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During the 1980s and 1990s, the US prison system was expanding at an unprecedented rate. This research charts how prisoners at the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly referred to as Angola, founded the Angola Special Civics Project to collectively organize for prison reform. Using a combination of oral history and archival research, this thesis argues that the Angola Special Civics Project emerged during an era of political opportunity created by the coupling of political openings and contractions. Unlike outside advocates who focused their reform efforts on internal conditions, the Angola Special Civics Project centering of prisoners’ experiential knowledge led them to organize for an end to life sentencing through a combination of research, political education, electoral organizing, and coalition building. This thesis further asserts that their organizing should be conceptualized as a form of prison abolitionist reforms.

This study investigates whether Christianity has a reformative influence in the lives of prisoners who consider themselves ‘genuine’ Christians. Interviews were conducted with forty-five prisoners and fifteen ex-prisoners (who had been released from prison as Christians) - all high/medium-security inmates with long sentences. The study had two basic aims: to examine aspects of their religious backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs, and whether Christianity benefited and/or hindered them; second, to investigate their religious needs (in prison and post-release), whether they were being met, and the likely effect to potential benefits of existing support structures. It was anticipated that existing support would be inadequate to meet the men’s needs, particularly those who had been released from prison. In relation to these issues the findings are both positive and negative. With few exceptions, Christian prisoners/ex-prisoners believed that being a Christian made a qualitative difference to life in prison, offering essential hope, meaning and purpose in life, a positive outlook, and productive use of time. Christianity provided a different way of life, with new morals, values, and a renewed sense of self that helped overcome guilt and generally enhanced relationships. Belonging to a religious group provided practical and moral/spiritual support, which assisted prison adjustment and personal security. Moreover, Christian inmates had more self-control and tolerance/respect (than they ordinarily would) for authorities and others, resulting in fewer institutional rule violations. (For complete abstract open document)

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of History, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 42-44).

The criminal justice system in the United States was not created to treat mentally ill people. Despite this fact, the number of seriously mentally ill people in prisons and jails now exceeds the number in state psychiatric hospitals by tenfold. At the same time, the epidemic of mass incarceration in the United States has become one of the most pressing economic and social problems our country has faced in the last three decades. One novel approach to reducing prison populations and lowering costs to taxpayers has been justice reinvestment. However, for justice reinvestment to meet its ultimate goal of reducing incarceration rates, saving tax payer dollars, and creating safer communities, the JRI must begin to focus more attention and resources on how to better address the unique needs of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system.

No / This commentary surveys some of the trends and gaps in current research on criminal justice reform in Latin America ¿ with a focus on Brazil, and on two specific areas : police and prison/penal reform. It explores two principal themes: the uneven and thin production of knowledge about criminal justice issues ; and the impact this has on policy reforms and on the ways in which these are framed and interpreted in terms of their relative success and failure. Overall it argues that we still know very little about criminal justice institutions and the actors within them. We also need many more finely-grained analyses of the dynamics of reform efforts and of the policy environments in which these take place in order to understand how and why reform initiatives are often derailed or subverted, and, more rarely, flourish and can be embedded and replicated.

This thesis examines the history of legal and illegal narcotics in the United States. This thesis explores the impact criminalizing drug use has on communities of color. The current criminal justice system seeks to correct behavior society and the law deems deviant but has not proven to be effective as shown by rates of recidivism. The present research uses a literature review to investigate how alternative dispute resolution practices and prison abolition meet the needs of the criminal justice system. The purpose of this thesis is to examine two proposed reforms: one that would abolish prison sentences except in cases where offenders pose a high risk to public safety, and another that would employ conflict resolution techniques to serve the retributive, and rehabilitative purposes of the criminal sanction. This thesis will suggest that these proposed reforms, if undertaken concurrently, will likely shrink the US prison population while advancing penal goals.

