Prison School Research Articles

At the Mercy of the Prisoner Next Door: Using an Experimental Measure of Selfishness as a Criminological Tool

Do criminals maximise money? Are criminals more or less selfish than the average subject? Can prisons apply measures that reduce the degree of selfishness of their inmates? Using a tried and tested tool from experimental economics, we cast new light on these old criminological questions. In a standard dictator game, prisoners give a substantial amount, which calls for more refined versions of utility in rational choice theories of crime. Prisoners do not give less than average subjects, not even than subjects from other closely knit communities. This speaks against the idea that people commit crimes because they are excessively selfish. Finally those who receive better marks at prison school give more, as do those who improve their marks over time. This suggests that this correctional intervention also reduces selfishness.

Transcription work: learning through coparticipation in research practices

The focus for this paper evolved out of doctoral research conducted by the author with incarcerated women attending a prison school. During that project, she hired an assistant to transcribe audiotapes of interviews, participant observations, and field notes. In this paper, one context‐specific case is used to examine the complexities of transcription work involving a person other than the researcher. Lave and Wenger's (1991) “legitimate peripheral participation” serves as an analytical framework to explore the learning experienced by both researcher and transcriber as a result of their co‐participation in the project. Transcripts of four interviews conducted with the transcriber provide the basis for the investigation. The findings disrupt simplistic notions of the transcription process and show how peripheral participation can lead to educational experiences for those involved.

Training School Psychologists in Prison Schools

Abstract Although special services providers are trained to address a range of behavioral problems, there has been little attention paid to non-traditional training sites which can prepare special service providers for working with seriously delinquent youth with histories of criminal behavior. This article considers the increasingly delinquent behaviors of children and describes an internship training experience for school psychologists assigned to a correctional educational program serving delinquent, incarcerated, youthful offenders.

Conducting Respectful Research: A Critique of Practice

This article evolved out of my work as both teacher and researcher in a prison school for women. I explore the possibility of conducting respectful research within a prison context while acknowledging that the issues raised here are important to researchers at other educational sites also. Discussion of my shifting positions within the research context is central, particularly my experience of moving from the position of outsider to what I came to understand as that of someone familiar. I explore how this particular shift affected the research process, using examples from field work to problematize aspects of research in practice in particular, informed consent, participant observations, interviews, reciprocity, and documentation. In conclusion I pose questions that arose for me during this research, questions I hope will contribute to continuing conversations about the practicalities and possibilities of conducting respectful research in schooling contexts.

Educating prisoners: Observations of a prison school

Performance + InstructionVolume 33, Issue 5 p. 13-16 Article Educating prisoners: Observations of a prison school Dr. Russell Eisenman Ph.D., Dr. Russell Eisenman Ph.D. Dr. Eisenman is Associate Professor of Psychology at McNeese State University. He previously served as Senior Clinical Psychologist in a prison treatment program. You may contact him through the Department of Psychology, McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA 70609-1895.Search for more papers by this author Dr. Russell Eisenman Ph.D., Dr. Russell Eisenman Ph.D. Dr. Eisenman is Associate Professor of Psychology at McNeese State University. He previously served as Senior Clinical Psychologist in a prison treatment program. You may contact him through the Department of Psychology, McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA 70609-1895.Search for more papers by this author First published: May/June 1994 https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.4160330506 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume33, Issue5May/June 1994Pages 13-16 RelatedInformation

Certain Sociological Characteristic Differences in the Correctional Education Learners and the Public School Learners:

This article compares two sociological characteristics, ethnicity and age, between the learners in correctional education (prison) schools and the learners in the public schools. The research findings indicate and demonstrate that correctional educators (prison teachers) lack certain important professional preparedness training to adequately educate these learners with regard to their age and cultural ethnicity. This article also presents a graphic model which illustrates how this lack of professional preparedness continues to be purported by teacher education institutions where the correctional educators are trained and recruited by correctional educational school districts, correstional systems, and correctional programs.

