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Objective Individuals with mental illness and addiction are overrepresented in prisons. Few studies have assessed mental health and addiction (MHA)-related service use among individuals experiencing incarceration using health administrative data and most focus on service use after prison release. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of MHA-related service use in the 5 years prior to and during incarceration. Methods We used linked correctional and administrative health data for people released from Ontario provincial jails in 2010. MHA-related service use in the 5 years prior to the index incarceration was categorized hierarchically into four mutually exclusive categories based on the type of service use: psychiatric hospitalization, MHA-related emergency department (ED) visit, MHA-related outpatient visit (from psychiatrist or primary care physician), and no MHA-related service use. Demographic, diagnostic, and incarceration characteristics were compared across the four service use categories. MHA-related service use during the index incarceration was assessed by category and length of incarceration. Results A total of 48,917 individuals were included. Prior to incarceration, 6,116 (12.5%) had a psychiatric hospitalization, 8,837 (18.1%) had an MHA-related ED visit, and 15,866 (32.4%) had an MHA-related outpatient visit. Of the individuals with any MHA-related service prior to incarceration, 60.4% did not receive outpatient care from a psychiatrist prior to incarceration and 65.6% did not receive MHA-related care during incarceration. Conclusion Despite a high prevalence of mental illness and addiction among people experiencing incarceration, access to and use of MHA-related care prior to and during incarceration is poor. Increasing the accessibility and use of MHA-related services throughout the criminal justice pathway is warranted.

A sample of 48,930 inmates was examined to estimate the direct and moderating effect of the timing of prison sanctions on recidivism. Logistic regression models demonstrated that number of sanctions was positively associated with recidivism but timing of an inmate’s last sanction before release did not significantly influence recidivism. However, timing of an inmate’s last sanction moderated the association between number of sanctions and recidivism. This moderation effect suggested that as time between an inmate’s last sanction and release from prison increased, the effect of the total number of sanctions on recidivism decreased in magnitude. The results of this assessment suggest that the number and timing of sanctions matter in explaining the relationship between prison sanctions and recidivism.

In this paper we examine how a socially innovative solution to a complex social problem is able to overcome entrenched disadvantage and division and sustain itself within an existing institution. We explore how a rugby team in a high-security prison in Argentina has become an organizational response that substantially transformed prisoners’ lives in and out of jail, allowing inmates to reclaim many critical aspects of their humanity and dramatically reducing recidivism. We examine rugby as an analogy for new models of behaviours and identities in the context of extreme disadvantage, and surface the specific emotional work required to make the analogy generative. The findings from our in-depth case study reveal three reinforcing mechanisms in the workings of an analogy – resonating, resignifying and collective generativity – and in doing so provide a novel crescive model of how analogies may sustain change emotionally, cognitively and behaviorally over time, and ultimately achieve positive transformational effects in extreme social contexts.

With a focus on reentry after prison, we formulate an evidence-supported action plan for enhancing transitions from prison to society that focuses on increasing independence, reducing racial and ethnic disparities, and achieving public safety. Prisoner re-entry is a critical piece of any racial justice agenda as the lack of education or vocational training within carcer institutions impose barriers to job opportunities that, coupled with societal stigmas, often make reintegration extremely challenging. Noting that changes in policies with significant potential to improve reentry outcomes extend beyond federal agencies traditionally involved in the administration of justice, we include ways to reduce reentry barriers such as housing, education, employment, health, and political rights. The paper is divided into short, medium and long-term recommendations. The short-term recommendations pertain to existing funding streams and discretionary authority regarding administrative rules and regulations, funding decisions, and rule enforcement. Medium-term recommendations involve the creation of new legislation, infrastructure, and funding appropriations. In the long-term, recommendations include changes in laws to achieve fundamental re-orientations of existing policy frameworks, and approaches that require substantial new funding appropriations.

