Over the past 30 years, the U.S. prison population has exploded. With only 5% of the global population, the U.S. now incarcerates more than 25% of the world’s prisoners (ACLU, 2011). This has led to increased attention towards the carceral system in the United States, and the efficacy of its methods of rehabilitation. As inmate populations rise, prisons have also become increasingly over-crowded, and this has led to a variety of environmental problems. In response to this and calls to action by the Justice Department to implement more sustainable and cost effective strategies in prisons, the United States is seeing a surge in prison sustainability programs throughout the country. While sustainability is an important challenge facing the world, researchers have argued that these changes are being made not only with environmental sustainability in mind, but with strategic aims to sustain current levels of hyper-incarceration.

Prisonization refers to the idea that prisoners assimilate to prison society, import criminogenic characteristics, and are deprived by prison culture. Post-carceral prisonization is the process by which excarcerated prisoners (EXP) are socialized by features of prisonization that persist after release, and which manifest under probation and parole. Post-carceral prisonization occurs as a result of stigma and discrimination and a lack of access to crucial resources like employment, housing, and prosocial ties. EXPs make a decision to change their lives during or immediately following release from prison or jail, usually accompanied by a spiritual or religious change. EXPs seek to reform identities constructed both by years of incarceration and by their experiences with "prison satellites" which are prisonization agents that emerge after release. Hindered by a loss of social, economic, and material assets, the threat of sudden and unexplainable incarceration, and lifelong criminal stigma, EXPs endeavor to positively reform their identities and their lives. / Ph. D.

« Vivre c’est passer d’un espace à l’autre, en essayant le plus possible de ne pas se cogner » (Perec, 2000 :14) .Or, lorsque l’on se cogne, ce n’est pas à un espace ni à un lieu, mais bien à un objet :un mur, une porte, un coin de table… ou à un individu pris dans le même espace. Il convient de noter que les objets ne sont pas nécessairement des choses inanimées, fixées dans le temps et l’espace ;les objets sont des actants non humains (Latour, 1995). Ils répondent à un « programme » que l’on peut déceler en étudiant l’ensemble des médiations et des interactions qui entourent ces objets ;ce dans quoi les individus ne cessent d’être pris, c’est-à-dire les objets faisant espace. Dans cette recherche doctorale, il s’est agit de considérer les dispositifs architecturaux les plus simples, dans une structure en quatre titres :le mur d’enceinte, l’escalier, la fenêtre… et la tasse de café, comme les résultats – non figés, car en perpétuelle figuration et reconfiguration – d’une hybridation de rationalités (parfois d’irrationalités) qui amène à un état de fait (les objets eux-mêmes) ayant des conséquences sur les expériences et les pratiques. Ainsi, les dispositifs spatiaux ne sont pas réduits à de simples objets, mais à l’intersection d’un ensemble de réseaux de gestes, de paroles ou de non-dits, d’interactions, de relations, etc. Il convenait de considérer les objets qui (et que) compose le monde spatial de la prison comme tels et d’étudier le quotidien, la situation ou l’événement au regard des choses qui sont directement impliquées dans ce quotidien, cette situation ou cet événement. Pour l’exprimer autrement, il s’est agit de faire vivre l’architecture qui n’est plus un espace inanimé. Si la plupart des objets communs (table, téléphone, chaise…) sont disposés dans l’espace (Conein, Jacobin, 1993), le mur, les escaliers, les fenêtres ou la tasse sont des éléments distinctifs de l’espace. Le matériau premier de cette recherche réside dans l’observation minutieuse du quotidien de vie et de travail au sein des établissements pénitentiaires de Obristan, Arstotzka et Kolechia .Ces immersions ethnographiques ont été complétées par de nombreux entretiens, dans (personnels de tous types, personnes détenues) et hors des murs (fonctionnaires, architectes…). Un important corpus de documents, aussi divers que variés (cahiers des charges, règlements internes, rapports disciplinaires, notes de services, dessins de détenus, procès-verbaux de réunions…) complète les descriptions fines et précise les interprétations analytiques.En prenant comme prétexte l’étude des objets de l’architecture carcérale en tant que dispositifs spatiaux, il est donc possible de rendre compte de l’hybridation et de l’éclectisme des (ir)rationalités entre fonctionnalité et esthétique, entre sécurisation et humanisation, entre adaptation et contre-pouvoir. Il s’est agit de rendre compte de l’imbrication des logiques carcérales dans une dialectique mêlant conception, historicité et expérience de la matérialité de la prison à travers ses objets et ses espaces. Les dispositifs spatiaux de l’architecture sont alors considérés comme les fruits de logiques diverses, mais également comme les sources de logiques variées. / Doctorat en Criminologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

No description available.