Computer-Based Education in Prison Schools

The PLATO Corrections Project (PCP) is implementing PLATO computer-based education in Illinois prisons. Since October 1975, the PCP staff has assembled a pre-GED and GED curriculum of over 400 already available PLATO lessons; has developed the PCP instructional management, communications, and evaluation system; has designed an instructor training package; and more recently has developed forty hours of mastery-based instruction in adult reading comprehension and vocabulary development. Some 2,000 students and 120 staff in three Illinois prisons have used the system for over 32,000 hours. The PCP network also has expanded to the Minnesota Department of Corrections. Data collected on student/instructor usage, attitudes, and achievement demonstrate that the PCP System is feasible, attractive, and effective in corrections education. Moreover, educational strategies employed in PCP's current curriculum development program will form the basis for a comprehensive basic skills curriculum for educationally disadvantaged youth and adults.

The Nature and Effectiveness of Correctional Techniques

The criminological and penological literature contains two principal conceptions of The older conception considers as those general systems and general programs used for handling criminals and assumed to be somehow reformative. Thus, imposition of either physical or psychological pain, in any of a variety of settings, continues to be viewed as a general system for correcting criminals. Similarly, one rationale for introducing and maintaining general programs such as probation, parole, and imprisonment has been that these programs are or will be more correctional than the programs used in the past. A newer conception of however, places more emphasis on the specific methods used in attempts to change individual criminals. While descriptions of such methods are by no means as precise as descriptions of medical techniques, an analogy with clinical medicine is made, with the result that utilizing the methods is called or therapy. Thus, within a parole or probation organization, the agents may help offenders find jobs, order them to stay out of saloons, or counsel them on psychological problems of adjustment. Because each of these maneuvers is assumed to have some efficacy in changing criminals into noncriminals, each is viewed as a treatment or technique. Similarly, prisoners may be enrolled in prison schools, ordered to work, given vocational counseling and training, or engaged in individual or group psychotherapeutic interviews. These specific programs also are viewed as techniques. This paper will be devoted to closer identification of these two conceptions of techniques, to discussion of the problems involved in measuring the effectiveness of defined in either the first or the second sense, and to exploration of possible reasons for reluctance to define techniques more precisely. *B.S. 1943, Iowa State College; Ph.D. I950, Indiana University. Chairman, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles; Research Consultant, California Department of Corrections; Research Advisory Board, California Board of Corrections. Sociologist, Illinois State Penitentiary, I949; Research Associate, United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, 1951; Research Associate, California Institution for Men, 1950-5I; Research in the Wisconsin State Prison and the Wisconsin State Reformatory, I955-56, while attached to the Center for Education and Research in Corrections, University of Chicago. Author, OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY (1953); co-author [with Edwin H. Sutherland], PRINCIPLES OF CRIMINOLOGY (5th ed. 1955). Contributor to sociological, legal, and publications.

An American Prison School in the Eighteenth Century

An American Prison School in the Eighteenth Century

A Filarial Survey in British Guiana, 1921

The Filariasis Commission, composed as it was of British, Chinese, and Mohammedan members, was able to take a more extensive and a more representative survey of the incidence of filariasis than would have been possible in the case of a single investigator. Dr. Khalil had frequent invitations to local Mohammedan ceremonies, and as these were usually held at night, he was able to examine a large number of bloodfilms from East Indian immigrants. Dr. C. U. Lee was very hospitably received by the Chinese families of Georgetown, and collected statistics as to the filarial rate amongst them on a scale that was hitherto unattainable. The whole commission, working together, was able to undertake a survey of an institution such as Georgetown Prison, the Almshouse, or Christchurch Public School with little inconvenience to the children or inmates. Thus from hospitals, schools, prisons, asylums, and domiciliary visitations, the Commission collected details and examined blood-films from 4,215 inhabitants of British Guiana. The total number of examinations was made up as follows:—