Elderly prisoners: a growing and forgotten group within correctional systems vulnerable to elder abuse

There are over 2.1 million people incarcerated in the nation's jails and prisons. Additionally, close to 600,000 prisoners are released annually into communities across the country. Many prisoners and those released from prisons are elderly. The purpose of this article is to examine the systemic abuse and neglect experienced by elderly prisoners while they are incarcerated and when they are released from prison. Most correctional systems have inadequate resources, processes, and personnel to manage the elderly population inside and outside of prisons. In addition to providing a definition of "elderly prisoner," two specific problems-prison health care and prisoner re-entry-are examined in the article. The article concludes with recommendations for both policy and research on how best we can further understand and address the multiple needs and concerns faced by elderly prisoners.     

Elderly Prisoners: A Growing and Forgotten Group Within Correctional Systems Vulnerable to Elder Abuse

ABSTRACT

There are over 2.1 million people incarcerated in the nation's jails and prisons. Additionally, close to 600,000 prisoners are released annually into communities across the country. Many prisoners and those released from prisons are elderly. The purpose of this article is to examine the systemic abuse and neglect experienced by elderly prisoners while they are incarcerated and when they are released from prison. Most correctional systems have inadequate resources, processes, and personnel to manage the elderly population inside and outside of prisons. In addition to providing a definition of “elderly prisoner,” two specific problems–prison health care and prisoner re-entry–are examined in the article. The article concludes with recommendations for both policy and research on how best we can further understand and address the multiple needs and concerns faced by elderly prisoners.     

RACE AND DISCIPLINARY REPORTS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS

This research examines the likelihood of one racial group of correctional officers writing more disciplinary reports than another. It also examines interracial and intraracial disciplinary reports. Two theoretical models are used to explain why correctional officers use official write ups to control prisoners. The importation model emphasizes the impact of individual factors on correctional officers behavior, and the institutionalization model stresses the effect of organizational factors. Using data from 115 correctional officers, we found no significant differences in Black and White officers writing of inmate disciplinary reports. No significant difference was found between interracial and intraracial disciplinary responses, either. The findings were consistent with the hypotheses derived from the institutionalization model.     

Prevalence of Problem Gambling Among the Prison Population in Hamburg,Germany

Despite the increasing research in gambling, the prevalence of problem gambling in the criminal justice population is rarely investigated, especially in Europe. Given the lack in knowledge the Hamburg study aimed at identifying the prevalence of problem gambling in the whole regional prison population. For this purpose two major approaches were used: a 10 months long-term screening of pre-trial detainees at prison entry through the Lie/Bet Questionnaire, and full-scale survey of inmate personnel records of prisoners being in prison on a defined reporting date. Based on 792 valid screening files 6.6 % of the pre-trial detainees were positive on the Lie/Bet Questionnaire, and these problem gamblers were male only. Among the 1,236 inmate personnel records reviewed in 7.3 % the records indicated problem gambling (90 prisoners). This indication was found in 7.5 % males and 3.6 % females. For almost half of the prisoners with problem gambling their prison sentence was related to their gambling behavior (46.7 %). These results are representative for the regional prison population, and the first of its kind in Europe.     

THE TIES THAT BIND: Family Surveillance of Canadian Parolees

This article combines the Foucauldian governmentality principles of managing troublesome populations with the actual everyday institutional discourse at parole hearings. The article illuminates how parole board members, inmates, and inmates' family members participate collaboratively in the construction of inmate identities as either parolees who should be released to the community or as prisoners who should remain in prison. The Foucauldian governmentality principles are complemented by a family attachment perspective whereby an offender's stake in conformity is promoted. Board members use a typology of caring and uncaring families to organize the parole hearings. This typology includes caring inmate mothers, caring inmate fathers, caring female partners uncaring inmate fathers, uncaring male partners, and uncaring female partners.     

Freedom within bars: maximum security prisoners’ negotiations of identity through rap

This paper examines the construction of prisoners’ identity through rap in England’s high security prisons. While hip hop studies has often addressed rap’s connection to the social practices of criminalized youths, prison rap cultures have received scant attention. This paper draws on a series of rap workshops and interviews with prisoners to investigate the experiences of black prisoners in high security prisons and how identities are produced and negotiated through rap. Rap is associated with the production of a range of identities and identifications, enabling prisoners to accommodate themselves to the conditions of their incarceration and to challenge aspects of the criminal justice system that they experience as unfair or illegitimate.     

