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CRM 331 Corrections : W '08   Mon 5:30 - 8, Pray Harold 204

Required Reading [links go to Amazon.com; all bookstores have this order also]

Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind.  Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. New Press 1-56584-726-1

 Robert Johnson. Hard Time. Wadsworth, 3rd ed. 0534507174

Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. Vintage Books; 0679751319

Recommended Books

Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. Knopf; 0375726624

Jeffrey Ross and Stephen Richards. Behind Bars: Surviving Prison. Alpha; 0028643518

Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair. Knopf (2002); 0375410597

Great article on what happens to someone freed from 10 years on death row after DNA evidence clears him ($300,000, depression, etc)

Texas executes a convicted killer whose lawyer suffered from mental illness and was repeatedly disciplined by the state bar

Margaret Edds, An Expendable Man: The Near Execution of Earl Washington Jr. New York University Press (2003). 0814722229

Scott Christianson, Innocent: Inside Wrongful Conviction Cases. New York University Press (2004) 0814716342 .

Jeremy Travis, But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry. Urban Institute Press (2005) 0877667500

Robert Johnson, Justice Follies: Parody from Planet Prison. Infiniti/Willo Tree Press. (2005) 0741425920.

Jeffrey Ross and Stephen Richards. Convict Criminology. Wadsworth Pub Co;  0534574335 [see website for the book and the 6 minute Realaudio video clip from Wisconsin Public TV on convict criminology. 

I mentioned the Pew Center study about 1 in 100 Americans behind bars. I'd also suggest their study Public Safety, Public Spending (pdf) which examines the cost of incarceration until 2011. The New York Times' editorial on the 1 in 100 study noted: "Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry."

Required Reading and Exercises 

1/7

Introduction & Greeting | Syllabus (Adobe.pdf) | 

Recommended general online references: Prisoner's Dictionary (look up slang terms) - part of a good collection of info at The Other Side of the Wall. Also check out What Every American Should Know About Criminal Justice and The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control Industry. The Real Costs of Prisons has some great information and a frequently updated blog. A list of corrections research reports is below

Watch Johnny Cash play at San Quentin prison (the real footage, not from the movie)

1/14 Johnson, Intro

Paper 1 Due: based on Ted Conover's article 'Guarding Sing Sing.' Write a 2 page paper that identifies several quotes from different topics or aspects of the article that you found important and briefly discussing it. [If you like the article, check out the recommended book Newjack by Conover, which is the longer version of his prison guard experience.]

Johnson ch 1 
Prison History links: To follow up on other aspects of prison history, check out the Eastern State Penitentiary - remember, silent system - homepage with its brief timeline and a virtual reality tour. 

More information about the history of women and prison is also available

prison work songs - parchman farm

Extensive list of prison music

Johnson ch 2
1/21 MLK DAY - NO CLASSES
1/28 Johnson ch 3, 4
Gulag: A History (introductory chapter of a book). GULAG is an acronym, meaning Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, or Main Camp Administration. Over time, the word "Gulag" has also come to signify not only the administration of the concentration camps but also the system of Soviet slave labor itself.. [and] the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the "meat-grinder": the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths.

The Black People's Prison Survival Guide.  

Johnson ch 5 (skip state raised inmate section)

Stop Prison Rape

The video we saw was Shakedown in Santa Fe, about the New Mexico prison riots. There's a good overview of prison riot issues, causes and prevention

2/4 Johnson ch 7

We discussed the Stanford Prison Experiment in class - here's a link for the website that has a slideshow and commentary by Zimbardo.

Addressing Correctional Officer Stress: Programs and Strategies (National Inst of Justice) 129 pages, Adobe/.pdf

In Chapters 7 & 8 Johnson makes extensive use of Conover's book Newjack, partly because there are few officers who seem to write - unlike the large amount of inmate literature. The reading for the first week about Sing Sing was an excerpt from the book; he's also written a short but interesting story of a female guard

A Convict Criminology Perspective on Women Guarding Men (full text pdf), from Justice Policy Journal

Johnson ch 8

Worksheet 1 Due: Michigan's Crime & Prison statistics. The worksheet is here and the link with the information for Part 1 is here (select Michigan) and information for Part II is here (see worksheet instructions). 

