists in Ecuador

Despite the fact that Ecuador has a Constitution that enshrines the principles of freedom, equality and minimal criminal intervention, with an express rule that prohibits discrimination based on "judicial past" and that the Constitutional Court and the National Court of Justice have insistently pronounced for the exceptional application of preventive detention, the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code maintains unchanged the third paragraph of the article 536, which prohibits judges from substituting this precautionary measure for another of lesser rigor when lawbreakers are recidivists; this situation that has caused high rates of people deprived of liberty without conviction, around which a serious prison crisis has unfolded with at least 385 deaths in seventeen months. The study that is presented, carried out under a qualitative approach and the critical and reflective method has allowed to show the internal contradictions between the criminal legal norms; the principles that the Code itself states and the constitutional text, in addition to revealing the social need to adopt Urgent legal reforms around preventive detention to help to reduce the negative effects of violence in detention centers and comply with constitutional mandates.

Right to physical integrity of persons deprived of liberty in the deprivation of Liberty Center N1: El Oro del Canton Machala

The physical integrity of persons deprived of liberty, normatively protected by international legal instruments, the Constitution and the Organic Comprehensive Criminal Code, has been the object of serious attacks in detention centers, including N1: El Oro del Canton Machala, a situation about which warnings had been made through studies, reports, visits, and even jurisdictional pronouncements. Among the fundamental causes that have given rise to violations of bodily, psychological, moral or sexual integrity is prison overcrowding, since this is a center for which there is only space for 500 people, however, 1300 are confined, without enough area to live, eat, rest, work or study in peace and harmony. The objective was to analyze physical integrity as a constitutionally established right to freedom in Ecuador and the effects on the aforementioned deprivation of liberty center as a consequence of prison overcrowding and the violation of other fundamental rights. The legal theoretical study with a qualitative approach allowed confirming the violations of the personal integrity of persons deprived of liberty in the Center for the Deprivation of Liberty N1: El Oro del Canton Machala as part of the prison crisis that Ecuador is suffering.

Warfare Tactics and Techno-Managerial Solutions: The Public Private Management of the Brazilian Prison Crisis

This article examines the interactions between the public and private sectors in the process of increasingly endowing the Brazilian penal system with security technologies in the wake of a series of prison rebellions led by the “criminal group” Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). By discussing the discourses and rationales mobilized by politicians, legislators and businessmen within the scope of the Congressional Inquiry of the prison system established in 2008, the article shows that the growing presence of private capital into the Brazilian criminal justice system activates the technical and discursive connections between cost-effective surveillance and violent repression as the main strategies for prison management in the country.

Violence and prison: an approach to culture within walls from overcrowding in Costa Rica

This work has been undertaken as part of the academic project UNA pedagogía para el reencuentro: derechos humanos, educación y literatura en centros de atención institucional de Costa Rica of Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (UNA) and the Instituto de Estudios Latinoamericanos (IDELA). It covers the problem of prison overcrowding in the Costa Rican penal system: due to this issue, a large number of human rights are violated day by day to the extent of becoming a worrying and urgent problem to address. The country has entered a prison crisis where the dignity of people deprived of liberty has been diminishing with ill-treatment in terms of food, recreation, and health. The accumulation of these factors has generated the constitution of a violent prison culture; human interaction between walls is constituted between tensions and indifference among inmates.

A Table Before Me in the Presence of My Enemies: Susan Atkins and the Embodiment of Aging and Frailty on Parole

Abstract In this article I rely on 50 years’ worth of parole hearing transcripts in the Manson family cases to argue that, on parole, the embodiment of aging is treated evasively and with hostility by the parole board. The parole board’s difficulty to reconcile the applicant’s youthful and violent past with their aging, frail present, almost always results in a rejection of the embodied present and future—and of parole. Following an explanation of the California parole process, emphasizing the role that time and aging plays in its different stages, I analyze Susan Atkins’ last parole hearing as an example. To show the general implications of the analysis, and its disastrous consequences for public health, I place the argument in the context of California’s covid-19 prison crisis.

