En återkommande debatt rörande kriminalvården är hur man ska kombinera de två grundprinciperna i fängelserna: vård och straff. Om isolering är ett straff i straffet, hur ser då vården ut i anslutning till denna? Få eller inga andra former av frihetsberövande skapar så mycket psykologiskt trauma, med så många symptom på psykisk sjukdom, som isolering gör. I studien undersöktes vilka effekter ofrivillig isolering, under minst två månader, hade på den psykiska och fysiska hälsan, samt vilket stöd tidigare fängelseintagna fått under och efter sin tid av isolering. Dessutom undersöktes vilket stöd den intagne själv hade önskat att få. Resultatet bygger på semistrukturerade intervjuer med tidigare fängelseintagna som ofrivilligt blivit isolerade. Resultatet analyserades med hjälp av tidigare forskning och begreppen ångest, depression, avsaknad av social interaktion samt sociala band till andra. Två av tre respondenter visade tecken på att isoleringen påverkat deras psykiska hälsa mycket negativt. Den tredje respondenten visade vissa negativa effekter men tycks ha klarat tiden i isoleringen förhållandevis väl. Ångest och depression var tydliga symptom som isoleringen lett till. Avsaknad av social interaktion skapade stort lidande både under och efter isoleringen och ledde till såväl social tillbakadragenhet som rädsla för att skapa nya kontakter. / A recurrent debate within the correctional treatment, is how to combine the two fundamental principles: rehabilitation and controle. If solitary confinement is a punishment within the punishment, then what does the support in association to it look like? There are few or no other forms of detainment that creates as much psychological trauma, with so many symptoms of mental illness as seen in isolated inamtes. This study examined the effects of involuntary solitary confinement during at least two months, to the psychological and physical health, and the support that former inmates got during and after their time of isolation. It also examined what kind of support the inmates had wanted. The result is based on interviews with persons who previously have been imprisoned and then have been involuntarily placed in solitary confinement. The result was analyzed using previous research and the concepts anxiety, depression and lack of social interaction. Two of the three respondents showed signs of very negative effects on their psychological health from the solitary confinement. The third respondent showed some negative effects but seemed to have coped with the isolation relatively well. Anxiety and depression were obvious symptoms that the solitary confinement had caused. Lack of social interaction had created considerable suffering during and after the solitary confinement and had caused social seclusion as well as fear of making new contact

The main area of inquiry for this thesis is super-maximum security prisons or as commonly referred to “supermax prisons”. First, the thesis traces the shift from the use of physical punishment to the use of disciplinary measures in punitive institutions and the development of the modern prison until it reaches its latest form as embodied in the supermax model. Secondly, the design, characteristics, and conditions of these prisons are also explored to demonstrate how they systematically contribute to the dehumanization and depersonalization of prisoners. These institutions are subsequently found to represent physical spaces of the lawless “state of exception” that reduces inmates to a “bare” animal-like form of living through depriving them of all the rights and prerogatives granted to them by law. Third, the thesis analyzes the penological rationale commonly invoked to justify supermax prisons and concludes that it suffers from a clear deficiency in demonstrating any evidence-based credibility. Finally, the thesis sheds light on the devastating and long-lasting impacts of supermax confinement on mental health and argues that it may be in violation of fundamental human rights such as the right against torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment or punishment as provided by international law.

Syftet med studien är att se hur Kriminalvårdens säkerhetsavdelningar kallade Fenixavdelningarna legitimeras, genom att göra en kritisk diskursanalys av synen på fångarna som placeras där. Vi gör det för att skapa en förståelse för de diskursiva processer som påverkar den kriminalpolitiska utvecklingen. Avsikten var att se till diskursen om de Fenixplacerade i ett dialektiskt förhållande till de institutioner som upprätthåller en särskiljning av fångarna inom fängelsesystemet. Studien är genomförd utifrån en kvalitativ ansats med Faircloughs metod av kritisk diskursanalys utifrån ett socialkonstruktivistiskt förhållningssätt. Den teoretiska ram som används är bland annat Foucaults teorier om den disciplinära makten, Goffmans om stigmatisering samt Maslows psykologiska teorier. Vi belyser även tidigare forskning inom de teoretiska fälten som komplement till teorierna. Resultatet påvisade att de diskursiva formationer som upprätthålls om de Fenixplacerade beskriver denna grupp fångar som särskilda eftersom de betraktas som ”psykiskt störda” och ”samhällsfarliga”. På så sätt legitimeras en disciplinerande isolering och avskildhet av dessa fångar för att kunna föra en nyliberal politik av ”hårdare tag” och strängare straff. Detta står i motsättning till det sociala arbetets mål om att skapa jämlika villkor i samhället. / The purpose of the study is to see how the “high security”-departments within the prison system in Sweden called “Fenixavdelningarna” are legitimized, by making a critical discourse analysis of the perception of the prisoners placed there. We do it to create an understanding of the discursive processes that affect criminal policy development. The intention was to look upon the discourse concerning this group of prisoners in a dialectical relationship with the institutions that maintains a separation of these prisoners within the prison system. The study was conducted based on a qualitative approach with Faircloughs critical discourse analysis approach based on the ideas of social construction. The theoretical framework used is among others Foucault's theories of disciplinary power, Goffman's theories of stigmatization and Maslow's psychological theories. To complement our theories we add earlier research within this field of knowledge. The results demonstrate that the discursive formations that are maintained on the prisoners placed in these “high security”-departments describes this as certain to other prisoners because they are considered to be "mentally disturbed" and "dangerous to society". Our conclusion is that this is legitimizing a disciplinary isolation and an exclusion of these prisoners in order pursue a neo-liberal policy of "hard on crime" and more severe punishments, and this development contradicts the objectives in social work.