It is important to consider the conditions of prison life in understanding how individuals rejoin society at the conclusion of their sentence. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach that promotes new ways of thinking and behaving for both incarcerated persons and correctional staff that will better prepare returning citizens to be valuable community members. We consider that “since criminal behavior is driven partly by certain thinking patterns that predispose individuals to commit crimes or engage in illegal activities, the widespread implementation of CBT [and immersive cognitive communities] as part of correctional programming could lead to fewer re-arrests and lower likelihood of reincarceration.” This article includes short, intermediate, and long-term policy and practice recommendations to begin implementing this model, beginning with funding to support the implementation of Cognitive Communities, re-branding prisons to focus on rehabilitation, and finally making the reduction of prison-sentencing through shorter prison terms and more reliance on community sanctions a long-term policy goal in the U.S.

In this article, we discuss the evolution of criminal justice reform efforts focused on pretrial and sentencing policies and practices that resulted in unprecedented rates of incarceration. There is an urgent need to identify a strategy of pretrial justice and sentencing that will reduce crime and victimization, ameliorate unwarranted disparities, and reclaim human capital currently lost to incarceration. A discussion of proposed policy reforms should begin by first identifying the costs incurred by pretrial decisions (and across further decision points in the justice system) on both the system and the collateral costs to the detained, their families and their communities. In the short-term, jurisdictions should reconsider probation and parole policies and practices that contribute to mass incarceration. Mid-term improvements require inter-agency approaches by law enforcement, prosecutors, and the courts to institute alternatives to incarceration and collaborate with health and community organizations to address underlying issues that lead to local justice system intervention. Importantly, what we highlight is the need for a long-term approach designed to slow the flow of individuals into jails and prisons and to reduce the lengths of sentences they are serving.

Significant in the management of a safe and secure custodial environment is the compliance of incarcerated persons with the prison rules and the directives of prison officers. In recent years, there has been increased research focus on the role of normative compliance in the prison environment, which is postulated to derive from the perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice of those who are incarcerated. This article presents the findings of a scoping review of the empirical literature as it relates to procedural justice and legitimacy in prison settings. This literature is charted and then analyzed across two primary themes, namely “Shaping Perceptions of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy” and “Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Compliance.” The presence of normative compliance in prisons and the contribution of procedurally just treatment to perceptions of legitimacy held by persons who are incarcerated are discussed.

The Covid-19 pandemic occurred at a time when families of prisoners were gaining visibility in both academia and policy. Research exploring the experiences of families of prison residents has tended to focus on intimate partners and children, despite parents of those in prison being more likely than partners or children to maintain contact (Murray, 2003). The small body of work focusing on parents has identified their continued care for their children and highlights the burden of providing this care. With the ‘ethics of care’ posing an ideological expectation on women to provide familial care (Souza, Lanskey, Markson & Losel, 2020), the ‘care’ for adult children in custody is likely to fall to mothers. However, with restricted prison regimes, the pandemic has significantly impeded mothers’ ability to provide this ‘care’. Adopting a qualitative methodology, this paper explores the accounts of mothers to adult children in custody during the pandemic across two UK prison systems, England and Wales, and Scotland; exploring the negotiation of mothering in the context of imprisonment and the pandemic and highlighting important lessons for policy and practice.

The concept of throughcare as a means to prevent recidivism continues to attract considerable attention in Australia over the last couple of years. This is particularly the case for Indigenous peoples, as the transition to life after imprisonment proves to be particularly challenging for them, resulting in high rates of recidivism and ongoing overrepresentation in Australian prisons. In this contribution, we report on research we conducted in two Australian jurisdictions. After identifying the problems in developing effective throughcare strategies for Indigenous peoples leaving prison, we turn to Canada for examples of good practice. Canada was chosen for comparison as it is also a settler colonial state, experiencing similar problems of overrepresentation of their Indigenous population in the prison. After a critical analysis of these practices, we conclude that the reasons for a problematic re-integration of Indigenous peoples are related to a tendency to impose solutions and strategies developed in the white mainstream onto Indigenous communities without acknowledging traditional cultures and structures.