Architectural guidelines aimed at resocialization: the analysis of the Regional Prison of Passo Fundo and the Santa Luzia Apac

The worsening of the prison crisis in Brazil is currently being discussed at the global level. This is the result of multiple factors, among them, the lack of maintenance of penal establishments, causing a degraded architecture, which influences the precarious condition of use of detainees. The general objective of the article is to analyze the architectural guidelines aimed at the re-socialization of Brazilian prisoners in the prisons of Passo Fundo, in Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Luzia, in Minas Gerais. Methodologically, we sought to understand the functionality of the Passo Fundo Regional Prison (traditional system) and the Santa Luzia prison (with the application of the [Association for the Protection and Assistance to Convicts – Associação de Proteção e Assistência aos Condenados [Apac] methodology), thus confronting architectural assessment guidelines on the efficiency of these establishments aimed at rehabilitating convicts by the judicial system. The results showed that the state of architectural conservation and programs aimed at resocialization positively influence the decrease in reoccurrences.

Adversariality, Plea Bargaining, and Prison Population Growth: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

During the two decades after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. promoted Latin America's deepest criminal justice transformation. By the end of 2010, approximately 70% of Latin American countries had abandoned their inquisitorial system and adopted the U.S. model. In the mass- incarceration era, the U.S. expanded its adversarial model without considering the consequences in foreign penitentiary systems. Despite a large body of literature documenting the scale of imprisonment in the U.S. and its effects on inequality outcomes, we know relatively little about the U.S. impact in Latin American prisons. After the reform took place, almost every country that introduced it experienced an acceleration in incarceration rates. Almost three decades after this transformation, Latin America lives one of its majors' prison crisis, while the effect of adversariality remains empirically unexplored. In this project, I seek to advance the literature on mass-incarceration studying the consequences of the U.S. transnational agenda in one key jurisdiction -Colombia. Mainly, I will explore the effects of adversariality and introducing controversial institutions like plea bargaining into the Latin American context. To carry out this analysis, I exploit the Colombian quasi-experimental case showing that the U.S. model caused an increase of 18%-30% in Colombian incarceration rates.

Oedipus-Inspired Pintos: The Plague of Prisons in Two Chicano Takes on the Prototypical Myth of Crisis

This article discusses two revisions of the tragic myth of Oedipus in the light of recent studies on the American prison crisis. In 2010, Luis Alfaro’s “Oedipus el Rey,” a play that draws on Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, addressed the national prison crisis which has encroached on barrio life with dreadful repercussions. One year later, Ernest Drucker employed the term “plague of prisons” to describe the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the US and shed light on its effects on poor communities of color, such as barrio communities. As if responding to Drucker’s study and Alfaro’s play, Law Chavez’s “Señora de la Pinta,” presented in 2012, gets its inspiration from the myth of Oedipus to dramatize US prison experience as a plague threatening the self and the barrio. The two plays are examined for what they reveal about the impact of the prison crisis on Chicano barrio life and Chicanidad.

Entrepreneurial initiative of the inactive human resource in the Penitentiary Establishment of Medium Security and Prison of Bucaramanga

El código penitenciario colombiano se encuentra regulado por la Ley 65 de 1993, que establece que las funciones y finalidades de la pena en Colombia son la protectora y la preventiva, pero su fin fundamental es la resocialización. Actualmente, se presenta en el país una crisis penitenciaria y carcelaria en el proceso de resocialización a la vida laboral del recluso, por su condición de expresidiario. En esta investigación se hace un análisis de las características personales y del entorno del recurso humano inactivo y su influencia en la iniciativa emprendedora en el Establecimiento Penitenciario de Bucaramanga, con el fin de proponer estrategias que favorezcan la resocialización de esta población vulnerable. El estudio tiene un enfoque cuantitativo no experimental, de corte transversal y de alcance relacional. Se comprobó que las características personales y del entorno global influyen positivamente en la iniciativa emprendedora del privado de la libertad, por lo que se propone la creación de una unidad de emprendimiento en el Establecimiento Penitenciario.

The voice of the prison and “wars of position”: a discourse analysis of a Venezuelan prison newspaper

ABSTRACTThis article examines how a Venezuelan prison newspaper challenges hegemonic representation of prisoners and the prison crisis through constructing new meanings of the prison and new subjectivities of incarcerated peoples. In my research, I utilize qualitative methods such as textual and visual analysis of the August 2014 Venezuelan prison newspaper La Voz, unstructured interviews conducted with the authors and supporters of the paper, and observations made during a prison visit in February 2015. Through discourse analysis, I examine how the authors use the prison newspaper in an ideological battle to construct new forms of common sense about prisons; this struggle is what Gramsci calls “wars of position.” While the article aims to illustrate the ways in which power is diffuse—as embodied through language and meaning—I do not ignore the fact that power is also highly centralized—as illustrated by the prison itself. I argue that the Venezuelan prison newspaper rejects prevailing hegemonic rationalities that people are in prison because they are being punished for a crime; instead, the newspaper represents prisons as illegitimate institutions that intern and punish poor people.