Expansion of long-term care in the prison system: an aging inmate population poses policy and programmatic questions

Throughout the United States, departments of corrections are experiencing increases in their inmate populations. More specifically, the number of aging inmates is increasing and will continue to grow as younger prisoners who have long sentences with no possibility of parole age in prison. In addition, the number of younger inmates with illnesses such as AIDS has increased. Although long-term care can be required by individuals of any age, the need for such assistance tends to increase with age. Long-term care, therefore, can be seen as an issue confronting prisons with aging inmate populations. Yet, little is known about the nature or extent of the need. This paper focuses on older inmates and includes reasons for the increased need for long-term care in the prison setting. The standard for prison health care, the long-term-care status of older inmates, and examples of long-term-care services and facilities are described. Key questions related to furnishing long-term care to an older incarcerated population are identified. Recommendations are presented for both corrections and long-term-care providers and policymakers as they develop strategies to address this challenge.     

Micropolitics of race and ethnicity in women's prisons in two political contexts

Research over the past two decades has focused on the topic of race as important for understanding order and compliance in men's prisons. However, relatively little research considers how subjective understandings of imprisonment are influenced by race, particularly in the case of women prisoners. The current study analyses 139 interviews conducted with women prisoners in California and England in order to determine how race and ethnicity shape prisoners' experiences and abilities to cope with institutional confinement. Findings suggest that women's understandings of their racial identities differ substantially in these two contexts. In California, where the conditions of confinement are more extreme and white women assume a minority status, racial identity emerges as a salient factor in coping with the adversities of prison life. By contrast, in England, it is the women of colour, and particularly foreign nationals, who have a greater appreciation of the role of race and ethnicity in their daily lives. These findings have implications for our understanding of how prisoners draw on their lived experiences to make sense of their carceral worlds.     

Problem gambling among female prisoners: lifetime prevalence,help-seeking behaviour and association with incarceration

The widespread introduction of electronic gaming machines (EGMs) in Australia has seen problem gambling (PG) rates soar over the past decade. This has been particularly apparent among women, with presentations to gambling help services increasing fivefold, and 90% of them indicating EGMs as the problem. Prisoners represent a group containing the highest PG rate found in any population. Despite a sharp increase in PG among women and the well-established link between offenders and PG, little data exists concerning PG among female prisoners. This study examined lifetime prevalence of PG among female prisoners in South Australia. The Early Intervention Gambling Health Test was administered to 74 female prisoners. Previous help-seeking behaviour and association with incarceration were also examined. Sixty-four percent of respondents indicated PG with one in six reporting they were incarcerated due to PG-related offending. Problem gamblers whose incarceration was related to PG were more likely to indicate they had gambled to try and win money to repay debts than problem gamblers incarcerated for unrelated offending. Given high levels of PG and overall low rates of help-seeking, women’s prisons may provide an opportunity to engage this high-risk population with effective treatment.     

Ramen Politics: Informal Money and Logics of Resistance in the Contemporary American Prison

This article explores an unexpected yet pervasive arena in which changes to security may alter lived experiences of and responses to punishment. Namely, amidst changes in the quality of care behind U.S. prison walls and resultant prisoner insecurities in the face of neoliberal penology, the nation’s prisoners have adapted informal prison markets to address unmet needs and pursue autonomy. Where cigarettes once reigned as the de facto token of exchange in the underground economy, the contemporary American prison is now home to a new form of informal money: cheap, reliable food items like ramen noodles. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork within a U.S. men’s state prison and 82 in-depth interviews with prisoners and institutional staff, this paper explores this change in the form of informal prison money and what it reveals about the nation’s prisons and prisoners. It contends that prison money reflects changing logics of prisoner resistance in particular political-economic and penal contexts. As prison administrative practices, institutional conditions, and legal environments change with time, prisoners adapt expressions of autonomy accordingly. While cigarettes symbolized withdrawal from the rigors of prison life and individualized treatment—the dominant logic of resistance of the prior era—the new ramen currency reflects a growing emphasis on prison “foodways” in opposition to cost-shifting and deteriorating services behind bars.     

Gambling behaviors and perceived health among incarcerated older adults

The proliferation of lotteries and casinos has led to increased participation in gambling. Older adults who have opportunities to gamble may be vulnerable to gambling problems, and incarcerated older adults may be the most vulnerable. Furthermore, research has linked decreased health to gambling problems. This study compared perceived health and gambling problems among 43 incarcerated older adults from two county jails in the midwestern United States. Results from the South Oaks Gambling Screen indicated 48.83% of the sample scored in the problem or pathological range. Short Form-36 results were compared with U.S. norms for ages 55 to 64 and showed significantly lower perceived health scores on Role-Physical, Bodily Pain, Mental Health, Social Functioning, and Role-Emotional subscales. The problem and pathological gamblers showed significantly lower social functioning than the recreational gamblers. Assessment of health conditions and gambling behaviors is important for quantifying current and anticipated burdens of these conditions on correctional health care systems and the community.     