Given recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings regarding the constitutionality of juveniles who received mandated life sentences, questions have arisen in the field of criminology regarding how these offenders will adjust if someday released. Risk scores were calculated for 59 male juvenile homicide offenders (JHOs) based upon the eight domains in the Youth Level of Supervision/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) and used to examine recidivism among the 48 JHOs who were released. Sample subjects were charged as adults for murder and attempted murder in the 1980s, convicted, and sentenced to adult prison. Chi-square analyses were used to assess the relationship between risk score category and two measures of recidivism, which were general arrests and violent offenses. Results indicated risk scores failed to predict both general and violent recidivism. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.

In the late 18th century, lenders’ right to imprison borrowers for defaulting on debts was taken for granted. By the mid-19th century, this power was widely and permanently revoked. Using a variety of archival evidence, this study explains the historical demise of the debtors’ prison in New York State, the first Western jurisdiction to permanently abolish imprisonment for debt. Tracing seven decades of contestation over moral aspects of credit exchange and incarceration, it shows that the development of capitalist markets, including their cultural and technological consequences, was necessary but not sufficient to render the debtor's prison obsolete. Rather, the development of a liberal polity and a penal state institutionalized new moral views about the use of force in economic exchange, consolidating the legitimacy of bodily detention around the punishment of crimes rather than the coercion of private agreements. The analysis has implications for theories of states, markets, and violence, as well as for recent trends in penal debt, debt resistance, and prison abolition.

This article explores how prison staff in Australia view their work and how their work is viewed by others, by applying a theoretical framework of ‘dirty work’. ‘Dirty work’ is a social construction that refers to tasks that are ‘physically, socially or morally tainted’ ( Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999 ; Hughes, 1958 ) and this article will apply this concept to prison staff in Australia for the first time. The discussion is based on qualitative research in seven different Australian prisons, ranging from high to low security. The article illustrates how staff responds to working in a ‘dirty’ profession by reframing, refocusing, and recalibrating their daily work tasks; how the staff uniform can be utilised as a status shield and protector from taint; and how the stigma of ‘dirtiness’ tends to foster strong occupational and workgroup cultures which in turn makes cultural change of a profession difficult. The consequences of the dirty work stigma for staff and prisoners are discussed, with a focus on informal interactions, case work and dynamic security.

Despite an important and burgeoning literature correcting oversimplified portrayals of incarcerated men as “hypermasculine” and aggressive, research on men’s prison masculinities has not yet been sufficiently incorporated into prison treatment and therapy programs. In this article, we draw on in-depth interviews with 28 incarcerated men to explore the intergenerational transmission of masculinity in the family setting, highlighting how incarcerated men adapt, modify, and/or challenge the masculinity scripts they inherited from their fathers (or father figures) when reflecting on their own attitudes toward fatherhood. We use these insights to advocate for gender-responsive feminist family therapy that incorporates incarcerated men’s constructions of masculinity in efforts to restore and strengthen these men’s familial ties.

People with serious mental illness are disproportionately represented among prison/jail populations. Mental health courts (MHC) serve as an alternative to incarceration. In this study, we explore the extent to which MHC participants have members of their social network who were reported as having a history of arrests. Multilevel logistic regression demonstrated friends who used drugs, race, and network density were all predictive of MHC participants’ friends who have a history of arrest. Results demonstrate an association between MHC participation and arrest among individuals in their social network. Given the importance of social support in recovery from mental illness and in desisting from crime, such limitations can be problematic. MHC participants may be disinclined to engage with the very individuals who are able to provide social and emotional support.

We analyzed results from semi-structured interviews and participant observation with educators, clinical staff, and administrators who worked at nearly 100 different correctional facilities centrally managed by eight separate state prison systems to understand how the beliefs they hold about the life experiences and future trajectories of incarcerated people influence prison social climate. We found that staff who regard incarcerated people as past and/or future neighbors are more likely to foster a safe, mutually respectful prison social climate conducive to positive personal transformation. Envisioning prison social climate as a product of the relationship between staff and incarcerated people demonstrates how prisons and communities interact with each other to shape the past and future possibilities for people who are incarcerated. Our results offer six policy implications, to (1) mandate administrative-institutional commitment to creating a positive prison social climate in which correctional staff and incarcerated people are partners in rehabilitation; (2) expand existing program opportunities in prison to ensure widespread availability of educational, vocational, and therapeutic treatment programs; (3) increase representation of staff who share experiential and demographic characteristics with incarcerated people to reduce or eliminate unconscious bias; (4) generate public awareness of, and support for, rehabilitative measures proven to better prepare incarcerated people for release from prison; (5) increase community engagement by publicizing graduation and other positive events; and (6) foster a mutually supportive work environment among educational, clinical, and administrative staff.

