Prison Reform Research Articles

“We are perceived as a foreign, ‘western’ element by Russian society” - Interview* with Liudmila Alpern‡, Center for Prison Reform, Moscow, 2 October 2008◊

Introducing The Moscow Center for Prison Reform PIPSS.ORG - Could you briefly introduce yourself and explain the circumstances that led you to work for the Moscow Center for Prison Reform? Liudmila Alpern: My name is Liudmila Alpern. I am the deputy director of the Moscow Center for Prison Reform. I have been working in this organization for 10 years, although I was connected to it for many more years prior to that. Founded by Valery Abramkin in 1988, the organization has existed for twenty y...

The crisis of imprisonment: protest, politics, and the making of the American penal state, 1776-1941

America's prison-based system of punishment has not always enjoyed the widespread political and moral legitimacy it has today. In this groundbreaking reinterpretation of penal history, Rebecca McLennan covers the periods of deep instability, popular protest, and political crisis that characterized early American prisons. She details the debates surrounding prison reform, including the limits of state power, the influence of market forces, the role of unfree labor, and the 'just deserts' of wrongdoers. McLennan also explores the system that existed between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, where private companies relied on prisoners for labor. Finally, she discusses the rehabilitation model that has primarily characterized the penal system in the twentieth century. Unearthing fresh evidence from prison and state archives, McLennan shows how, in each of three distinct periods of crisis, widespread dissent culminated in the dismantling of old systems of imprisonment.

No One Knows: offenders with learning disabilities and learning difficulties

There is a lack of clarity about the prevalence of offenders with learning disabilities and learning difficulties. However, it is clear is that, regardless of actual numbers, many offenders have learning disabilities and learning difficulties that interfere with their ability to cope within the criminal justice system. No One Knows is a UK‐wide programme led by the Prison Reform Trust that aims to effect change by exploring and publicising the experiences of people with learning disabilities and learning difficulties who come into contact with the criminal justice system. The article highlights the aims of the No One Knows programme and considers recent research on prevalence, drawing attention to some of the reasons for the different findings.

The Poetry of Prose: Readings in Russian Literature. (Slavica Bergensia, 8) by Jostein Børtnes

MLR, 104.2, 2009 617 where civil societywas more developed. The Riga society provided quite successful work-relief schemes, drawing on family networks in themerchant milieu of some of itsmembers. Finally, Rosslyn turns to the Ladies' Committees of the Society for the Care of Prisons in St Petersburg and Orel, a component of a mixed-sex society. These women's activities were modelled on Elizabeth Fry's prison reforms in London's Newgate Prison. Their correspondence with Frymade them part of an international philanthropic network. Rosslyn's study is meticulously researched and draws on awide variety of sources. Itbrims with information, presenting the readerwith excerpts from reports and de tailed statistics of the various societies' incomes and expenditures. Where primary sources were scarce, Rosslyn has included alternative sources and drawn intelligent conclusions. University of Bern Ursula Stohler The Poetry ofProse: Readings inRussian Literature. By Jostein Bortnes. (Slavica Bergensia, 8) Bergen: Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. 2007. 211pp. ?14. ISBN 978-82-90249-34-7. The Poetry ofProse gathers together essays written by JosteinBortnes over twenty fiveyears into a readable and interesting collection which shows effectively the development ofmajor aspects of the authors ideas on religion and the nineteenth centuryRussian novel. Bortnes defines the poetry of prose' as the function of poetic modes of similarity in difference, inboth formal features such as metre and rhyme and elements of content such as allegory and metaphor, which transform the prose text from sequential, causal narrative into 'symbolic parallelism' (p. 10). Bortnes relates this transformation to the projection into art of theOrthodox conception of the self as emulating the life and suffering of Christ. The first chapter, on medieval Russian literature,although largely informative rather than argumentative, establishes thisOrthodox anthropology within hagiographic texts and provides the basis for themore detailed examination of the development of this feature in the Russian novel. The influence ofRousseau's natural man', and of theRomantic cult of genius, which gained its strongest expression in theworship ofNapoleon, provided a challenge to theOrthodox idea of the self, and inChapter 2 Bortnes shows how these differentworld-views are combined in the nineteenth-century novel, as the movement from transgression and separation through a liminal state to regeneration and reintegration, apparent inworks as varied asGogol"s Dead Souls and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, becomes fundamental toDostoevski's experimentation with the possibility of a christocentric anthropology in themodern world' (p. 79). Chapter 3 discusses how a dialogue with hagiography in thedepiction ofAlesha in The Brothers KaramazoVy and with biblical references in Crime and Punishment, through the presentation of theRaising of Lazarus scene, moves these novels towards 'symbolic parallelism', while the idea of polyphony in relation to the 'dissimilar similarity' (p. 101) of both models and their imitations, and the thematic repetitions which form the plots of Dostoevski's novels, form the basis of Chapter 4. Traditional 6i8 Reviews interpretations of the iurodivyi (holy fool) as either religious ormad are challenged by the conception of'God's secret servant' (p. 113), a figureboth outside the religious establishment and quite sane?as in the case ofAlesha afterhe leaves themonastery and Zosima before he becomes a monk?to show in Chapter 5 that iurodstvo is related in Dostoevskii to belief in Christ as the foundation of human freedom. Chapter 6 covers some of the same ground in itsquestioning of Prince Myshkin's Christ-like status in The Idiot, showing how differentmodels are projected on this character, while Chapters 7 and 8 expand on Girard's analysis of triangular desire inDostoevskii. In Chapter 9 Bortnes moves away from Dostoevskii to focus on the relationship between character and setting, self and nature, and inner reflection and narration in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, in a fine close reading. Finally Chapter 10 discusses Bakhtinian genre theory, and in a departure from the other essays, shows how a dialogue between genres underpins the depiction of Sebastian Flyte in EvelynWaugh's Brideshead Revisited. Although the hagiographic element of the analysis here ties inwith other essays, the oddness of this switch tomid twentieth-century English literature unbalances the collection slightly.Two other minor problems might have been avoided through greater revision of the original essays. There is a tendency to...