2/11 Johnson ch 9

"Effective Prison Mental Health Services: Guidelines To Expand and Improve Treatment" (93 pp. Adobe/.pdf) presents survey results on historical, legal, and ethical issues in dealing with mental illness in the field of corrections.

Ill-Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness (Human Rights Watch Report)

Johnson ch 10

The Office of Justice Programs has a major initiative dealing with prisoner reentry. The Vera Institute has several good publications that explore the issues faced by release and strategies to help. Also good is the Urban Institute's report, 'Chicago Prisoners' Experiences Returning Home.'

StopViolence has more on restorative justice and includes a page on faith-based crime prevention, which includes some prison ministries. 

2/18

TEST 1   Please be on time as no one will be admitted after the last person has left

W 08 bonus question: discuss and relate to class the information in this article: why do the men interviewed in the article say the current system is counterproductive?

2/25 - 3/2 WINTER RECESS - NO CLASSES
3/3

Mauer & Chesney-Lind: Intro + Ch 1, 15

Worksheet 2 due: Go to ‘Prisoners in 2006'. You will need to open up the .pdf/ Adobe Acrobat file to complete this assignment because the other versions do not have all the tables. Please be careful to distinguish between the number, a rate and percents – make sure you provide the information requested by the questions in the worksheet. (click on 'worksheet' to open a copy of the questions you'll need to answer)
Mauer & Chesney-Lind: 5 + 8
More on 'equality with a vengeance'

As we discussed in class, a search for "women in prison" was as likely to turn up a dating service or a B exploitation movie like Ilsa: She Wolf of SS as anything serious (link goes to prisonflicks.com). 

Wired magazine did a story "Jail Order Brides" on JailBabes.com.

Prison Rape links: “Not Part of My Sentence” from Amnesty International; “Nowhere to Hide: Retaliation Against Women in Michigan State Prisons; ALL TOO FAMILIAR: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons (Human Rights Watch)

Recommended: Gender-Responsive Strategies: Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders (142 pp, Adobe.pdf). If you like the report, author Stephanie Covington has her own website with a number of articles available online (gender responsive programming in many forms). See also "Developing Gender-Specific Classification Systems for Women Offenders" (97 pp./Adobe.pdf) addresses the need for classification systems that provide necessary information about women offenders, are adapted to women, and are effective in matching women to appropriate custody levels and programming. The Gender-Responsive Strategies Project: Jail Applications
3/10 Mauer & Chesney-Lind: ch 7 Worksheet 3 due: Go to Criminal Justice Expenditure and Employment, 2003. You will need to open up the .pdf/ Adobe Acrobat file to complete this assignment because the other versions do not have all the tables. Please be careful to distinguish between the number, a rate and percents – make sure you provide the information requested by the questions in the worksheet. (click on 'worksheet' to open a copy of the questions you'll need to answer)
Mauer & Chesney-Lind: 11
Lynch and Sabol, Prison Use and Social Control discusses in more detail research examining how mass incarceration undermines informal social controls (family and community). The Lynch & Sabol article is part of Criminal Justice 2000 (NIJ) that has some interesting work: Spohn has an excellent review of 30 years of sentencing discrimination research, and Zatz on the convergence of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class. 

employ ex-offenders.org - to reduce the class and race based stigma of criminality and to challenge the popular media discourse that demonizes individuals with criminal records and individuals making the transition from prison to civil society.

Mauer & Chesney-Lind: ch 6 + 12
private prison resources - info on cost savings, reports, and links to explore the topic. See Why Private Prisons Don't Save Money (CEO pay = $1.4 million, etc)

With 2.2 million people engaged in catching criminals and putting and keeping them behind bars, "corrections" has become one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, employing more people than the combined workforces of General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three biggest corporate employers in the country.