Correctional workers have a high likelihood of exposure to violence in the workplace. However, empirical literature has largely neglected the mental health consequences of prison work, as well as the institutional factors that might mitigate or exacerbate these effects. To fill this gap, we employ original survey data on thousands of correctional officers to explore the effects of exposure to violence on the job. We find strong associations between violence and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide risk, as well as symptoms of depression, alcohol abuse, anxiety, and sleep disorder. Importantly, we also find a potentially protective role of institutional factors, such as the quality of perceived management and supervision. In line with the perceived organizational support (POS) model, our findings make clear that organizational support can moderate the deleterious effects of prison work.

Recent scholarship suggests that detention may have differential effects depending on situational factors. This longitudinal study tests an integrative theoretical framework with the aim to identify conditions under which detention deters from subsequent rule-violating behavior. We examined whether effects of experienced sanction severity on subsequent misconduct and reoffending behavior are dependent on procedural justice perceptions among Dutch adults in detention ( n = 763 and n = 765, respectively). The deterrent effect of sanction severity on misconduct was dependent on procedural justice. Increased sanction severity only deterred from subsequent misconduct when treatment was perceived as procedurally neutral to just. For individuals who were detained for the first time, a similar interaction effect was observed for reoffending behavior. The results support the added value of integrating deterrence theory with situational characteristics (i.e., procedural justice) to explain sanctioning effects and suggest that correctional staffs’ relationships with individuals in detention can contribute to order in prison and beyond.

Transitioning from prison to the community can pose significant hardships as returning individuals seek to support themselves while searching for work and housing. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is one potential service that can help ease this transition, however, in numerous states TANF is not available to many former offenders. We conduct a fixed effects analysis on laws banning TANF assistance and state rates of unsuccessful parole completion between 1994 and 2016. We find that states that imposed restrictions on TANF saw an increase in state rates of unsuccessful parole completion. Furthermore, we find no significant difference between full bans and partial bans of TANF, indicating that even partial bans may undermine efforts to successfully reintegrate former offenders.

Research on the prison visitation context has recently grown, yet little is known about the overall composition of who visits. This paper describes visit groups using latent class analysis (LCA) separately for women and men incarcerated two or more years in New York State. In this context where policies support frequent in-person visits, many maintain large, diverse groups of external connections. Although theory suggests that some groups may be more beneficial than others (e.g., prosocial influence or social support), visitor classes did not predict recidivism, but recidivism was higher for those with no/few visits. Policies that restrict visitor types or amounts may diminish valuable external social ties that can be maintained and offer ongoing support in more visit-positive regimes.

It is hard to determine when adverse labour conditions become exploitation. As of July 1, 2018, ‘human exploitation’ is criminalised in Sweden, with penalties up to ten years prison. The crime of ‘human exploitation’ occurs when someone, through unlawful coercion, misleads, exploits another person’s position of dependence, lack of protection, or difficult situation, or exploits another person in forced labour, work under obviously unreasonable conditions or begging. This article describes how disputes concerning low wages are to be handled within the Swedish model for labour market regulation, and contrasts this with the novel crime that adds a criminal law element to this otherwise civil law-oriented model.

Back-end sentencing is the discretionary, administrative process through which individuals on parole are returned to prison for violating the requirements of their supervised release. Parole officers play a crucial role in this process as they are the witnesses to the rule-breaking behaviors of people on parole supervision and ultimately must initiate the back-end sentencing process. This study explores predictors of parole officer decision-making when determining whether to consider a person for revocation or to gear programmatic community-based resources toward them in an attempt to decrease the likelihood of their eventual revocation. Our results indicate that if people released to parole are front-loaded programmatic resources as a part of their release conditions from prison, the odds that parole officers subsequently gear community-based programs toward them decreases by approximately 60%. Other factors such as demographics, actuarial risk levels, and criminal history were not significantly predictive of officer decision-making in this context.

