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For the past several decades, the United States led the world in incarceration rates. With nearly 2.3 million people being held in state or federal prisons or local jails in 2019, incarceration rates in the United States are over four times higher than in other developed countries. Disparities exist by gender, race, ethnicity, and other special populations. Males are 13 times more likely to be incarcerated than females. Additionally, black males are 5.7 times and Hispanic males are 2.8 times more likely to be incarcerated than white males. Individuals who experience incarceration have poorer mental and physical health outcomes. People with criminal records or history of incarceration encounter significant barriers to employment as well. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to experience poor health outcomes and behavioral issues that increase the risk of future incarceration. One intervention that contributes to higher success of reintegration and can prevent rearrest, reconviction, and reincarceration is reentry programs, particularly those with a holistic approach combining employment during and after release, work skills training, mental health and substance use counseling, and support post-release to assist with housing and continued counseling services. Correctional Career Pathways (CCP) is one such program developed and expanded in five Tennessee counties. The first aim of this project was to explore the facilitators, barriers, and impact of the CCP program by analyzing the data collected by the CCP program and highlighting lessons learned in the process. The second aim was to identify opportunities for improvement and sustainability of the CCP by conducting interviews with key partners in CCP implementation across all counties. Information gathered through this project was helpful in creating a roadmap to expand this program to other communities, providing ways to improve the program, and making it more sustainable.

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Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / In a moment when the legitimacy of institutions that respond to crime is being challenged in new ways, there is also a growing interest in the use of ecological sustainability and environmental justice initiatives as a possible intervention in this context. These initiatives take many social and spatial forms across correctional landscapes, from prisons, jails, and youth detention centers to communities impacted by incarceration. Across three articles, this dissertation critically examines some of the contexts, limits, and possibilities of ecological sustainability initiatives as a means to transform correctional landscapes. Considering that ecological sustainability programs can involve some form of work done by incarcerated people, the first article explores the social-historical context of prison labor. It reviews the contested development of theories about prison labor among scholars, reformers, and activists. The article examines how the role of prison labor has been imagined in society, from punitive and rehabilitative theories to the more recent restorative and abolitionist or transformative ones. Contested theories of prison labor across time and space suggest that although work programs have often been exploitative, there are pathways, within and outside of the present system, towards forms of labor that might better contribute to crime prevention and public safety. The second article looks at some current efforts to intervene in correctional landscapes through the lens of environmental justice and ecological sustainability programs in the Northeastern United States. It explores these efforts through surveys, workshops and experiences of practitioners who have been trying to implement green interventions in correctional landscapes over the last ten years. The article denaturalizes the commonsense assumption in sustainability discourses that green interventions are necessarily good for individuals and institutions, and instead looks to the social contexts within which practitioners aim to implement interventions towards the possibilities of transformation. Overall, the article shows how some educators and activists have sought to seed transformative possibilities from within the constraints of existing theories and practices of correctional rehabilitation, as they work to design and implement specific program protocols, practices, curricula, networks, and collaborations. Finally, the third article turns to a case study of the emerging role of social cooperatives in Italy, as a crime response and prevention strategy that promotes social inclusion. It situates the model of Italian Social Cooperative movement in the context of W.E.B. Du Bois’s coopertivist thought and the emerging field of design for transitions. It looks at specific Italian laws, policies, and organizations that relate to the transformation of correctional landscapes and have possible applications to U.S. context. The Italian case, which emphasizes the role of ecological sustainability and cooperative practices in the context of incarceration, is used to better understand how future interventions might become pathways to decarceration, environmental justice, and sustainable communities. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Since the concept of place management was first introduced to environmental criminology in 1994, much has been learned about its application and usefulness. Through the study of a wide variety of places, it is now recognized that how a place is managed can affect the type and amount of crime that occurs at that specific location. Madensen's (2007) recent work with bars in Cincinnati further enhanced our understanding of the place management concept by hypothesizing that effective place management could be a result of four operational elements: organization of the physical space, regulation of conduct, control of access, and acquisition of resources (ORCA). To date, the application of place management concepts as reflected in the theory has been limited to community-based settings and has not been applied to custodial or institutional settings such as jails. This study is intended to test the concepts of effective place management in a jail setting to determine whether or not the number of incidents of inmate misconduct and disorder can be reduced thereby. Using a mixed-method design, this study measured the impact place management interventions implemented in a county jail had on a number of outcome measures, including the number of written, major misconduct reports for both male and female inmates, and the perceptions of inmate behavior held by officers, supervisors, and administrators. An interrupted time series (ARIMA) analysis of written inmate misconduct reports was used to evaluate whether or not the implementation of place management interventions reduced the amount of reported inmate misconduct in both male and female housing units. Qualitative analysis of the themes presented during individual and focus group interviews was used to assess changes in perceptions of inmate behavior held by officers, supervisors, and administrators, and to enhance understanding of the factors that may be responsible for producing changes in behavior. The results provide evidence that the identified elements of effective place management have broader application than previously hypothesized. / Criminal Justice