Delinquency Interrupted: Research into and Inside of Juvenile Correctional Facilities

Incarcerated juveniles are a largely invisible population in the United States. Research into training schools and other juvenile correctional facilities has uncovered a sordid history of good intentions and bad practices. Juvenile correctional facilities are generally considered a less harmful environment for serious delinquents than adult prisons but a much more severe sanction than alternative community programs or treatment would be. Studies have shown that juveniles in confinement face similar deprivation and many of the same pains of imprisonment ( Sykes 1958 ) as adult prisoners, but the more pressing threat to adolescent inmates may be to their psychological selves rather than their physical being. New research on adolescent brain development is garnering attention and sparking questions about the culpability and punishment of juvenile offenders, even as public opinion research suggests that there is fairly widespread support for rehabilitation and a social‐welfare oriented juvenile justice system. By listening and giving voice to incarcerated youth and their “keepers,” investigating the conditions of confinement, and continuing to evaluate programs and outcomes, researchers are positioned to play a key role in the future of juvenile justice and juvenile correctional facilities.     

Perceived stigma and self-stigma of problem gambling: perspectives of people with gambling problems

Minimal research has investigated the stigma associated with problem gambling, despite its major hindrance to help-seeking and recovery. This study explored perceived stigma and self-stigma to examine stigmatizing beliefs held, how they may be internalized, coping mechanisms, and effects on help-seeking. In-depth interviews with 44 people experiencing gambling problems were analysed using interpretive phenomenology. Results revealed an overwhelming perception that problem gambling attracts acute public stigma and is publicly viewed as caused by personal failings. Participants had serious concerns about being viewed as ‘a problem gambler’, fearing demeaning stereotypes, social rejection, hostile responses and devaluing behaviours. Many participants internalized perceived stigma as self-stigma, with deleterious reported effects on self-esteem, self-efficacy, perceived social worth, and mental and physical health. Deep shame was a near universal emotion and exacerbated by relapse. Secrecy was the main coping mechanism used, with perceived and self-stigma found to act as major barriers to disclosure and help-seeking. The findings can inform the development of a valid understanding and conceptualization of problem gambling stigma. This is a prerequisite for effective stigma-reduction strategies to reduce public stigma and discrimination, and to lower perceived and self-stigma and increase the use of treatment services and other interventions by people with gambling problems.     

Professional education for correctional nurses. A community-based partnership model.

Advanced, professional education is the key to shift the correctional health nursing role from isolated practice behind bars to a seamless community-based, managed-care approach. From a public health perspective, the state of health or illness of the correctional population reflects the state of health or illness of the community of which they are a part. The aim of correctional health is to close the health-trauma cycle and to restore the inmate's health to a state and a process of being, and the inmate to an integrated and whole person within the community.     

Privacy violations and procedural justice in the United States prisons and jails

Through constitutional amendments and case law, the United States citizens receive privacy protections. These same protections do not exist for individuals incarcerated in prisons and jails. Instead, their privacy rights are regularly replaced by larger institutional concerns for security, safety, and control. Such privacy violation measures may include electronic surveillance, recording of phone calls, opening/reading of mail, and searches of their person, cell, and property. Although it is expected that incarcerated individuals have fewer privacy rights than nonincarcerated citizens, some privacy violations may be perceived as procedurally unjust due to their severity and infringement upon incarcerated individuals' rights to dignity and respect. This has implications for the well-being of incarcerated individuals, the legitimacy of correctional officers, and as a result, the potential safety and security of institutions.     