Magister Artium - MA / The intention of this dissertation is to clarify the psychological processes and effects which operate in the political detention situation, and to outline effective treatment and coping strategies. An overview of research literature and theory is provided, and the importance of viewing detention within a broad 'socio-political context is emphasised. In the analysis of the detention situation a number of variables likely to be operative are considered. Solitary confinement, torture, interrogation, reactions to severe stress situation s, and uncertainty, unpredictability and uncontrollability are given separate discussion, interaction situation. prior to an attempt to consider the of these variable s in the detention This projected picture is compared with case material gathered in the area. It is noted that political detention is not a uniform experience with a uniform set of effects. Rather, the effects are seen to be dependent on the particular differences in re-ponse. Nevertheless, political detention is shown to be commonly both objectively and subjectively severely stressful, with a strong likelihood of the detainee developing debilitating psychological sequelae. post-traumatic stress disorder appears to be commonly implicated, and symptom s may persist for many years. Family and community members and organisations to which the detainee belongs suffer not only the effects of the loss of that person, but also the problems of effectively helping him or her to reintegrate. It is shown that detainees have commonly drawn on a number of resources or strategies to counteract the potentially debilitating effects of prior preparation of detention. The for the detention experience to facilitate an accurate appraisal of the situation and better coping is emphasized. Useful strategies that may be learned or fostered are outlined. A multidisciplinary approach to treatment that acknowledges all of the difficulties and needs particular to any specific ex-detainee, and that draws on as broad a recommended. It is shown range of available supports Physiotherapy, psychotherapy, and family involvement are as possible, is medication where stressed. Necessary that much may be learned from Canadian and European units that rehabilitate victims of torture - mainly from South American countries; but that strategies need to be adapted to South African conditions.

No description available.

The aim of the dissertation is to study the problem definitions and the governmental rationality of new activities aimed at reforming criminals, the poor and workers in Sweden during the mid-1800s. Three case studies analyse the solitary confinement penitentiary, the district visiting poor relief and the bildung-society for workers. A fourth case study analyses the introduction of crime statistics and prison photography. I argue that these different activities were part of the historical process that have been characterised as ”the birth of the social” and the new governmental rationality, ”liberal governmentality”. The initiators presupposed that civilisation had negative behavioural consequences among the lower classes. At the same time they expressed optimism regarding new fostering instances and how such could be integrated to a mutually supporting network. The aims of the new reformatory principles were regularly described as capacities for self-reflection, self-regulation and self-control among the lower classes. The dissertation shows that the new activities localised and defined a new set of problems and questions in terms of the social. ”Society” was what was to be protected as its ”inner” relationships were described as going through comprehensive historical changes. The ambition to lead, manage and organise the behaviours and values of the lower classes was even more far-reaching than was the desire to exert direct discipline. Order, well being and morals were integrated in a field of problems where effects on the lifestyles of the lower classes constituted the ultimate authoritative body.