Upon release from prison, women face barriers in every step of their journey home, with most reentry services designed for men. With virtual reality (VR) headsets increasingly affordable and normalized as a mental health treatment modality, VR is being adopted by prisons around the United States. We argue that the risks and affordances of VR in this political context necessitate centering those with lived experience as creative agents to avoid designing media that re-traumatizes, reduces the complexities of reentry, and reproduces oppressive prisoner–guard dynamics. This article documents and analyzes the design process of a VR reentry program for a state prison to help incarcerated women practice responding to high-stress reentry situations, prior to their release. The resulting VR prototype draws on therapeutic VR work but takes a community-based participatory design approach. We conclude by discussing the institutional and cultural tensions of implementing a participatory design process in a US state prison system.

This paper investigates the role of informal peer support as a bridge for participation by foreign national prisoners in prison activities (e.g. education, work, sports activities, library) and services (e.g. psychologist, doctor). A total of 51 individual interviews, following an appreciative inquiry perspective, were conducted with foreign nationals in four prisons in Flanders (Belgium). In terms of leading foreign nationals to prison activities and services, the findings reveal four types of informal peer support: informational support, instrumental support, emotional support, and social companionship. Moreover, during participation in these prison activities and services, three types of informal peer support emerged: informational support, instrumental support, and social companionship. Peer support seems to be a ‘form of survival’ for foreign nationals to overcome barriers experienced in accessing prison activities and services and difficulties during participation in such prison activities and services.

In this article I make the argument that the prison in post-genocide Rwanda is an architectural artefact and a problem-space around which to examine the transitional dilemmas of the post-genocide period. I examine the changing punitive architecture of incarceration in Rwanda’s capital and in secondary urban areas. Looking at the space of the prison in relation to the changing city, I posit that through the penal production of space, the state reconfigures logics of punitive practices and urban governmentality. Changing logics of incarceration are evident in Rwanda today in the deconcentration of the capital, Kigali, to make way for an urban masterplanned order. In analyzing this shift in the visibility of the penal order in Rwanda over time, I contend that the prison constructs the city through its punitive and surveillance-based logic, as much as the city constitutes the prison as a spatially segregated edifice. I examine two sets of governmental spaces and practices that have run through different eras of Rwanda’s colonial, post-independence and post-genocide periods: (a) the prison and punishment, and (b) the reordering of the capital city and urban planning.

Building on prior theorization of the prison–military complex and critiques of Foucault’s claim of similarities between the prison and the military, this article uses the example of ex-military personnel as prison staff to consider the nature of this relationship. In a UK context in which policy discourse speaks of ‘military’ methods as an aspiration for the Prison Service but where critical prison scholars use this term more pejoratively, it draws on a unique survey of current and former prison staff to explore the perceived characteristics of ex-military personnel, and the relationship between military service and prison staff culture. The article finds that although some ‘military’ characteristics recall more negative ‘traditional’ cultures, others point towards more professional and compassionate attitudes, challenging the notion that ‘militarism’ necessarily engenders authoritarian and punitive prison regimes.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the capacity of choral singing to improve human well-being and that, in certain sectors of society (including older adults, prison populations, underprivileged social groups, and mentally illness groups), choral singing bears several benefits. Thus, this descriptive study proposed a comprehensive structural model of the dimensions that comprise choral singing’s contribution to individual well-being and aimed to explain these benefits. The study was conducted in a non-random sample of 1,513 adult Spanish singers of both sexes and variable age. An instrument was developed to assess the psychosocial benefits of choral singing, as perceived by singers; it comprised five constituent dimensions: satisfaction, ability, group engagement, belonging, and optimism. The instrument enabled us to assess how choral singing contributed to well-being, with adequate reliability (Cronbach’s α = .917) and validity. The system of relationships proposed by the model represents a plausible explanation regarding the benefits of choral practice and singing for well-being.

