NCJ Number
126733
Date Published
1990
Length
190 pages
Annotation
Between 1969 and 1983, British prisons experienced a number of serious disturbances in the relatively privileged atmosphere of dispersal prisons rather than in the overcrowded and disadvantaged local prisons. This literature review focuses on the non-inmate features of prisons including regime type, management style, programs and facilities, architecture, and system of control. Much of the material is drawn from American sources, although the review recognizes the cultural and procedural differences between the U.K. and the U.S.
Abstract
The first section explores the social and ideological influences on prison management and prison control, discussing authoritarian and rehabilitative styles, the English experience, the change from rehabilitation to humane containment, the impact of the civil rights movement, and post-treatment penal ideologies. The review examines theories of inmate adaptation to imprisonment, both in authoritarian and post-authoritarian settings, and various inmate dynamics, including prison gangs. Various inmate and prison characteristics are related to control in another section, followed by a discussion of control and architecture (separatist, telegraph pole, and New Generation). Incentives and privileges related to control which are described in the review include visits with family and friends, home leave, prison location, parole and indeterminate sentencing, and programs and activities. The final section focuses on three types of studies of prison regimes: those using the measurement approach, those studying particular prisons at specific times, and those evaluating regime changes.