Prison works?

It is a commonly held view, one certainly held by the government, and most prison reformers, that the primary function of prison labour is to provide training and work experience to aid a prisoner in finding a post-release job. This is certainly not backed up by the everyday experiences of many prisoners and by the evidence base. Even the Prison Service reluctantly acknowledges that ‘The aim of prison industries is to occupy prisoners in out-of-cell activity and wherever possible to help them gain skills, qualifications and work experience to improve their employment prospects upon release’ (Select Committee on Home Affairs, 2004) (my emphasis).

Notas sobre Concepción Arenal

La figura de Concepción Arenal, cuando se la estudia, aparece casi siempre vinculada alDerecho Penal, a las prisiones, al preso. Fue como penalista, como reformadora de prisiones y comoestudiosa de la psicología del preso y de su entorno social como su fama se consolidó, traspasónuestras fronteras y alcanzó la cima, pero su personalidad era tan polifacética que no dejó tema sinanalizar, ni problema social sin abordar. Puede decirse que, en el siglo XIX, Concepción Arenal, consu inteligencia y con su pluma, iluminó los más oscuros rincones donde se escondían la injusticia, lapobreza, la violencia, la tiranía, la discriminación, los privilegios de clase y de género, denunciandomuy especialmente la inhumana situación de los presos.

Restorative Prisons: Towards Radical Prison Reform

The words ‘restorative’ and ‘prison’ seem somehow incompatible. Consequently, it ought to be acknowledged that ‘[a]t one level there can be no such thing as a restorative prison’ (Coyle 2001b:7). However, as Coyle (2001b:8) also notes, ‘in the interests of prisoners, of prison staff and of civil society one has to set one's ambitions higher than that’. It is already acknowledged that the prison systems we have in the developed world fail to compel offenders to take responsibility for the harm they have caused, fail to recognise the importance of victims in the equation, and fail to demonstrate values inherent in civil society. Accordingly, this article explores the notion of the restorative prison and looks at ways in which restorative and therapeutic processes might work to establish a wholly restorative and therapeutic prison in Australia. That is, a prison whose regime is run entirely on restorative and therapeutic principles rather than a prison that might have established a therapeutic or restorative unit or a prison which runs therapeutic or restorative programs. As Liebmann (2007:250) suggests, ‘it is not enough to have a single project to demonstrate “look how restorative we are” - rather a prison needs to look at all ways it can fulfil the values’.

Influencing public policy: an embedded criminologist reflects on California prison reform

Criminologists bemoan their lack of influence on U.S. crime policy, believing that the justice system would be improved if their research findings were more central in decision making. I had an opportunity to test that notion as I participated in California’s historic attempt to reform its prisons over the past 4 years. I became an embedded criminologist, where I was able to observe and contribute to the inner workings of state government. This article reports on my accomplishments with respect to fostering research activities and shifting the department’s focus towards prisoner reintegration. It discusses some of the lessons I learned, including the personal toll that such work entails, the importance of the timing of policy initiatives, and the power of rigorous methodology and clear communication. I conclude by recommending that other policy-oriented criminologists seek out similar experiences, as I believe our academic skills are uniquely suited and ultimately necessary to create a justice system that does less harm.

