Criminology Commons^™

The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On The Well-Being Of People Incarcerated In United States Prisons, Kimberly Rivera

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the population as a whole. However, the incarcerated population (which also experiences a variety of health disparities) has been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Due to overcrowding, poor ventilation, and lack of resources, the incarcerated population already is at a heightened risk for negative health outcomes, made worse by the recent pandemic. To adapt to the rapidly changing conditions during the pandemic in 2020 and into 2022, new safety measures were implemented, but the unintended consequences associated with the implementation of these procedures have yet to be examined empirically. I conducted a qualitative content …

Idle Hands Are The Devil's Workshop? Exploring The Connections Between Prison-Work Release Programming, Post-Release Employment And Recidivism, Ryan Maranville

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

This paper focuses on evaluations of employment-based reentry programs. It begins with an overview of recidivism, touching on the both theory and empirical research framing employment as a pivotal factor in the reentry process. Next, it reviews the limited assessments of work-release programming and their findings. The final sections examine the structural factors which complicate reentry, specifically low wages and community disorganization. And identifies the benefits of incorporating qualitative methods in criminological research as it relates to evaluating programs, their impact, and tying findings to program adaptations and future implementation.

Need For Reform: The Prison System And Deaf Inmates, Catherine Pellini

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

Anecdotal and empirical evidence reveal a severe lack of awareness, education and accessibility in the criminal justtice system for those who are deaf. These issues are most obvious and detrimental in the prison system and have serious ethical implications that need to be addressed.

Prisons, Nursing Homes, And Medicaid: A Covid-19 Case Study In Health Injustice, Mary Crossley

Articles

The unevenly distributed pain and suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic present a remarkable case study. Considering why the coronavirus has devastated some groups more than others offers a concrete example of abstract concepts like “structural discrimination” and “institutional racism,” an example measured in lives lost, families shattered, and unremitting anxiety. This essay highlights the experiences of Black people and disabled people, and how societal choices have caused them to experience the brunt of the pandemic. It focuses on prisons and nursing homes—institutions that emerged as COVID-19 hotspots –and on the Medicaid program.

Black and disabled people are disproportionately represented in …

Where Were The Lesbians In The Stonewall Riots? The Women’S House Of Detention & Lesbian Resistance, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

Where were the lesbians in the Stonewall Riots? They were jailed in the House of Detention for Women in Greenwich Village, New York City, two blocks away from the Stonewall Inn. Lesbians in the Women's House of Detention shouted from the windows to the rioters in the streets below, fueling the momentum of the Stonewall uprising. The women's prison was a site of lesbian confinement and resistance that inspired the 1969 uprising in Greenwich Village.

Polly Thistlethwaite is Chief Librarian at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She volunteered at the Lesbian Herstory Archives 1986 – 1997.

Our Criminal Justice System Should Not Be Our Mental Health System (But It Is), Donald Roth

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Our criminal justice system is like the silt layer at the bottom of the ocean. If a problem isn’t taken care of higher up in society, it will eventually find its way down to the criminal justice system."

Posting about the need for criminal law reform from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/our-criminal-justice-system-should-not-be-our-mental-health-system-but-it-is/

Prison Officer Legitimacy, Their Exercise Of Power, And Inmate Rule Breaking, Benjamin Steiner, John Wooldredge

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Prison officers are directly responsible for transmitting penal culture and prison policy to the confined, yet few studies of officers’ impact on inmate behavior have been conducted. We examined the effect of inmates’ perceptions of officer legitimacy on rule breaking within prisons, as well as the effects of officers’ reliance on different power bases on rates of rule breaking across prisons. The findings from bi-level analyses of data from inmates and officers from 33 prisons revealed that inmates who held stronger views regarding officer legitimacy committed fewer nonviolent infractions but that perceived legitimacy did not affect the number of violent …

Programming In Restrictive Housing: Considerations For Improving Outcome Evaluations, H. Daniel Butler, Starr Solomon, Ryan E. Spohn

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

A number of studies have identified “what works” in regard to the successful implementation of correctional programming over the past several decades. Few studies, however, have examined the complexities associated with programming in restrictive housing. Using data from a Midwestern department of corrections, we examined whether the provision of programming in restrictive housing achieved desired outcomes (e.g., reductions in inmate misconduct). The findings revealed the amount of time served in restrictive housing and confinement in different types of restrictive housing may influence estimations of a treatment effect. As a growing number of states seek to reform the use of restrictive …

The Effects Of Prior Education On The Success Of Inmates In Prison Education Programs, Jayden Barth, Lisa Kort-Butler

UCARE Research Products

This study examined the relationship among an inmate’s prior education level, work history, and his/her success in a prison education and training program. Success in prison education and training programs in this study was defined as a positive change in job readiness skills, selfcontrol, and self-esteem.

