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Experiments in prison reform have often included efforts to democratize prisons. Such experiments were especially popular during the progressive era. Today, democratization efforts are congruent with management literature that describes employee participation and total quality of management initiatives through which organizations try to improve the quality of their products and services. Prison democratization can combine opportunities for staff involvement with enhanced prisoner participation. Inmates can be afforded a greater role in classification and programming decisions, and in determining policies that affect the quality of prison life. Such participatory approaches help to normalize prison life and contribute to the resocialization of offenders.

Dealing with crime is everyone's business. It demands a clear law enforcement response combined with significant efforts to address the root causes of crime, particularly poverty, racism, and overwhelmed families. As a society, we are spending the bulk of our resources on the most expensive response: incarceration. Traditional approaches to crime need to address the differences between men and women as these differences translate to appropriate reactions by the criminal justice system. For example, the Rockefeller drug laws in New York were meant to incarcerate high-level drug pushers for long terms. Instead, women in financial or family crises have been easy dupes for dealers who never handle their own drugs. These women do not dispute their guilt, but is their crime worth a 15-year minimum? Certainly, the public needs to make informed decisions about which women should be in prison and for how long and which women might be dealt with differently.

It is widely accepted that prisoners are at risk of victimization from their fellow prisoners. However, little is known about the psychological consequences of exposure to such risk. In particular, what is the relationship between prisoners' feelings of anxiety and their observations or experiences of victimization? How is the level of incivility in penal institutions related to perceptions of safety? The findings from a survey of 1,182 inmates shed some light on the dynamics of fear in prison. Most prisoners reported feeling safe most of the time, although a small number of prison locations consistently were rated as unsafe. Prisoners with direct experience of victimization were more fearful than those without. An attempt is made to outline possible explanations for these and other findings.

Use of convict labor by private business in private-run and state prison systems; impact on civilian employment, prisoners' rights, export of prison-made goods, and other issues; US.

Examines attempts by prison inmates to organize unions for workers in US correctional institutions, contending that these labor leaders are strongly disciplined, sometimes threatened with death, & have little outside support. The case of Jerome White-Bey, founder of the Missouri Prisoners Labor Union (MPLU) is related, noting that silent strikes have been frequent in MO's system where inmates are required to work for pittances making various consumer goods. In spite of the filing of over 1,000 grievances in a single week, the MO Dept of Corrections not only refuses to recognize the MPLU, but is keeping White-Bey in a solitary confinement cell known as "the Hole." The history of prison labor in the US is traced, & prison unions that have been formed in other states are examined. It is noted that the AFL-CIO does not absolutely oppose prison labor but has spoken out against expanding federal prison industries on the basis that it takes jobs away from nonconvicts. Reasons for opposition to the unionization of prisoners & prospects for the future are discussed. J. Lindroth

The voices of prisoners are seldom heard as contributors to the evaluation of imprisonment. Official discourse is hostile to their accounts. Prisoner autobiography is a small but established genre in prison writing. The article presents a critical introduction to the study of these texts. Two groups of authors are identified in a sample of post‐war British autobiographies. Several key themes are identified and it is argued that, although problematic, prisoner autobiography should receive more systematic attention as a contribution to the penological archive.

Following an earlier pilot study of 32 prisons which showed that probation officers were participating in more prison groupwork than any other single professional group, Graham Towl, Head of Forensic Psychology at Highpoint Prison, undertook a further survey of senior probation officers in 128 prisons and reports on the returns from 84 (66%).

Graham Towl, Head of Forensic Psychology at Highpoint Prison, conducted a pilot survey in 1991 to establish what group-work is being undertaken and by whom. Twenty-seven prison psychology units covering 34 prisons in England and Wales were sent questionnaires; 25 replied.

'Helping those serving long sentences to 'do' imprisonment'was the advice given to prison educational practitioners at a recent conference on dispersal prisons. Prisoners on any education courses certainly have an opportunity to 'do' something whilst serving those sentences. Education, moreover, presents people in prison with many challenges in the midst of the chaos of the prison. But what kind of education? This paper posits that prison education policy, too, is in its own kind of chaos – presenting the Prison Service with the dilemma of whether to drive practitioners into the teeth of 'correctional models'or one favouring individual prisoner empowerment. Looking at the implications of these choices within the prison and beyond release for the prisoner, the article 'breaks the silence' in the UK on prison education.

Prison psychosis is a mental state produced as the result of the fear of imprisonment. It begins by looking at prison as a place of punishment & torture, describing the game of "cat & mouse" frequently played between prisoners & guards. The paper then examines the feelings of abandonment, isolation, & revenge that afflict nearly every prisoner. Family & friends of prisoners, particularly black male prisoners, are encouraged to write letters, visit, & protest incarceration tactics. The paper concludes by arguing that because torture is illegal in the US, the family & friends of tortured prisoners must organize a sincere & genuine protest movement, one that will have lasting effects. K. A. Larsen