NCJ Number
190288
Date Published
2001
Length
140 pages
Annotation
This study examined the experiences of inmates in Greenland's night-time correctional institutions, offenders on probation, and juvenile offenders in hostels, so as to develop information on how the measures adopted by the Prison Service were being implemented in practice.
Abstract
The study's objective was to describe daily life as experienced by offenders under these three types of correctional regimes and to determine how the offenders and the staff regarded it. Data were collected in interviews with offenders in these various correctional regimes as well as the staff in the institutions and the Prison Service. Specific issues addressed in the interviews were whether the offender's experience of the sanctions and the staff involved was believed to contribute to a stabilization of the offender's daily environment (work, residence, family, friends, and leisure activities); whether the offender and staff believed that a reinforcement of personal resources (education and social skills) was occurring; and whether a treatment of substance abuse and other problems was occurring. The interviews also sought to determine what limitations on personal freedom occurred in practice and how these limitations were experienced by offenders and staff. Offender-staff relations were considered, along with the attitudes of inmates and probationers toward the application of the sanctions. The general finding of the study was that the offenders interviewed accepted the restrictions of their sanctions as reasonable given their offenses, even though they required emotional and mental adjustments to the deprivations involved. Although treatment and rehabilitation were viewed by staff and offenders as somewhat lacking, they still believed that constructive outcomes resulted. 25 notes, interview guides, 34 references, and a summary of the Commission's proposals