Book Review: Mr. Smith goes to prison: What my year behind bars taught me about America’s prison crisis

Book Review: Mr. Smith goes to prison: What my year behind bars taught me about America’s prison crisis

Producing the ‘problem’ of new psychoactive substances (NPS) in English prisons

BackgroundThere has been a significant change in the types of substances consumed within English prison settings in the last eight years. There have been particular concerns regarding the acceleration in the use and availability of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), mainly synthetic cannabinoids. Although NPS were identified as a ‘problem’ in prisons in 2011, government responses emerged only in 2015. As yet, there is no overarching policy document or strategy for dealing with NPS. This paper analyses the various strands of the response to NPS in prisons published from January 2015 to December 2016. MethodsDrawing on Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ framework, the ways in which the NPS ‘problem’ in prisons has been represented is analysed through a number of related policy texts including press releases, new legislative and regulatory measures, government documents and training package. ResultsFrom the various measures introduced to deal with the ‘problem’, NPS use is produced primarily as a law, order and control ‘problem’ requiring regulation, penalties and control, rather than a ‘demand problem’ calling for prevention, education, treatment and harm reduction or a ‘regime problem’ demanding greater emphasis and resources for purposeful activities such as education, training and work opportunities. This problematisation of drug use in prisons has a history dating back to the 1995 prison drug strategy and has become entrenched and reproduced within policy development over time. ConclusionThe law, order, and control problematization blames the volatility of the substances and the individual prisoners who use them as key factors contributing to the current prison crisis, rather than as consequences of the wider practices, cultures, contexts, and conditions. Multiple representations of the problem of NPS in prisons are needed in order to address the regime and structural issues which lead those imprisoned to use substances.

A Ascensão do reino do facão

As one of the largest prison populations in the world, Brazil is facing an uncontrollable situation where government institutions fail to provide any kind of positive outcome to the problems faced on a daily basis. Inmates live in overcrowded, unhealthy, degenerate establishments. We are led to ask ourselves: What dictates govern the present prison crisis? We intend to draw a theoretical outline of the main problems of the Brazilian Penitentiary System analyzing them in perspective with the modern criminological theories, thus proposing new directions of the issue. Received: 05/24/2018Accepted: 07/05/2018

The Thrill of the Chase: Punishment, Hostility and the Prison Crisis

This article offers one of the first analyses of the current and ongoing crisis affecting English and Welsh prisons and of recent proposals for prison reform. The article pits the impression of novelty surrounding the current framework of incarceration against the notion promoted by critical scholarship that the nexus between crisis and reform is not new. Building on this debate, we deploy an original theoretical perspective, grounded on the concept of hostile solidarity, to argue that the promise of prison reform is an essential aspect of the utility ascribed to punishment, which allows the prison to be perpetually preserved and seen as unquestionably necessary, even when in crisis. The article concludes by suggesting that our emotional attachment and contemporary reliance on punishment, and its manifestation in the perpetuation and expansion of institutions like the prison, are ultimately self-defeating and self-propelling.

Care Cage: Black Women, Political Symbolism, and 1970s Prison Crisis

Mary Fitzpatrick's historical life sheds light on the role of liberal discourse and racialized and gendered affective politics in entrenching black captivity. Her imprisonment and coerced domestic servitude reveal the role of black women's carceral exploitation in a pivotal 1970s moment in which the future of the U.S. carceral state was contested and contingent.