Punishment and the cultural limits to state power in late 18th-century Britain

The late 18th century is widely regarded as a time of rapid and momentous change in European and US penal history. Having identified this as the crucial formative period of the modern penitentiary, scholars naturally have sought to explain the developments that contributed to this modern form of punishment. However, at least in the case of Britain, this was also a time of continuity. Despite the well-publicized efforts of prison reformers, seminal prison legislation, and the end of transportation to America, Britain did not cease conveying its felons overseas. The question arises, 'Why did Britain resume transporting its offenders to New South Wales despite the opportunity and impetus for prison reform?' This article challenges more instrumental economic, strategic, and social control explanations by placing transportation within a broader expressive or cultural context. Since state punishments are some of the clearest and most brutal displays of state coercion, their application can generate questions about the nature of state authority and human freedoms. Using historical documents and secondary sources, this case study seeks to uncover the broader cultural understandings of the State's capacity to punish in order to explain why Britain continued to expel its offenders overseas. In doing so, it draws attention to how transportation operated within existing social relations between rulers and ruled — relations that were centered on the practical experiences of liberty and influenced by emergent democratic sentiments.

Redemption to Reform: The Intellectual Origins of the Prison Reform Movement

In the late Nineteenth Century, major shifts within the criminal justice system and within society at large led to the transformation of the concept of rehabilitation from a religious and spiritual process (redemptive rehabilitation) to a medicalized and rationalized process (reformative rehabilitation). This paper illustrates that shift through the lens of the process leading to the formation of the first American system of parole at the first adult reformatory prison, Elmira Reformatory.

Hapishane Tarihimizden Bir Kesit: Üsküdar Paşakapısı Tevkifhanesi ve Mütareke Dönemi’nde İşgali

Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda zindan, kale, kürek ve nihayet 1831'de cezaevi olarak kullanılmaya başlayan Mehterhâne'den, 1871'de Hapishâne-i Umûmî'ye geçiş son derece ağır adımlarla gerçekleşen sıkıntılı bir süreçtir(1). XIX. yüzyıl itibarıyla imparatorluğun içinde bulunduğu zincirleme siyasiiktisadi sıkıntılar, iç ve dış politikanın önceliklerini de belirlemiştir. Bu sancılı dönemde hapishane ve tevkifhanelerin ıslahı ile bunun en önemli unsuru olarak yeni binaların inşası, doğal olarak öncelikli ve acil gündem maddeleri arasında yer almamıştır. XIX. yüzyıl ortalarına dek İstanbul'da Mehterhâne dışındaki belli başlı hapishaneleri şu şekilde sıralamak mümkündür: Tersâne-i Âmire Zindanı, Baba Cafer Zindanı, Babıâlî Tomruğu, Bâb-ı Seraskerî Tomruğu, Ticarethâne-i Âmire ve Tophâne-i Âmire hapishaneleri(2).

‘Patchy’ police approach slammed by prison body

Miscarriages of justice could be occurring because of flaws in the way in which the police deal with people with learning disabilities, according to a Prison Reform Trust (PRT) report.

Probation and Parole as Methods of Mainstraiming Criminals: A Socio-Legal Analysis from Indian Perspective

Modern Criminal Jurisprudence recognizes that criminals are not born but made, since when a crime occurs it takes place due to culmination of variety of factors and that a good many crimes are the result of socio-economic milieu. Thus modern laws try to reform criminal in order to control crime. This paper would like to enlighten reader about the economic and jurisprudendential analysis behind prison reforms in the form of probation and parole. The author would analyse teh situation from emerging concepts like juvenile justice administration in lights of international documents like the 'Beijing Rules' etc. The main focus would be a comprehensive analysis of jail reformatory system in India from a comparative perspective.

