Suchergebnisse

If we select certain prisoners to bear the burden of heavier sentences... surely we have a moral obligation at least to allow those serving extended terms an opportunity to make some constructive use of the time we have demanded of them. And unless we intend to lock them away forever, our reasons for attempting to rehabilitate these prisoners are not only moral but eminently practical. (Norval Morris, The Future of Imprisonment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

ABSTRACT* * *As with participation in illegitimate activities in the larger society, involvement in rule infractions within prisons is not normally distributed among prisoners. Rather, a small segment of the inmate population is disproportionately represented in official records of disciplinary activity. In this research, factors associated with differential levels of involvement in prison disciplinary infractions were examined.The findings indicate that the inmate's age at commitment, history of drug use, current offense (particularly homicide/nonhomicide categories), and the type of sentence that the inmate served were significantly related to high‐rate infraction status. For one subgroup of the inmate population, race was also significantly related to infraction‐rate status. However, these variables are not sufficiently predictive of institutional misconduct to justify their use as classification factors. The implications of the findings for the study of social control mechanisms in prisons are discussed.

This study examines the nature and distribution of job satisfaction in a national sample of 641 wardens of state prisons for adults. The results indicate that these corrections executives are a highly satisfied occupational group, but there is evidence that job satisfaction among wardens has declined since the late 1980s. Measures of social support in the workplace, including effective communication with staff and support and confidence in subordinates, are important determinants of wardens' job satisfaction. The implications of these findings in the context of corrections' increasing politicization and punitiveness are discussed.

This study examined the prison behavior and postrelease recidivism of more than 14,000 inmates released from Texas prisons in 1991 and 1992. Comparisons were made between participants and nonparticipants in prison education programs on a variety of behavioral outcomes. The findings suggest that these programs may be most effective when intensive efforts are focused on the most educationally disadvantaged prisoners. Implications for correctional education policy and correctional program research are discussed.