Not With Our Money! is a network of student and community activists working to end the use of prisons for profit. Not With Our Money! took on multinational Sodexho Alliance, demanding that the catering company divest its 10% stake in Corrections Corporation of America. By the end of June 2001, CCA’s largest shareholder had ended all ties with the prison company as a result of protests at more than 60 campuses where subsidiary Sodexho Marriott Services held contracts

See also: A map illustrating the growth in incarceration in the U.S.  State Prison Expenditures (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

3/17 Mauer & Chesney-Lind: ch 3,  10 & 16

Mark Mauer, who wote ch 3 on the disappearing voter, works for the Sentencing Project; they have a section on felony disenfranchisement. See also prisoners of the census for statistics and excellent discussion. See how prisoners affect the census in Michigan

Reverse Reparations Race, Place, and the Vicious Circle of Mass Incarceration

The Sentencing Project released a study yesterday showing that about 14 percent of black men in Atlanta cannot vote because they are in prison, on probation or on parole. A study of Providence by the Rhode Island Family Life Center, released simultaneously with the Atlanta report, had similar findings. That study showed that 32 percent of black men from ages 18 to 34 could not vote, compared with 3 percent of white men and 10 percent of Hispanics. (In Atlanta, 14% of Black Men Can't Vote, Washington Post, 23 Sept 2004, A10)

Understanding the unemployment rate and alternative measures of it. See also joblessness but unemployment low

My page on the death penalty has a section on European views, if you'd like to follow up on Stern's thoughts; my StopViolence site has information on Restorative Justice.

Read the brief filed by the European Union in the juvenile death penalty case that was being heard by the Supreme Court last term and ended that penalty. (Adobe/.pdf 62pages) For background on the case, see links below for first day of Prejean's book.

Worldmapper shows size of countries based on prison population rates (US is large light blue area in upper left)

INTERNATIONAL INCARCERATION RATES to know for test see the World Prison Brief and review sheet for specific countries. You want to review rates for the entire world and NEED TO CHANGE THE SECOND PULL DOWN MENU CATEGORY TO PRISON POPULATION RATES (NOT POPULATION TOTALS).
3/24

TEST 2     Please be on time as no one will be admitted after the last person has left

link for bonus question

3/31 Prejean intro + ch 1

 

Sister Helen Prejean's New book is The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions

Death Penalty Debate: opposing viewpoints and links

Sample death penalty jury instructions on aggravating and mitigating factors (Idaho - see link at bottom of page for instructions in .rtf)

Capital Defense Newsletter (review of current cases, news and law)

Prejean ch 2 + 3 worksheet 4 on Death Penalty - click here to open the worksheet. The information you need can be found in Capital Punishment, 2005. NOTE: You will need to use the Adobe Acrobat version, which has all the tables and charts. 
4/7 Prejean ch 4 -7

Catholics Against Capital Punishment

Read the brief statement by the President of the AMA and this statement by the President of the ASA about participation in lethal injection

Paper 2 Due: The topic will the Baze v Rees, a case the Supreme Court is hearing on lethal injection. The question for your 2-3 page paper is to summarize the position of both sides with respect to how much pain is allowed by the 8th amendment and how likely does that pain have to be? Your paper should be based on the Brief for the Petitioner (pdf - see page 30 ["Argument"] and following) and the Brief for Respondent (pdf - see p 24 ["Argument"] and following).

DO NOT give simply a summary a case or discuss the specifics of the 3 drug cocktail unless it is directly relevant to answering the question about 8th Amendment standards mentioned above above. Use the Briefs and examine the subheadings to get the flow of the argument. 

If you're interested, see the background brief written by Cornell Law School, but note that this does not contain all the information I am looking for in the paper and I will be reading the papers looking to see if you have used the briefs.

***Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's lethal injection - link to summary of opinion and full written opinions.

4/14 Prejean ch 8 international views on US death penalty - will be covered as part of final exam ~ see review sheet for specifics.