“Prison Is Dull Today”: Prison Libraries and the Irony of Pious Reading

most, if not all, chapel libraries in federal prisons around the coun try (Goodstein). The Associated Press reported on 10 June 2007 that this metaphoric book burning stemmed from an April 2004 review of the problem of radical Islam in federal prisons by the United States Department of Justice (Neumeister). The lawsuit was filed on First Amendment grounds by a Christian and a Jew, convicts at the federal prison in Otisville, New York, who were affected by this Me morial Day massacre of religious literature (Goodstein). When the news of the suit broke, it stirred up considerable criti cism among Republicans, liberal Christians, and callers to evan gelical talk shows. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reversed itself in September and returned the books to the libraries. On 27 September 2007 the New York Times reported that [t]he Bureau will begin im mediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as material that could be radical izing or incite violence (Banerjee). The bureau continued review ing the literature, however, and compiled lists of approved reading; it also reserved the right to remove any religious literature that it found offensive or a threat to security. Convicts still could order re ligious and other materials directly from publishers, as they could even under the original order. Given that library rights for prisoners are severely limited, it is doubtful that the plaintiffs will gain relief from the lawsuit, which is still in the courts. The Prison Litigation and Reform Act of 1996 al lowed removal of many prisoner privileges, as well as restricting cor rectional court orders by reducing the number of lawsuits convicts could file unless they exhausted prison administrative channels first. United States Supreme Court decisions from the late 1970s on also se verely curtailed prison privileges. (See Bounds v. Smith, 1977; Rhodes v. Chapman, 1987; Wilson v. Seiter, 1991; and esp. Lewis v. Casey, 1996,

No One Knows: Identifying and supporting prisoners with learning difficulties and learning disabilities: the views of prison staff: Jenny Talbot for the Prison Reform Trust

No One Knows is a major initiative by the UK Prison Reform Trust which highlights the plight and predicament of prisoners with learning disabilities and of those with less severe degrees of learning difficulties. This major initiative has been sponsored by the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and has yielded a number of pivotal recommendations which are already being explored actively by the Department of Health (England) and the Prison Health Service.

Sometimes You Have to Go Backwards to Go Forwards: Judicial Review and the New National Security Exception to the Fourth Amendment

National security concerns have historically provided a strong basis for non-justiciable Executive Branch action; however, post 9/11, such actions have grown to encompass a greater number of American citizens' civil liberties. The federal judiciary's deferential treatment of national-security related conduct, particularly in the realm of suspicionless searches, occurs with dangerous frequency, and any semblance of meaningful review has been nearly eviscerated. The stakes involved in national security are weighty and, in many instances, present the courts with an artificial choice: uphold a potentially over-zealous suspicionless-search program but avoid danger, or strike down such a program in favor of civil liberties only to risk causing mass tragedy. Instead of being confined to two extreme choices, the courts should instead implement a more robust review process akin to the federal courts' institutional reform practice in the school desegregation and prison reform cases, which would allow remedial flexibility with programs that are constitutionally problematic. Using the suspicionless-search program instituted in July 2005 by the New York City Police Department as a sample, this paper demonstrates the way in which the courts could structure such remedial decrees to monitor and maintain a program's constitutionality. In lieu of creating yet another exception to the Fourth Amendment, the federal courts should heed the lessons from their own experience to avoid the potentially limitless extension of a new national security exception into civil liberties.

The Wildest Show in the South: The Politics and Poetics of the Angola Prison Rodeo and Inmate Arts Festival

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When I entered the grounds of Louisiana State Penitentiary, I saw a maze of rawhide belts and purses, paintings reminiscent of a back aisle thrift store, and elaborate wooden objects that evoked the country crafts of my southern childhood. I passed a robust woman sniffing a perfumed wooden rose with Mother etched in lavish script on its heart-shaped stand. Above her hung a copied print of John Wayne next to Tupac Shakur. Brightly airbrushed bible covers praised the Lord in oversized letters. Larger-than-life cartoon characters decorated heavily-shellacked furniture. Men with leather faces and white coats hovered near the crafts and sat amidst the crowds visiting Angola. Some talked with abandon; others hung back and smoked cigarettes, stealing glances at the women who passed. This was my first trip to Louisiana State Penitentiary in West Feliciana Parish, fifty-five miles northwest of Baton Rouge. The prison, better known as Angola, sits on former plantation land named for the country from which its slaves came. In 1880, former Confederate major Samuel James bought the Angola plantation with three others and ran it with convicts leased to him from the state of Louisiana. Under James and, later, the state--to whom he sold the plantation in 1901--Angola became infamous as a site of brutality and death. (1) After a long and troubled history, the prison is today considered a model prison, not least because of its popular Angola Prison Rodeo and Inmate Arts Festival, held every Sunday in October and one weekend in the spring. As a cultural anthropologist interested in folk art and popular culture, I pursued research at the Angola Prison Rodeo and Inmate Arts Festival, visiting six times in total. During my third and fourth visits, I secured permission from the warden to bring a tape recorder and camera to interview inmates, despite the usual prohibition against recording equipment at the festival. A child of the South, I was familiar with the phenomenon of rural festivals deemed offbeat by outsiders. During the summers of my youth, I spent at least one sweltering day wandering around downtown during Hillsborough (North Carolina) Hog Day. Like other teenage girls, I followed the standard courtship rituals of flirting, sweating, and eating barbecue, laughed at the vulgarity of the old farmers' hog-calling contests, and danced with their sons to the tunes of amateur musicians. From hillbilly days in Kentucky to rattlesnake roundups in Georgia, festivals are the very fabric of public life in the South. Indeed, the ubiquity and pageantry of public events often intrigue cultural anthropologists and folklorists. For them public festivals serve as a ritual display that communicates deeper cultural meanings through which a collective group asserts its history and identity. (2) The Angola Prison Rodeo and Inmate Arts Festival is a compelling model of this kind of public display, communicating complex and disturbing messages about crime and incarceration to a curious public. One inmate cowboy's experiences reveal how the rodeo poses as a progressive recreational reform at the same time that it exploits and ridicules inmate participants, while the perspective of an inmate artisan demonstrates how the Inmate Arts Festival offers a more salient, though still questionable, avenue to prison reform at Angola. Although the Inmate Arts Festival provides creative and economic benefits to inmates, the festival also presents a sanitized version of prison life, and the festival atmosphere eludes any serious critique about the growing prison industrial complex in the United States. Furthermore, the cultural messages available to spectators at Angola resonate more profoundly in the American South, where a legacy of conservatism on issues of crime and punishment has shaped the public imagination, and, perhaps more significantly, where the prison industrial complex has had the most profound impact. …