The study took a mixed-methods approach, based on secondary data analysis. Data came from a faithbased organization which currently facilitates a life skills/job readiness program in some Nebraska prisons and jails. (244 men, 193 women)

Quantitative Data: • No significant relationship between prior education or prior incarceration and the success in the program …

Assessing Suicide Risk Scores As A Predictor Of Suicidal Behaviors In A Correctional Psychiatric Facility, Janice Rice

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This study evaluated suicide risk assessments in a correctional psychiatric setting. It considered whether clinicians’ judgment of suicide risk predicted future suicidal behaviors in seriously mentally ill prisoners. Data analysis did not show that higher suicide risk scores predicted more suicidal behaviors, nor did it show that suicide risk scores differentiated multiple attempters, or those who went on to attempt suicide or self-harm two or more times in the three years following the assessment. Study data did, however show that suicide risk scores significantly differentiated those who went on to attempt suicide or self-harm at least once in the three …

Exploring The Effects Of Ex-Prisoner Reentry On Structural Factors In Disorganized Communities: Implications For Leadership Practice, G. Michael Davis

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore the way(s) in which the disproportionate return of ex-prisoners to socially and economically disadvantaged communities impact(s) specific community structural factors identified in the study. After three decades of withstanding the enduring effects of the mass incarceration, communities stand at the edge of a new era. Economic realities, and the failure of policies designed to deter crime through imprisonment are rapidly ushering in an era of mass prisoner reentry. The complexity of the challenges surrounding the successful integration of offenders to communities requires a new leadership paradigm for justice leaders. This study posits …

Street, James William, 1858-1944 (Mss 478), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 478. Account books and journals of James William Street, recording his activities and local events, primarily in Henderson and Lyon counties in Kentucky. He also records the 1908-1909 activities of the Night Riders in the region.

Hagerman, Henry Thomas, 1862-1935 (Sc 443), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 443. Legal papers setting the execution date of Jim Buckner, African American, Marion County, Kentucky, as 9 June 1911, and stay of execution by Acting Governor William Hopkinson Cox until 8 July 1911, because of the incompletion of the installation of the electrocution apparatus. Henry Thomas Hagerman, warden of Kentucky Penitentiary, Eddyville, attested to Buckner’s death.

Kentucky State Penitentiary - Deeds, 1884 (Sc 1586), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1586. Copies of fifteen deeds for land in Lyon County, Kentucky near Eddyville on which the Kentucky State Penitentiary was built.

Loyalty's Reward — A Felony Conviction: Recent Prosecutions Of High-Status Female Offenders, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

Between 2001 and 2004, six high-status women were charged with crimes in connection with corporate criminal cases. The public is familiar with some of them, although not all of their cases have been covered equally in the press. With the exception of an occasional article now and then mentioning the exploding rates of female incarceration, women's crime tends to be invisible to the public eye. The statistical data the government collects and analyzes on women and crime will be discussed. This article will focus on the prosecution of the individual cases of Lea Fastow, Betty Vinson, and Martha Stewart. Their …

The Challenge Of Prison Overcrowding And Recidivism, Pearl Jacobs

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The state of Connecticut is currently dealing with a growing prison population. Ex-offenders face enormous obstacle trying to reconnect with society and get a job. They have no skills and lack a family support system.Their lack of preparation for successful reintegration into society places them at risk to become repeat offenders. Overcrowding in prisons produces individuals unable to cope or survive in free society.

Many of the recommendations of The Ex-Offender Employability Task Force of the State of Illinois relate to ex-offender employment and are worthy of consideration in employment programs in Connecticut.

We will have a safer and more …

Where Do We Go From Here? Boot Camps In The Future, Doris Layton Mackenzie, Gaylene Armstrong

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Boot camps have developed over the past two decades into a program that incorporates a military regimen to create a structured environment. While some critics of this method of corrections suggest that the confrontational nature of the program is antithetical to treatment, authors Doris Layton MacKenzie and Gaylene Styve Armstrong present research knowledge and personal discussions with community leaders that offer insight into both the strengths and weaknesses of this controversial form of corrections.

Correctional Boot Camps: Military Basic Training or a Model for Corrections? provides the most up-to-date assessment of the major perspectives and issues related to the current …

Managed Health Care In Prisons As Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION:Billy Roberts, a prisoner in an Alabama state prison, had a history of severe psychiatric disorders. He was often put on suicide watch, and received large doses of psychotropic drugs. A managed health care company, Correctional Medical Services (CMS), was responsible for the health care at the prison. After Roberts had a suicidal episode, CMS's statewide mental health care director reportedly put Roberts in an isolation cell rather than a psychiatric care unit. The mental health care director also ordered that Roberts' medication be discontinued pursuant to an alleged policy of CMS to get as many prisoners off psycho- tropic …