NCJ Number
188224
Date Published
October 1999
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This article discusses approaches to problems raised by the incarceration of long-term prisoners and violent offenders.
Abstract
The article examines different countries' definitions of long-term and decides not to force a consensus on the definition but rather to focus on the effects of the duration of deprivation of liberty on prisoners and prison problems. The paper also considers prevention and management of dangerous or violent behavior inside prisons by looking at interactions and situations within the prison context. This includes consideration of sociologies of imprisonment; microsociology of prison life; macrosociology and penal change; the influence on prison life of demographic and other social changes in the outside society; and the effects of long-term incarceration on prisoners. The article stresses the importance of the prison context in the interactional nature of prison life. Staff members who have most contacts with prisoners in daily life will determine the general climate of the institution for they will be seen as representatives of "the system." Any policy to tackle problems raised by the incarceration of long-term and violent offenders should therefore focus simultaneously on all participants in the construction of prison life. Notes, bibliography