Research Plan
The proposed budget is £75,000. This will cover costs and overheads associated with the design, implementation and completion of the study. Overheads will include the employment of 1 research assistant (£25,000) and the principle researcher wage (£25,000).
The proposed timeframe is 12 months.
A preliminary timescale is as followed:
• January - March: Research/ Design & Planning
• April - July: Interviews
• August - November: Data Coding & Analysis
• November - December: Editing
Methodology
Research Questions
1. What was the impact of prolonged and violent conflict on the mental health of male politically motivated (first time offender, life-sentence) prisoners and prison staff at HMP Maze, 1968-1998? (This includes the violent conflict that may have affected prisoners before coming to prison; the violent conflict that often erupted in prison; and the violent conflict that affected prison officers as a result of their occupation)
2. What does this cohort reveal about other prison populations arising from political, quasi-political or paramilitary conflict?
3. What can our research tell us about modes of adaptation to long-term imprisonment?
4. Can we develop insights into the dynamics of the staff-inmate relationship that may be relevant to the study of other closed institutions?
Research Methods
The proposed methodology is a primary qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews. This method has been chosen as the focus of this
Just as Conover explains and reveals, it takes years to become a professional in the field. Reading Conover’s text, gives a lot of important information and was something unique that I haven't read before. Before reading New Jack, I didn't imagine that working in a prisons could be so difficult. Hearing the information from someone that has experienced prisons in the United States and the ways facilities, corrections officers, and inmates function with one another, has helped me get a better
The author of Descent into Madness discusses how systems of criminal justice that engage in high levels of disorganization become nothing short of a breeding ground for discontentment among prison inmates. The other main point is that prison staff psychologically are hungry for power. This manifests in the myriad of ways that they treat the inmates in an effort to feel powerful through by retribution through their
Standing as one the most dominant agencies operating within the criminal justice system, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is a detrimental factor that has proven to materialize the very aspects of which to expand the dynamics of maintaining care, control, and custody of federal inmates. Albeit as it may that the agency’s establishment fails to loom too far into the crevices of history, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has surpassed a multitude of platforms that has propelled its strengths today far beyond what its founders could have imagined. However, given the magnitude of such feat as the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been bombarded with, challenges such as, but not limited the swift rate of inmates incarcerated, has greatly hindered the
The Stanford Prison Experiment sought to recreate a prison experience to study behaviors of prisoners and guards. The authors were seeking answers to the question of dispositional hypothesis which states “that the state of the social institution of prison is due to the “nature” of the people who administer it, or the “nature” of the people who populate it, or both” (A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Stimulated Prison, 1971, pg. 2). In other words, they were studying whether the prisoners and guards behaviors changed due to their personalities or was it the prison environment that caused these changes. The authors considered the recidivism rate that was 75 percent at the time, conditions in prisons, and the belief that prisons
We will discuss two models for inmate subculture: the deprivation model and the importation model. The Deprivation model suggests that “the prisoners suffer and get frustrated due to the absence of liberty, privacy, free access to goods and services, heterosexual relationships, autonomy and security” (Stojkovic, Stan & Lovell, 1998). This theory clearly says that inmate subculture is evident through the pains of imprisonment. While the importation model says that the subculture is evident because the prisoners are replicating the outside world. This model includes the prisoner-staff dynamic, 3 types of inmates, various racial groups within the prison population, type of offence, record of recidivism (re-offending), personality differences (prior to imprisonment), power of “politicians” (top of the inmate social hierarchy), work gangs, work groups, and sexual “deviation” which would directly affect inmate subculture. Both inmate subculture models comprise of a behavior code, a power hierarchy, an economic system for illicit goods and service distributions and “argot”
The method I chose for this analysis is in-depth interview. This ethnographic method will be best because it allows me to understand an
Correctional organizations whether it is local, state, or federal will all have numerous different masteries as well as many different staff members that complete those different tasks. The text (Carlson) explains that prison and or jails are both expected to accomplish several sometimes-conflicting goals when dealing with inmates. Among many of those, punish, incapacitate, and rehabilitate as well as deter others from violating society’s rules (Carlson & Garrett, 2008, p. 195). The concept that "all employees of a correctional institution
At any given time, a single corrections officer, can expect to be outnumbered by upwards of 400 inmates (Conover, 2011). It can be chilling to work in the midst of hundreds of inmates, some of which initiate attacks and inappropriate relationships. However, other issues have impacted the psychological health and physical safety of the staff. Detrimental factors have included heavy workloads, the prisons physical structure, and a lack of support from both peers and superiors. Each workplace issue has been in addition to role problems, specifically role ambiguity and role conflict (Schaufeli & Peeters, 2011). It is believed that anyone of these undesirable facets of prison should be enough to deter the public from attempting to enter such
Name: Lecturer: Course: Date of Submission: Mass incarceration in American Prisons Introduction More than 2.3 million Americans today are prisoners, a population that represents more than a quarter of the number of prisoners in the world. This means that 760 Americans in one hundred thousand are prisoners in America (Detotto and Pulina). The rise in prisoners’ numbers has sharply risen since 1980 with the cost of maintaining the prison going to over four hundred percent within the same period.
Through the obvious statistical evidence of the United States Prison system and the exploration of detrimental prison culture it becomes apparent that the system needs to be reformed. Prisons are not cost effective and they do not provide the right correctional help. The United States prison system is deeply flawed. Prison creates a culture that is detrimental to prisoners and all
An interview guide was constructed and then tested through two pilot interviews, during with time frame was evaluated. After these tests were executed, some small adjustments were made in order to better frame the questions. The sample was interviewed during three weeks in March and April 2012, using the semi- structured questions from the interview guide. The authors were aware of the effect that the response to some questions may have on the following responses, if a specific question was posed prior to another. Therefore general rules formulated within qualitative research for the sequence of questions, were followed. (Bryman, 2002). The authors deemed that the first question had
When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.
It is common knowledge that the American prison system has grown exponentially in the last few decades. The prison population within the last forty years has risen by two million inmates. Multiple factors such as overcrowding and cost cutting have also decreased the quality of life within prisons by an order of magnitude. With this rising statistic, it becomes increasingly urgent to understand the effect of incarceration on our prisoners and whether the reformation process is actually doing more harm than good.
At the start of the semi structured interview, several elements of demographic data were collected from the participant. In addition to the traditional age, gender, and ethnicity, participants will asked to describe their educational history. For each stage of their schooling, the year, location, intended degree, and field of study were collected. Questions will also asked about their current or recent employment status. This questions was like ‘ice breaking’ to make sure the participant comfortable during the interview. Following these demographic questions, the semi structured format will described to the participant. As explained, the goal of the session was to have the participant talk freely and openly
When an individual is introduced to the prison life, after violating rules and laws, he or she must come to terms about the journey he or she are about to take behind bars in prison. No one can save them, or do their time for them, and a majority of their freedom has been stripped from them either temporarily or permanently. Prison life deals with all walks of life and is not discriminative toward any race. In this paper I will discuss my perspective on prison life, policies I would enforce an inmate’s need for respect, changes on correctional policy, and why people commit crimes.