Emotions remain notably underexplored in both criminology and prisons research. This thesis sets out to address this problem by centralizing the importance of emotions in prison: especially the way prisoners express and regulate their affective states. To collect the data, 25 male and 25 female prisoners were 'shadowed', observed and interviewed across two prisons (HMP Send and HMP Ranby). Based on these findings, this thesis describes the emotional world of prisoners and their various 'affective' strategies. The three substantive chapters reveal the textured layers and various emotional states experienced by prisoners: first, at the level of the self (psychological); second, as existing between groups (social emotions); and, third, in relation to the physical environment (spatial). An individual substantive chapter is dedicated to each of these three levels of analysis. A primary finding was the prevalence of a wide range of 'emotion management' strategies among prisoners. One such strategy was emotion suppression, which was extremely salient among both men and women. While this emotion suppression was, in part, a product of pre-prison experiences it was also strongly influenced by institutional practices. Importantly, there was a strong correlation between prisoners who suppressed emotions and who were subsequently involved in violence (towards others, or inflicted upon themselves). A second key finding was the wide range of emotions that exist within, and are shaped by, different prison spaces-previous accounts have described prison as emotionally sterile, or characterised by anxiety and fear but this study develops the idea that prisons have an 'emotional geography' or affective 'map'. The study findings have implications for the 'emotional survivability' of our prisons; the need to open legitimate channels for emotional expression; and designing prisoners that are supportive, safe and secure establishments for prisoners to live in.

This project explores the contemporary history of segregation in Scottish prisons, focusing on measures of ‘special handling’ particularly the network of small units that was operative between the 1950s and the 1990s. Scotland has a complicated, troubling, idiosyncratic and, to a lesser degree, inspiring tradition of special handling measures, involving generic punishment blocks, anachronistic isolation units, highly innovative specialist units, ‘safe’ and ‘silent’ cells, and more collective segregation spaces such as vulnerable prisoners wings. Such sites have provoked considerable attention across public and political arenas; they have been sources of shame, pride, criticism and confusion; in specific penal moments, they have been experienced by prisoners (and officers) as warzones, sanctuaries, coffins and creative spaces; and, in terms of efficacy, they have both exacerbated and ameliorated the behavioural difficulties of the prisoners contained within them. The objectives of this research are (1) to chronologically map the evolution of key segregation sites, attending to the external pressures that have informed the policies, procedures and rules governing their protean use, (2) to explore the impact of particular environmental factors on the initial design, operation and, subsequently, the closure of these sites, and (3) to reflect on the relationship between space and the ways individuals have understood, coped with, and in various ways ‘acted-out’ their segregated confinement. Deciding who, how and why to segregate prisoners raises questions of a conceptual, operational, political, and moral nature. But deciding where to segregate prisoners situates such questions within the physical constraints and potentialities of space. By adopting a spatial-temporal approach, this research straddles disciplines, utilising the methods of penal history, prison sociology, and – though in a more approximate manner – the steadily burgeoning sub-discipline of carceral geography. Additionally, by marshalling a number of personal testimonies, this history attempts to capture the emotional resonances of segregation – how it feels to actually live and work in ‘prisons within prisons’.

This thesis examines representations of solitary confinement at four penal history museums in the province of Ontario, Canada: the Olde Gaol Museum in Lindsay, the L’Orignal Old Jail in L’Orignal, the Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives in Brampton, and Kingston Penitentiary in Kingston. Engaging with Brown’s (2009) theory of “penal spectatorship” and Cohen’s (2001) work on states of denial, I investigate how these representations of solitary confinement challenge and/or reinforce the idea that segregation is a necessary practice in operational carceral institutions. I identify three dominant themes. The first theme is who ends up in solitary confinement and why. The museums justify the necessity of solitary confinement by emphasizing its usefulness in neutralizing dangerous and unpredictable prisoners, along with its supposed ability to promote prisoner protection and the management of mental health needs. The second theme pertains to the duration prisoners spend in solitary confinement and the conditions they experience. The museums do not problematize prisoners’ length of stay in solitary confinement, nor the conditions of the cells in which they are held, rather historical penal discourses are used to demonstrate improvements over time, without problematizing its present uses. The third theme arising from my analysis concerns the impacts of solitary confinement on prisoners. The museums emphasize the positive effects that solitary confinement can have on prisoners such as providing the opportunity for contemplation, while information on the negative effects of isolation including exacerbating or triggering mental health issues are largely absent. Taking these findings into consideration, I argue that the penal history museums I examined foster social distance between visitors and those in conflict with the law by legitimating the exclusion of the latter, while reinforcing the idea that solitary confinement is a necessary practice in carceral institutions today. .

No description available.

This dissertation examines how the nature, extent, and consequences of mass supervision shape the health outcomes of individuals living under parole and probation. It addresses gaps within the geography literature concerning systems of parole and probation, as well as offering a contribution to examinations of the health impacts associated with these pervasive forms of carceral control. Using qualitative approaches, I explore the following research questions: 1) What are the structural conditions through which mass supervision impacts individual and community health? 2) How are structural dimensions of mass supervision experienced, and how might these embodied experiences shape pathways to ill-health? 3) How might the health impacts of mass supervision relate to processes of racial formation? In answering these questions this study draws on and synthesizes literatures from carceral geographies, biosocial theory and theories of racial capitalism. Key to understanding the health impacts of supervision is an integrated analysis of both the structural and the embodied and experiential pathways. By examining the impacts of and interrelations between these pathways, this study provides important context for the development of future research into persistent health inequities and the role of carceral control in spatial, political-economic and racial processes. / Geography

No description available.