La récidive en communauté est associée à de lourdes conséquences financières et une atteinte à la santé publique. L’isolement cellulaire (IC) est une pratique adoptée pour répondre aux comportements perturbateurs en milieu carcéral, sans indications quant à l’impact sur la récidive. Environ 7% des détenus nord-américains sont logés en IC et plusieurs vivront une détérioration psychologique. De plus, la littérature ne démontre pas une réduction de l’inconduite suite à l’IC, mettant en doute la possibilité d’un changement comportemental. Clarifier l’effet de l’IC sur la récidive permettrait d’informer les débats récents autour de son rendement coût-efficacité et d’évaluer les risques de victimisation associés. Une revue systématique et une méta-analyse ont donc été menées afin d’élucider l’impact de l’IC sur la récidive. Des modèles à effets mixtes ont été employés pour quantifier l’association entre l’IC et la réarrestation, réincarcération ou récidive violente. Des sous-analyses ont permis d’évaluer le risque de récidive associé à différentes formes d’IC, la durée d’exposition et le temps écoulé entre la sortie d’IC et la libération. Notre article a démontré une association modérée entre l’IC et l’augmentation de la récidive, laquelle résistait au contrôle de facteurs confondants. L’IC était associé à l’augmentation des trois formes de récidive. De surcroît, une plus longue et récente exposition augmentait davantage ce risque. Ainsi, ce mémoire contribue à démontrer que l’IC ne présente pas de retombées comportementales pouvant contrebalancer ses coûts opérationnels ou sur la santé mentale des détenus. Plusieurs initiatives sont proposées pour faciliter la réintégration des détenus exposés à l’IC. / Recidivism amongst releasees bears heavy consequences for society in terms of financial costs and public health strain. Placing inmates in solitary confinement (SC) was adopted as a solution for disordered behaviors in prison, without indication as to its impacts on recidivism. Approximately 7% of North American inmates are housed in SC, many of whom will suffer psychological deterioration. Moreover, studies dispute that SC can reduce institutional misconduct, casting doubt on its potential for inspiring behavioral change. To clarify the effects of SC on recidivism would inform recent debates around its cost effectiveness and the evaluation of associated victimization risks. Therefore, a systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to clarify the impact of SC on recidivism. Random-effects meta-analyses were carried out to quantify the association between SC and rearrest, reincarceration, and violent reoffense. Additional sub-analyses allowed to characterize recidivism risk following different forms of SC, lengthier periods of exposure, and shorter transition time between release from SC and to the community. Our article showed a moderate association between SC and increased recidivism, which remained robust to confounders. SC was associated with an increase in all forms of recidivism. Finally, longer and more recent exposure to SC upon release both further increased recidivism risk. This memoir thus provides further evidence that SC does not present significant benefits that could outweigh its associated mental health and financial costs. Finally, multiple initiatives are discussed in the context that they could facilitate community reentry for inmates exposed to SC.

The purpose of this project is to ascertain the ways in which Orange is the New Black uses its platform to either complicate or reify narratives about the prison system, prisoners and their relationship to the state. This research uses the works of Giorgio Agamben, Colin Dayan, Michelle Alexander and Lisa Guenther to situate the ways the state uses the prison and social narratives about the prison to extend its control on certain populations beyond prison walls through police presence, parole, the war on drugs and prison fees. From that basis, this work argues that while Orange does challenge some narratives about race and sexuality, because of its reliance on “bad choices” as a humanizing trope and its reliance on certain racialized stereotypes for entertainment, the show ultimately does more to reify existing narratives that support state interests.

