Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing The Benefits Of Practicing Spirituality Or Religion While Incarcerated : A Study Of Formerly Incarcerated Men In Texas, Jana Lynn Wu

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This qualitative study explored former prisoners' beliefs regarding the benefits of practicing spirituality or religion during their time of incarceration. The prison population is seldom included in mainstream research studies. Additionally, a personal relationship to religion and spirituality is a difficult phenomenon to quantify in a standardized and formulaic way. This research sought to explore if spirituality or religion can be considered a protective factor during a time of incarceration. This study was conducted with face-to-face interviews, using both demographic and narrative questions. A qualitative, flexible research method design was used to gather and analyze data from 13 former male …

Congressional Debates Over Prisoner Education: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Mark Timothy Yates

Educational Policy Studies Dissertations

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country. The causes for the large number of prisoners can be traced, in part, to a politicized war on crime that resulted in harsh sentencing and high recidivism rates. Prisoner education provides the potential for slowing the revolving door of prison by helping to create engaged citizens, who are committed to bettering themselves and their communities. However, there is a paucity of support for programs such as Pell Grants, which could facilitate emancipatory education in prisons. The purpose of this work is to examine why prisoners are provided few meaningful …

Reel Images: Representations Of Adult Male Prisons By The Film Industry, Melissa E. Fenwick

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research on the criminal justice system, punishment, and media continue to generate academic interest, particularly in the realm of social constructionism. The social construction perspective provides insight into the process through which media-controlled images are translated into social definitions of crime and justice. One new area of interest is the representations of prisons and penal culture by the entertainment media, namely the film industry. In this study, the author contributes to the area of social constructionist literature by administering a content analysis of eleven feature films on male prisons produced between 1979 and 2001. The author examines the frequency and …

Introduction: Symposium On Remedies For Exonerated Prisoners, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Exoneration of wrongfully convicted prisoners is not a new thing, but it seems to be more common with advances in the availability and utility of DNA evidence. Given the number of exonerations that have occurred in recent years, it is increasingly difficult to dismiss inmates’ ubiquitous claims of innocence. Is it still a safe assumption that the vast majority of claims of innocence are false? Do we trust that post-conviction and appellate procedures will sort the wheat from the chaff?

Regardless of how we answer the questions raised above, there is one question society must answer—how should the wrongfully convicted …

Reconceptualizing Competence: An Appeal, Mae C. Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Relative Benefits Of Incarceration: The Overall Change Over The Previous Decades And The Benefits On The Margin, John Donohue

John Donohue

No abstract provided.

No Rational Basis: The Pragmatic Case For Marijuana Law Reform, Eric Blumenson

Eric Blumenson

This article presents a critique of marijuana prohibition and suggests some alternative regulatory approaches that would be more productive and consonant with justice. Part I relies on a forty-year empirical record to demonstrate that (1) reliance on a law enforcement approach has aggravated rather than mitigated the risks involved with marijuana use, and (2) criminalization, which results in the arrest of more than 700,000 Americans annually for possession of any amount of marijuana, is an inhumane and destructive response to an act that almost 100 million Americans have committed. Part II assesses the relative merits of several alternative reform policies, …

The Older Inmate, Tara Livengood

Case Studies from Age in Action

Educational Objectives

1. Present a general overview of elderly inmates, including statistics, characteristics, crimes, mental and medical illnesses, and disabilities.

2. Describe Virginia’s only geriatric correctional facility.

3. Explain the practice of release planning, focusing especially on geriatric release.

A Miscarriage Of Juvenile Justice: A Modern Day Parable Of The Unintended Results Of Bad Lawmaking, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

Sensationalized cases increasingly create the context for public policy discussion. Stories about violent crime are a common feature of the local evening news and their emotional nature can often create the hook politicians need to showcase their “tough on crime” agendas. Often anecdotal and lurid, stories of criminal misdeeds are widely used to convince the public of a need to create or change laws. This article demonstrates the perils of making law by extrapolating from a few random, albeit attention-grabbing, events. Specifically, the article examines the impact of a 1995 change in New Hampshire state law that lowered the age …

Drug Law Reform--Retreating From An Incarceration Addiction, Robert G. Lawson

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Queer Lockdown: Coming To Terms With The Ongoing Criminalization Of Lgbtq Communities, Ann Cammett

Scholarly Works

The criminal justice system exacts a toll on some Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) communities. The experience of living in poverty and the concomitant exposure to a variety of governmental systems puts all poor, but especially LGBTQ low-income people of color, at risk of incarceration. What typically goes unexamined are the myriad ways that LGBTQ people are drawn into and experience the carceral system because of sexual identities and expression. This negative effect surfaces at every conceivable level: the marginalization and subsequent criminalization of queer youth; anti-gay bias in the judicial system; the rerouting of domestic violence cases …

Children Of Foster Care: Elevating Their Voices, Nancy A. Cristadoro

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The purpose of this paper was to discuss how through research and an internship with Douglas County Child Welfare, elevating children"â„¢s voices in decisions of placement is a vital component of child welfare reform today. This paper examines some of the negative outcomes of the foster care system on children who age out of the system. The negative impact further deteriorates children"â„¢s self esteem and increases the occurrence of homelessness and incarceration in our society. The internship further validated the difficulty inherent in including children in decisions of placements and the importance of allowing extra time, planning and changing mind …

Labor And Employment Law: Tools For Prevention, Investigation And Discipline Of Staff Sexual Misconduct In Custodial Settings, Susan D. Carle

Susan D. Carle