Prisoner recidivism is a problem of great social importance, as recidivism represents a failure of the rehabilitative goal of incarceration. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of accurate estimates of race as a predictor of recidivism risk in the United States, after taking demographics and criminal variables into account. Applying the life-course theory of recidivism, the purpose of this archival, epidemiological study was to calculate whether recidivism risk varied based on race, across different seriousness levels of commitment offense and number of prior arrests, among a sample of male federal prisoners released from custody. A Cox proportional hazards ratio was applied to determine both the statistical significance and the magnitude of being Black, rather than White, as a predictor of recidivism in six distinct scenarios. Analysis indicated that Black prisoners were more likely to recidivate in some instances, whereas White prisoners were more likely to recidivate in other instances. The results of the study can assist psychologists, parole boards, and other stakeholders in more accurately estimating the role of race in recidivism risk. The results of the study were that race is a significant risk factor in some kinds of recidivism, but not in others, and also that being African-American is not universally associated with higher recidivism risk. The results suggest that race might be a less prominent recidivism factor than previously thought.

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A proposta desta pesquisa é reconstituir os aspectos socioeconômicos e os desdobramentos políticos da rebelião de presidiários do Instituto Correcional da Ilha Anchieta (Ubatuba, SP), ocorrida no dia 20 de junho de 1952. A hipótese norteadora é de que a rebelião teve um papel decisivo na reforma das prisões em São Paulo, cujos parâmetros e objetivos foram debatidos e executados nas gestões de Lucas Nogueira Garcez (1950-1954) e Jânio Quadros (1955-1959) no Governo do Estado. Assim, a referida rebelião será considerada como estudo de caso para a compreensão do regime prisional e penitenciário em São Paulo nos anos 1950. Com base nos autos de Inquérito Policial realizado pelo DEOPS-SP (1952-1953) pretende-se elaborar um perfil socioeconômico dos presos da Ilha Anchieta, considerando: idade, estado civil, cor, naturalidade, profissão, grau de instrução, filiação, situação familiar, condições de moradia, tempo e motivo do encarceramento. Estas informações fornecerão subsídios para compreender a relação entre processos econômicos de conjuntura e as políticas de controle social, sobretudo o funcionamento da prisão. Por outro lado, ainda no contexto da Ilha, pretende-se reconstituir aspectos da organização do Instituto Correcional da Ilha Anchieta, tais como: o trabalho prisional, a administração do pecúlio, os gastos da administração pública com a manutenção e reforma do presídio pós-rebelião, a relação entre presos e funcionários, o atendimento aos pedidos de livramento condicional, os castigos e o lazer. Considerando a rebelião como um momento de ruptura do equilíbrio de poder no interior da instituição, suas causas serão buscadas nesses aspectos que estruturam o cotidiano prisional. Para compreender o lugar ocupado pela rebelião no processo de reforma das prisões em São Paulo, esta pesquisa propõe analisar a repercussão do evento na grande mídia e nas publicações especializadas, além de resgatar os atos administrativos, normativos e legais executados pelos poderes Legislativo e Executivo. / The aim of this research is to study the socioeconomic conditions and the political developments of the inmates rebellion at Anchietas Island (Ubatubta/SP), in June 20, 1952. The main hypothesis is that this rebellion played a decisive role in the reform of prisons in Sao Paulo, whose parameters and objectives were discussed and implemented during the administrations of Lucas Nogueira Garcez (1950-1954) and Jânio Quadros (1955-1959), at State Government. Thus, the mentioned rebellion will be considered as a case study to understand the prison and penitentiary regimen in São Paulo at mid-twentieth century. Based on the records of the Police Inquires directed by Delegacia Especializada em Ordem Politica e Social from São Paulo State (DEOPS-SP), it is intended to build a profile of socioeconomic conditions of that prison, concerning inmates and employees, by collecting information about: age, place of birth, schooling, family relations, housing conditions, time and reason for conviction, work conditions before condemnation, skin color, filiations and civil status. These informations will provide aids to understand the relation between economical process and social control policies. On the other hand, but still in the Anchieta s Island context, it is intended to restore some organization aspects of the Instituto Correcional da Ilha Anchieta, as: labor-therapy, the administration of the inmates peculium, the government spending with the prison before and after the rebellion, some trends of the social relations inside the prison, punishments, rewards and recreation. Considering the rebellion as a disrupting of a certain balance of power in a priso, their causes will be sought in those aspects of everyday life in a prison. To understand the place that Anchietas Island rebellion had occupied in the reform of prisons in Sao Paulo, this research proposes to restore the administrative, legal and normative acts operated by the Legislative and Executive powers and, in the meantime, analyze the repercussion in the specialized media and in the mass media.