Thesis (PhD (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis undertakes a comparative examination of South African and Kenyan auto/biographical narratives of crime and imprisonment. Although some attention is paid to narratives of political imprisonment, the study focuses primarily on autobiographical accounts by criminals, confessional narratives, popular fiction about crime and prison experience, and journalistic accounts of prison life. There is very little critical work at this moment that refers to these forms of prison writing in South Africa and Kenya. Popular prison narratives and to a certain extent the autobiographical in general are characterised by an under-theorised dialecticism. As academic concepts, both the popular and the autobiographical form are characterised by an unstable duality. While the popular has been theorised as being both a field of resistance to power and of consent to its demands, the autobiographical occupies a similar precariously divided position, in this case between fact and fiction, a place where the „I‟ that narrates is simultaneously the subject and object of the narrative. In examining an eclectic body of texts that share the prison as common denominator, my study problematises the tension between self and world, popular and canonical, political and criminal, factual and fictional. In both settings, South Africa and Kenya, the prison as a material and discursive space does not only mirror society but effects shifts and changes in society, and becomes a space of dynamic adaptation and also a locus that disturbs certain hegemonic relations. The way in which the experience of prison opens up to a fundamentally unsettling ambiguity resonates with the ambivalence that characterises both autobiography as genre and the popular as a theoretical concept. My thesis argues that during the entire historical period covered by the narratives that I examine there is a certain excess that attends on the social production of criminality and the practice of imprisonment, both as material realities and as discursive concepts, which allows them to have a haunting effect both on individuals‟ notions of „the self‟ and the constitution of national identities and nationhoods. I argue that the distinction between the colonial and the postcolonial prison is hazy. Therefore a comparative study of Kenyan and South African prison literature helps us understand how modern prisons and notions of criminality in contemporary Africa are intertwined with the broad European colonial project, reflecting larger issues of state power and control over the populace. In relation to South Africa, my study begins with Ruth First‟s 117 Days (1963), and makes a selection of other prisons narratives throughout the apartheid era up to the post-apartheid period which was ushered in by Mandela‟s Long Walk to Freedom (1994). Moving beyond Mandela, I examine other forms of South African crime and prison narratives which have emerged since the publication of Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela‟s A Human Being Died that Night (2003) and Jonny Steinberg‟s The Number (2004). In Kenya, I begin with Ngugi wa Thiongo‟s Detained (1981). I then focus on popular narratives of crime and imprisonment which began with the publication of John Kiriamiti‟s My Life in Crime (1984) up to the first decade of the 21st century, marked yet again by the publication of Kiriamiti‟s My Life in Prison (2004). Besides Kiriamiti‟s two narratives, the other Kenyan texts which I examine are John Kiggia Kimani‟s Life and Times of a Bank Robber (1988) and Prison is not a Holiday Camp (1994), Benjamin Garth Bundeh‟s Birds of Kamiti (1991), and Charles Githae‟s, Comrade Inmate (1994). / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: My proefskrif onderneem ‟n vergelykende studie van Suid-Afrikaanse en Keniaanse auto/biografiese narratiewe van misdaad en gevangeneskap. Hoewel aandag tot ‟n mate geskenk word aan verhale van politieke gevangeneskap, is die primêre fokus van die studie eerder op autobiografiese narratiewe deur misdadigers, konfessionele narratiewe, populêre fiksie met betrekking tot misdaad en gevangenis-ondervindinge, sowel as joernalistieke verslae oor gevangenes se lewens agter tralies. Min kritiese werk is tot dusver in verband met hierdie vorme van gevangenis-narratiewe in Suid-Afrika en Kenia gedoen. Populêre prisoniers-narratiewe, en tot ‟n mate autobiografieë oor die algemeen, word deur ‟n onder-geteoriseerde dialektisisme gekenmerk. As akademiese konsepte word beide die populêre en die autobiografiese vorme deur ‟n onstabiele dualisme gekenmerk. Terwyl die populêre tipe geteoretiseer word as sowel ‟n vorm van weerstand teen mag as van toegee daaraan, word aan die autobiografiese tipe ‟n soortgelyke onstabiele, verdeelde rol toegeskryf – in hierdie geval, tussen feitelikheid en fiksie, ‟n plek waar die “ek” wat vertel terselfdertyd die subjek en objek van die verhaal is. Deur middel van ‟n eklektiese versameling van tekste wat die gevangenis as verwysingspunt deel, problematiseer my verhandeling die spanning tussen self en wêreld, die populêre en die gekanoniseerde, die politieke en die kriminele, die feitelike en die fiktiewe. In beide kontekste, Suid-Afrika en Kenia, weerspieël die gevangenis as diskursiewe spasie nie alleenlik die gemeenskapsomgewing nie, maar veroorsaak dit ook veranderings en verskuiwings in die gemeenskap – sodoende word die gevangenis self ‟n ruimte van dinamiese verandering en ‟n plek wat sekere hegemoniese verhoudings versteur. Die manier waarop die ondervinding van gevangeneskap lei tot ‟n fundamentele versteurende dubbelsinningheid resoneer met die dubbelsinnigheid wat beide die autobiografiese as genre en die populêre as teoretiese konsep karakteriseer. My tesis voer aan dat, gedurende die ganse historiese tydperk wat gedek word deur die narratiewe wat ek hier betrag, daar ‟n sekere oormaat is wat die sosiale produksie van misdaad en die toepassing van gevangesetting begelei, beide as stoflike werklikhede en as diskursiewe konsepte, wat hulle toelaat om ‟n kwellende effek uit te oefen beide of individuele mense se sin van „self‟ en die samestelling van nasionale identiteite en nasionaliteite. Ek voer aan dat die onderskeid tussen die koloniale en die postkoloniale gevangenis onduidelik is, en dat ‟n vergelykende studie van Keniaanse en Suid-Afrikaanse gevangenes-narratiewe ons dus help om te verstaan hoe moderne tronke en idees oor misdaad in Afrika deureengevleg is met die breë Europese koloniale projek, en groter kwessies van staatsmag en beheer oor die bevolking weerspieël. In Suid Afrika begin my studie met Ruth First se 117 Days (1963), en maak dan ‟n seleksie van ander gevangenes-narratiewe van die apartheid-era tot en met die post-apartheid oomblik wat deur Mandela se Long Walk to Freedom ingelui word. Ek vestig dan my aandag op ander vorme van Suid-Afrikaanse misdaad- en gevangenes-narratiewe wat sedert die publikasie van Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela se A Human Being Died that Night (2003) en Jonny Steinberg se The Number (2004) verskyn het. In Kenia begin ek met Ngugi wa Thiongo se Detained (1981), en kyk dan ten slotte na populêre narratiewe van misdaad en gevangeneskap wat hulle aanvang vind met die publikasie van John Kiriamiti se My Life in Crime (1984) tot en met die eerste dekade van die 21ste eeu, nogmaals gemerk deur die publikasie van Kiriamiti se My Life in Prison (2004).