Suchergebnisse

This article explores prisoner-versus-prisoner conflicts as a means of clarifying the links and contrasts between victimization and bullying. The author argues that a defining feature of bullying is a power imbalance between the parties, and that most prison victimization - including insults, theft, threats and fights - lacks a power imbalance. The research shows that the majority of prison violence arises, not from bullying, but from victimization. He concludes that tackling victimization, as the Prison Service Violence Reduction strategy recommends, is likely to be more effective in preventing violence than attempts to identify and punish bullies.

It is widely accepted that prisoners are at risk of victimization from their fellow prisoners. However, little is known about the psychological consequences of exposure to such risk. In particular, what is the relationship between prisoners' feelings of anxiety and their observations or experiences of victimization? How is the level of incivility in penal institutions related to perceptions of safety? The findings from a survey of 1,182 inmates shed some light on the dynamics of fear in prison. Most prisoners reported feeling safe most of the time, although a small number of prison locations consistently were rated as unsafe. Prisoners with direct experience of victimization were more fearful than those without. An attempt is made to outline possible explanations for these and other findings.

Discussions of safety in prisons often emphasise the grossest forms of interpersonal violence, such as murder and sexual assault. However, a focus on spectacular acts of violence obscures the mundane, day‐to‐day victimisation which characterises institutional life. This study, based on an inmate survey and in‐depth interviews, provides a snapshot of the range and nature of 'outine'victimisation. It builds on the prisoners'own accounts of assault, robbery, threats of violence, cell theft, verbal abuse and exclusion, to show how these experiences shape their daily lives.

Prisons are dangerous places, and assaults, threats, theft and verbal abuse are pervasive - attributable both to the characteristics of the captive population and to an institutional sub culture which promotes violence as a means of resolving conflicts. Yet the crimes perpetrated by prisoners on other prisoners have attracted little interest, and criminological research has contributed little to an understanding of situations in which violence arises in penal institutions. This book seeks to remedy this, and to address and answer a number of key questions: how do features of the prison social

Recognizing the major scholarly contributions to criminology by the noted Irish criminologist, Ian O'Donnell, The Prison Journal invited seven contemporary corrections and punishment scholars to offer insights into O'Donnell's new book, Prison Life: Pain, Resistance, and Purpose. Offering contextually rich descriptions of prisoner life, the text features four case study prisons—H Blocks, Northern Ireland; Eastham Unit, Texas; Isir Bet, Ethiopia; and ADX Florence, Colorado, in pivotal time periods and through an individual's custodial career in each institution. The symposium discussants focus on O'Donnell's conceptual framework—the degree of prison integration, system and staff regulation, and legitimacy—and how these reflect the key interactions between punishment and society across time and culture.