In the context of the fight against Islamist radicalization in France, prison intelligence rapidly developed from 2015 through the gradual creation of a dedicated service and a specific corps of professionals. This professionalization of prison intelligence work has deeply transformed the prison administration. This article aims to describe and analyse these transformations on the basis of an ethnographic study conducted in radicalization assessment units, which are specific units set up to assess prisoners who have committed or are suspected of committing crimes linked to radical Islam. We shall describe how the guards, probation officers, psychologists and educators participating in assessing the prisoners adapt to the new, encroaching presence of the intelligence mission. We shall analyse the forms of collaboration and competition between this staff and the prison intelligence officers. Lastly, we will examine criticism of the intelligence activity in the radicalization assessment units voiced by various professionals. The interpenetration of the assessment work and the intelligence mission – which are formally distinct missions – produces a specific type of knowledge relating to radicalized prisoners: a reproduction of certain representations or ‘profiles’.

The purpose of the study was to identify the factors that delay the granting of early release to prisoners who are eligible for early release according to the Israeli law. The study is based on participatory observations of parole board hearings, interviews with parole board members, and content analysis of protocols of parole boards and legal rulings. The main factors identified in delaying release are related to the numerous postponements of hearings and delays in receiving documents from relevant parties. These factors are discussed in detail, offering recommendation for improvement and thus increasing the number of early releases.

Over 600,000 individuals return to United States communities from prison each year. Transportation has been identified as a major barrier to successful reentry. Applying qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis to achieve a deep understanding of reentry transportation obstacles, 11 articles with 362 male and female participants were identified. Two themes emerged from our analysis: (1) “Transportation connects complex obligations,” highlighting the critical role that transportation plays in the successful navigation of post-release conditions; and (2) “Transportation deficiencies exacerbate vulnerability,” revealing how transportation factors intertwine with structural issues to increase precarity.

Correctional staff play a major role in the incarceration experience for millions of U.S. adults each year. While much research has addressed misconduct perpetrated by incarcerated persons, less has systematically addressed rule-violating behavior by correctional staff and how such conduct is perceived by formerly incarcerated individuals. Using qualitative data gathered from 38 interviews with men and women recently released from prison, we examine their experiences with prison staff misconduct. Respondents shared observations of staff misconduct related to medical neglect, violence, and contraband, but experiences differed for men and women, raising concerns regarding conditions of confinement. We caution that such conduct has the potential to undermine the legitimacy of correctional authority in prison settings, which is troubling because heightened legitimacy is an important aspect of legal socialization that helps to reduce offending. Research and policy development on the frequency and consequences of prison staff misconduct is warranted.

Prison visits are recognised as an important feature of a humane prison system, providing important benefits for prisoners and their family in maintaining ties (McCarthy and Adams, 2017). Scotland has a history of penal welfarism and a right-based agenda in relation to visits (McCarthy and Adams, 2017); however, there is a lack of research that focuses on visits in the context of Scottish prisons. Equally, there is limited research that considers the perspective of children visiting a parent in custody. This paper explores the experiences of children visiting a parent in prison in Scotland, highlighting lessons for policy and practice.

Emerging research advocates prison-based peer support programmes not only for the recipients of support but also for those providing it. Such programmes are founded on principles such as reciprocity, shared problem-solving and empathy. Accordingly, there have been recent claims that such structures may engender a magnified impact in carceral settings characterized by deprivation and adversity. Specifically, it has been argued that peer supporters garner opportunities to enact prosocial behaviours and consequently energize desistance narratives while serving time. However, as intrigue and optimism around this untapped resource grow, so too does the need to explore any hindrances that might halt progressive developments. This article presents data from qualitative interviews held with incarcerated peer supporters in the UK. Transcripts of the institutional challenges that participants faced when undertaking their roles were thematically analysed, and suggestions for practitioners are offered. The article calls for professionals and policy makers to further explore the redemptive potential of prison-based peer support.