Five Theses on Mass Incarceration

According to the latest data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS),in 2014 the prison population of the United States stood at 1361,500 (BJS 2015a, 1), If prisoners held in local jails are added to the count, the population confined behind bars reaches 2,306,100 (for an incarceration rate of 725/100,000), to which one should add the more than 4,7 million individuals currently on parole or probation. In total, more than 7 million people are currently under some form of penal control--almost 3% of the US population, the equivalent of what would be the second-largest city in the United States after New York (BJS 2014a, 2015a, 2015b). However, the sheer extension of the correctional population in the United States does not convey the race and class dimensions of the US penal state--the result of a four-decade-long carceral experiment devised from the outset as a political strategy to restructure racial and class domination in the aftermath of the radical social movements of the 1960s (cf. Alexander 2010; Tonry 2011; Wacquant 2009). As of 2014, 59% of the male prison population was either African American (37%) or Latino (22%). The largest overrepresentation of black prisoners is among males aged 18 to 19: With an incarceration rate of 1,072/100,000, young black men are 10 times more likely to be in a state or federal prison than whites (102/100,000). In 2014, 6% of black men aged 30 to 39 were in prison, compared to 2% of Latinos and 1% of whites of the same age (BJS 2015, I). According to recent estimates, African American children born in 1990 of a high-school dropout black father had a 50.5% chance of having their male parent in prison by age 14, whereas for those born of a non-college-educated black father the probability was 30% (Wildeman 2009, 273). Black male high-school dropouts born between 1975 and 1979 had a 70% chance of spending some time in prison before reaching age 35 (Western and Wildeman 2009, 231). In 2014, resuming a recent downward trend that had been momentarily reversed in 2013, the nation's prison population registered a modest 1% decline--15,400 fewer prisoners since the previous year. Approximately one third of this decline was due to a decrease in the federal prison population; once that number is subtracted from the count, the decline at the state level (where the vast majority of prisoners are held) goes down to a meager average of 200 fewer inmates for each US state in the period 2013-2014 (BJS 2015a, 2). Despite the ongoing national debate on the prison crisis and the recent wave of bipartisan initiatives to tackle the burgeoning costs of mass incarceration, in 2014 prison admissions actually rose in 18 states. Over the same period, California--whose 2011 Public Safety Realignment plan has been hailed by some as a blueprint for nationwide decarceration efforts--has witnessed a slight increase in the state prison population (+0.1%), largely due to the ongoing rise in the number of women behind bars (+1.3% in 2013-2014; ibid., 3). Indeed, since 2010 women have been the fastest-growing fraction of the US prison population, rising by an average of 3.4% annually, even as the number of incarcerated men was undergoing a modest decline (BJS 2014b, 6). These tendencies become even more evident if one observes the fluctuating population of local jails, which are increasingly transformed into modern-day poorhouses in charge of the low-cost warehousing of petty offenders now deemed unworthy of expensive stays in state prisons: In 2014 the total US jail population rose by 1.8% since the previous year, with the female jail population increasing by a notable 18% between 2000 and 2014 (BJS 2015b. 3). Do these contradictory signals emerging from the penal field herald a turning point in the history of the American carceral state? Is it plausible, as Jonathan Simon (2014, 1) argues in his recent book, that like a biblical flood, the age of mass incarceration is finally ebbing? …

A Constitutional and Political High-Wire Act: The Role of Brown v. Plata in Solving America's Prison Crisis

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Coxsackie: the life and death of prison reform

Should prisons attempt reform and uplift inmates or, by means of principled punishment, deter them from further wrongdoing? This debate has raged in Western Europe and in the United States at least since the late eighteenth century. Joseph F. Spillane examines the failure of progressive reform in New York State by focusing on Coxsackie, a New Deal reformatory built for young male offenders. Opened in 1935 to serve adolescents adrift, Coxsackie instead became an unstable and brutalizing prison. From the start, the liberal impulse underpinning the prison's mission was overwhelmed by challenges it was unequipped or unwilling to face-drugs, gangs, and racial conflict. Spillane draws on detailed prison records to reconstruct a life behind bars in which ungovernable young men posed constant challenges to racial and cultural order. The New Deal order of the prison was unstable from the start; the politics of punishment quickly became the politics of race and social exclusion, and efforts to save liberal reform in postwar New York only deepened its failures. In 1977, inmates took hostages to focus attention on their grievances. The result was stricter discipline and an end to any pretense that Coxsackie was a reform institution. Why did the prison fail? For answers, Spillane immerses readers in the changing culture and racial makeup of the U.S. prison system and borrows from studies of colonial prisons, which emblematized efforts by an exploitative regime to impose cultural and racial restraint on others. In today's era of mass incarceration, prisons have become conflict-ridden warehouses and powerful symbols of racism and inequality. This account challenges the conventional wisdom that America's prison crisis is of comparatively recent vintage, showing instead how a racial and punitive system of control emerged from the ashes of a progressive ideal.

The Social Determinants of Health and Justice and the Aging in Prison Crisis: A Call for Human Rights Action

The rapid growth of the incarceration of aging people in prison across the globe is particularly problematic in the United States, which has the largest incarceration rate per capita. This papers examines the aging in prison crisis through the lens of the social determinants of health, well-being, and justice. Case studies and promising practices are reviewed to assist in a coordinated human rights based response to address the aging in prison crisis at the grassroots, national, and international levels.