LEGITIMATING TRANSPHOBIA

Transgender persons are strangers to the law; or put more accurately, the legal imagination is so deeply entrenched in normative gender binarism as to effectively render transsexuals a ‘freakish’ anomaly to law. This essay attempts to offer a reflection on transgenderism, law and sexual crime from a human rights and criminal law perspective. It focuses on one of the most violent types of institution in society – the prison – and asks: what are the legal imagination and practice surrounding transgender prisoners as they are linked to social and cultural transphobia? What ‘human’ rights can be practiced for a dehumanized class? It first surveys the legal predicament of transgender prisoners in the US prison system in relation to Eighth Amendment rights provided by the US Constitution. The US situation has seen cases that have importantly shed light on other jurisdictions when engaging with the combined questions of prisoners’ rights and transgender rights together. The analysis is then taken to the context of Hong Kong prisons in a modest application. In contrast to some other Asian contexts (such as Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia), critical cultural studies of transgenderism are non-existent in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, human rights studies of the same have only emerged through the work of legal scholar Robyn Emerton. It is hoped that a rights-based approach will emerge in Hong Kong for the protection of transgender inmates from sexual violence in local correctional facilities.     

Spiritual Programmes for Prisoners in India: Insights for Criminological Social Work Practice

This study is based on 198 prisoners in prisons of three Indian cities – Mumbai, Pune and Delhi, who had undergone spiritual programs conducted by the Art of Living and Brahmakumaris. The main objectives were to understand the prisoners’ perceived implication of the programs for themselves and the future use. Results showed that younger prisoners, the religious minorities, those who personally engaged with the programs by doing some self-practice and those who had at least matriculation level education, were more likely to see the spiritual programs as personally positive, i.e. as giving a sense of personal peace and also see its continuous use as a way of life for the future. They also did better on parameters of hope, well-being, coherence, happiness and peace. This has implications for criminological social work practice, where a case is made for spiritual interventions, geared towards increasing the chances of prisoners to turn their lives around.     

Truth-in-sentencing,law enforcement,and inmate population growth☆

This paper presents the empirical estimation of an econometric model of the flow of prisoners into a state correctional system. Specifically, an econometric model was built to control for the number of parolees, the probability of admission to the state system, the size of the state population, the unemployment and poverty rates, the number of law enforcement officers within the state, and the state-wide “truth-in-sentencing” law, which requires convicts to serve at least 85% of their sentences. One primary result was that increases in the number of law enforcement officers has generated a decline in the growth rate of the prison population. This suggests that a “deterrent effect” is created when more police are placed on the beat. Furthermore, the results indicate that the truth-in-sentencing law has also slowed the rate of inmate population growth. This finding may reflect the growing trend for courts to hand down nontraditional sentences and to adjust prison sentences to reflect a constant “real time” of incarceration by crime.     

Gambling Harm and Crime Careers

Incarcerated populations across the world have been found to be consistently and significantly more vulnerable to problem gambling than general populations in the same countries. In an effort to gain a more specific understanding of this vulnerability the present study applied latent class analysis and criminal career theory to gambling data collected from a sample of English and Scottish, male and female prisoners (N = 1057). Theoretical links between gambling and crime were tested through three hypotheses: (1) that prisoners in the UK would have higher rates of problem gambling behaviour than the national population; (2) that if the link between gambling and crime is coincidental, gambling behaviour would be highly prevalent in an offending population, and (3) if connections between gambling behaviour and offending are co-symptomatic a mediating factor would show a strong association. The first of these was supported, the second was not supported and the third was partially supported. Latent class analysis found six gambling behaviour clusters measured by responses to the Problem Gambling Severity Index, primarily distinguished by loss chasing behaviour. Longitudinal offending data drawn from the Police National Computer database found four criminal career types, distinguished by frequency and persistence over time. A significant association was found between higher level loss chasing and high rate offending in criminal careers suggesting that impulse control may be a mediating factor for both gambling harm and criminal careers.     

Gambling and Problem Gambling Among Recently Sentenced Women in New Zealand Prisons

Ninety-four recently sentenced women prisoners were interviewed to assess aspects of their gambling involvement, problem gambling and relationships between gambling and criminal offending. A third of the women, on the basis of their SOGS-R scores, were assessed as lifetime probable pathological gamblers and just under a quarter were assessed as probable pathological gamblers during the 6 months prior to imprisonment. For women prisoners, a preference for non-casino gaming machines and housie were predictive of problem gambling. Relative to non-problem gamblers, problem gamblers experienced higher rates of childhood conduct disorder and current non-psychotic mental disorder. Just over a quarter of prisoners and a half of the problem gamblers had committed a crime to obtain money to gamble. Few women said their early offending or convictions related to gambling. It was concluded that most women were “criminals first and problem gamblers second” rather than people whose offending careers commenced as a consequence of problem gambling. However, the extent of problem gambling-related offending among the women prisoners highlights the potential for comprehensive assessment and treatment programs in prison to reduce recidivism and other adverse impacts of problem gambling and gambling-related offending.