MARKET TESTING AND PRISON RIOTS: HOW PUBLIC‐SECTOR COMMERCIALIZATION CONTRIBUTED TO A PRISON RIOT

Research Summary:Macroeconomic reforms have swept many modern Western corrections jurisdictions into a world of commercial realities, privatization, and competition. The following case study reviews how competition (i.e., a market test) between the public and the private sectors in tendering for the operation of the Woodford Corrections Centre contributed to a riot. A combined model of the threshold and state‐centered theories of prison riots provides a template that clarifies the interactions of factors that contributed to the riot. Through document analysis and interviews, it is evident that despite producing a highly innovative bid judged superior to the private sector, the public sector was caught in a policy bind that led to a prison riot 3 weeks after the new center opened.Policy Implications:This research highlights important policy considerations for governments initiating policy‐driven prison reform. First, the research highlights the need for custodial policy development and implementation to be strategic and part of an overall reform agenda that considers prison riot theory. Second, if the public sector is to be involved in open competition with the private sector, then policy should be consistent with the conditions of the competition. Prisons, whether public or private, cannot cope successfully with reformist policy that does not consider adequately the interactions of the individuals in the prison.

Reading and Reckoning in a Women’s Prison

�� ��� It’s my time to come out of the wilderness now, and I saw all that in this book. —Denise, incarcerated in a Midwestern women’s prison Since the prisoners’ rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s gave way to the retributive justice framework of the 1980s and beyond, prisoners’ opportunities for reading, education, and rehabilitation have steadily declined. This decline bespeaks an increasing dehumanization of incarcerated men and women and a disavowal of their capacity for deep thought, growth, and transformation. Some critics argue that penal custody “is incompatible with real rehabilitation” (Sullivan, Prison Reform, 2) and that one should not expect prisons to provide genuine opportunities for change. Yet in conducting individual interviews and group discussions with incarcerated women, I have discovered that reading plays a central role in some imprisoned women’s efforts to begin freeing themselves from state-imposed, other-imposed, and self-imposed forces—including racism, poverty, abuse, and addiction—that have kept them in literal and figurative states of detention. 1 Despite significant limitations on the reading materials available to them, these women engage in reading practices that help them to come to terms with their pasts, contextualize their experiences in relation to larger frameworks, and gain inspiration from others as they learn to imagine—and create—new ways of being in the world. Because African American women constitute the fastest-growing population in the U.S. penal system, prisons merit particular attention as a site in which African American women’s literacy practices have flour ished. As Elizabeth McHenry argues in Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies, scholarship about reading has tended to obscure the complex history of African Americans’ literacy and literary engagements (5), thereby contributing to the “historical invisibility of black readers” (4). Indeed, from Janice Radway’s groundbreaking Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (1984/1991) to Elizabeth Long’s Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life (2003), studies typically feature white, middle-class women in exploring the

Frederic John Mouat (1816–97), MD FRCS LLD of the Indian Medical Service

Frederic John Mouat trained at University College London, qualifying Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1838. He was a distinguished surgeon in the Indian Civil Medical Service who became Professor of Medicine in the Bengal Medical College. After 30 years in India, where he was a leading figure in the field of education and prison reform, he retired to the UK in 1870. Then he started a new career as an Inspector for the Local Government Board. He was also an active member of the Royal Statistical Society, becoming its President in 1890. He died in 1897 leaving a widow and four stepchildren.