If the link above does not work, try this alternative for the 2006 information

Prejean ch 9 + 11
Center on Wrongful Convictions (Northwestern Law School). See especially their page on the underlying causes of wrongful convictions

Justice Denied: Magazine for the Wrongfully Convicted

The Disappearance of Executive Clemency in Capital Cases: What Has Happened to Mercy in America? (Austin Sarat, Findlaw.com)

The genetics of justice: After years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, DNA testing finally freed Kirk Bloodsworth (book review, Christian Science Monitor)

As DNA testing frees increasing numbers of innocents from prison, Maryland and other states across the country are facing a politically sensitive and morally complex calculus: What is the value of a life unjustly spent behind bars? "What's a prison rape worth?" asked Ronald Kuby, a New York lawyer who has worked on compensation cases. "What's missing your child's first day of school worth? Not being with your parents as they lay dying? Having your parents go to their graves with you branded a convict?" ("Putting A Price on Innocents' Lost Years" Washington Post, 4 Oct 2004, p A1)

My research on televising McVeigh's execution - description of the work and 25 minute mp3 file

4/21 FINAL EXAM: regular class time

Please be on time as no one will be admitted after the last person has left

Bonus question - what is this case about and what are the arguments for and against? 

While it is not material for the final exam, if you are interested the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's lethal injection - link to summary of opinion and full written opinions. 

 

If you're graduating, congratulations. Whether or not you are graduating, check out the commencement address given by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. He discusses dropping out of college (he never graduated), getting fired from Apple (a company he helped start) and dealing with cancer. (You can also watch it on YouTube if you'd prefer)

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Corrections Research Reports

"Training Programs for Juvenile Corrections Professionals" (108 pages, Natl Inst of Corrections)

"Alternatives to the Secure Detention and Confinement of Juvenile Offenders" (41 pp., OJJDP)) discusses community-based alternatives that enable judicious use of detention and confinement. 

"Supervision of Women Defendants and Offenders in the Community" (24 pp.Adobe.pdf), explains the use of gender-responsive strategies with women in community corrections. National Institute of Corrections

"Correctional Leadership Competencies for the 21st Century: Executives and Senior-Level Leaders" (253 pp./Adobe.pdf) Topics discussed in this report include managerial profiles, self-awareness, ethics and values, strategic thinking, power and influence, strategic planning, performance measurement, collaboration, and team building.

"A Guide to Preparing for and Responding to Prison Emergencies: Self-Audit Checklists, National Survey Results, Resource Materials, Case Studies" (318 pp./Adobe.pdf) addresses topics such as conducting an audit, emergency preparedness, natural disaster/HAZMAT/fire, leadership issues during crises, prevention of prison emergencies, emergency teams, and prisons and counterterrorism.

"Correctional Health Care: Addressing the Needs of Elderly, Chronically Ill, and Terminally Ill Inmates" (162 pp./Adobe.pdf) is intended to help prison administrators explore options for managing aging and infirm inmates and those with chronic illnesses or disabilities.

"Parole Violations Revisited: A Handbook on Strengthening Parole Practices for Public Safety and Successful Transition to the Community" (116 pp/Adobe.pdf)

"Stress Among Probation and Parole Officers and What Can Be Done About It" Researchers identified the major sources of stress (heavy caseloads, paperwork, deadlines) and what officers do to cope. This Research for Practice summarizes key findings and provides case studies of promising stress reduction programs.

"Objective Prison Classification: A Guide for Correctional Agencies" (91 pp. Adobe/.pdf)  summarizes the current state of the art in prison classification, focusing on the use of prison classification instruments for custody or security rating purposes. "Classification of High-Risk and Special Management Prisoners: A National Assessment of Current Practices" (104 pp. Adobe/.pdf) presents results from a survey designed to obtain information on the procedures used to classify high-risk inmates, particularly those in protective custody or administrative segregation, and inmates with mental illness or medical problems. 

"Screening and Assessing Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders Among Youth in the Juvenile Justice System: A Resource Guide for Practitioners

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