Tea Ceremony and Tatami Mat Making: Gender Differences in Access to Educational Programs in Japanese Prisons

• NCJ Number: 152543
• Journal: Prison Journal Volume: 74 Issue: 4 Dated: special issue (December 1994) Pages: 462-473
• Author(s): J Gerber; S L Weeks; F Denq
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 12 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Phoenix, Ariz., October 1993.

Annotation

This study compared access to educational programs in Japanese prisons for male and female inmates.

Abstract

Data collection, which was conducted during early 1992 in Japan, was done with a questionnaire administered in two prisons near Tokyo. A total of 101 inmates in the female prison were surveyed, and 73 inmates in the male prison participated. In addition, researchers conducted personal interviews with 14 male and 10 female inmates, as well as some correctional officers in both institutions. Researchers also reviewed documents and other information from the two prisons as well as information provided by the Japanese Ministry of Justice. Given the research on educational programs in prisons in several nations, the study hypothesized that Japanese female inmates would have less access to programs than would men and that the programs to which they did have access would be gender stereotyped. With one significant qualification, the data support this hypothesis. The qualification is that although female inmates generally had less access to educational programs than men, male inmates apparently did not have much access to prison education programs either. 2 tables and 35 references