This article was written for the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. In September 2021 will make 50 years since the Attica Prison Revolt. We seem to have learned so little in that half century! Read more →
Category: Writings about Prisons
The Pen and the Pendulum: Finding Our Way to the Future of Incarceration – 1995
This Chapter in Crime and Justice in the Year 2010 (published in 1995) explores the dynamics of the dialectic of the purposes and nature of imprisonment in the United States in an effort to predict (in 1995) what would be happening with the internal prison life and policy related to internal prison life (not the use of incarceration and prison… Read more →
Prisonography: Sources of Knowledge about Prisons – 2004
This chapter in CORRECTIONAL CRIMINOLOGY, Edited by Sean O’Toole and Simon Eyland discusses the problem of multiple realities (prisoners, prison officers, administrators, politicians, mass media (press, film), advocacy and academic (with sub disciplines) and the various courses of information (data) which inform the reality! Read more →
Group Dynamics and the Correctional Officer Subculture: Is it an Impediment to Helping Inmates 1985
Abstract: It is often argued that correctional officer as a group hold values that are antithetical to helping inmates. This assumption links “guard subculture” values to reinforcing group solidarity among correctional officers. This paper explores some of the literature on correctional officer from the perspective of the social psychology of group dynamics. Its conclusion is thot factors which appear to foster… Read more →
Stress, Change and Collective Violence in Prison 1982
Alleviating Inmate Stress: Contributions from Correctional Officers – 1982
Learning Corrections: Linking Experience and Research – 2012
This paper (a chapter in Lee Michael Johnson’s book, EXPERIENCING CORRECTIONS, Sage, 2012) ) describes Lucien Lombardo’s early days as a teacher at Auburn Prison from 1969-1977. Lessons from ‘his experiences’ and his efforts to understand these experiences through the exploration of available research on living and working in prison, such as Bruno Bettelheim’s “individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme… Read more →
Guards Imprisoned: Correctional Officers at Work 1981, 1989, 2016
GUARDS IMPRISONED: Correctional Officers at Work provides the first through exploration of the diversity of approaches to working and impacts of working in prison. Conducted at Auburn Prison in New York, the research upon which the book is based integrates interviews with over 70 correctional officers with from 2 to 40 years of experience working a variety of job assignments.… Read more →
Senior Scholar Presentation: My Journey With Violence 2006
November 2006 This presentation was for colleagues in the College of Arts and Letters at Old Dominion University, November 2006. The presentation describes the things that lead me to study and try to understand the topics of prisons, violence, violence and children. It links my academic work to a need to understand that was never just academic! Read more →
Attica Remembered: 1996
Abstract This essay is a personal and intellectual autobiographical analysis ofthe roots and dynamics of the development and conclusion of acultural icon in the history of American prisons, the Attica PrisonRebellion. In 1971 Attica Prison in New York State became the blood spilled by agents of the government in the retaking of the prison. This personal essay about the Attica… Read more →