Changing Prisons to Help People Change

Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Christy Visher ◽  
John M. Eason

It is important to consider the conditions of prison life in understanding how individuals rejoin society at the conclusion of their sentence. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach that promotes new ways of thinking and behaving for both incarcerated persons and correctional staff that will better prepare returning citizens to be valuable community members. We consider that “since criminal behavior is driven partly by certain thinking patterns that predispose individuals to commit crimes or engage in illegal activities, the widespread implementation of CBT [and immersive cognitive communities] as part of correctional programming could lead to fewer re-arrests and lower likelihood of reincarceration.” This article includes short, intermediate, and long-term policy and practice recommendations to begin implementing this model, beginning with funding to support the implementation of Cognitive Communities, re-branding prisons to focus on rehabilitation, and finally making the reduction of prison-sentencing through shorter prison terms and more reliance on community sanctions a long-term policy goal in the U.S.

Author(s):  
Ilana Seager ◽  
Douglas S. Mennin ◽  
Amelia Aldao

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a debilitating condition characterized by excessive, pervasive, uncontrollable, and paralyzing worries about a wide range of future situations. Individuals with this condition frequently find themselves stuck in worry and tension cycles in futile attempts at reducing uncertainty and increasing control. GAD has been associated with substantial impairments in functioning and reduced quality of life. GAD remains poorly understood, and the long-term efficacy and end-state functioning resulting from treatment are weaker compared to other anxiety disorders. Some treatments (e.g., emotion regulation therapy, acceptance-based behavioral therapy) have improved efficacy, partly by targeting emotional dysfunction. Basic psychopathology research has focused on identifying the role of negative affect in GAD, so little is known about how positive affect is experienced and regulated in this disorder. This is particularly important in light of the overlap of this condition with major depressive disorder, which is characterized by low or suppressed positive emotion. Developing such an understanding is essential to further improve the efficacy of emotion-based treatments. This chapter reviews current and future directions in the study of positive affect in GAD. The chapter reviews the nascent research on positive affect and GAD, then illustrates dimensions of future work.


2008 ◽  
Vol 196 (11) ◽  
pp. 847-851 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Kleindienst ◽  
Matthias F. Limberger ◽  
Christian Schmahl ◽  
Regina Steil ◽  
Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Shytierra Gaston

African Americans are disproportionately victimized by various forms of racialized violence. This long-standing reality is rooted in America’s history of racist violence, one manifestation being racial lynchings. This article investigates the long-term, intergenerational consequences of racial lynchings by centering the voices and experiences of victims’ families. The data comprise in-depth interviews with twenty-two descendants of twenty-two victims lynched between 1883 and 1972 in the U.S. South. I employed a multistage qualitative analysis, revealing three main domains of harmful impacts: psychological, familial, and economic. The findings underscore that racist violence has imposed harm beyond victims and for many decades and generations after the violent event. These long-term, intergenerational harms, especially if multiplied across countless incidents, can fundamentally impact the well-being of individuals, families, and communities as well as contribute to structural and macrolevel forces. Findings from this study have implications for research, policy, and practice, including efforts toward redress and reparations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. e302
Author(s):  
M. Sforza ◽  
M. Poletti ◽  
L. Giarolli ◽  
A. Galbiati ◽  
S. Marelli ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Few ◽  
Mythili Madhavan ◽  
Narayanan N.C. ◽  
Kaniska Singh ◽  
Hazel Marsh ◽  
...  

This document is an output from the “Voices After Disaster: narratives and representation following the Kerala floods of August 2018” project supported by the University of East Anglia (UEA)’s GCRF QR funds. The project is carried out by researchers at UEA, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, and Canalpy, Kerala. In this briefing, we provide an overview of some of the emerging narratives of recovery in Kerala and discuss their significance for post-disaster recovery policy and practice. A key part of the work was a review of reported recovery activities by government and NGOs, as well as accounts and reports of the disaster and subsequent activities in the media and other information sources. This was complemented by fieldwork on the ground in two districts, in which the teams conducted a total of 105 interviews and group discussions with a range of community members and other local stakeholders. We worked in Alleppey district, in the low-lying Kuttanad region, where extreme accumulation of floodwaters had been far in excess of the normal seasonal levels, and in Wayanad district, in the Western Ghats, where there had been a concentration of severe flash floods and landslides.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 580-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mie B Haller ◽  
Torsten Kolind

Ethnicity has come to play an increasing role in contemporary Danish prison life. This development not only reflects the growing number of prisoners in Danish prisons with ethnic minority backgrounds. It also reflects changes in prison spatial policy and institutional classifications. Based on seven months of fieldwork in a Danish high security prison, we investigate how such changes at the institutional level and at the level of policy have affected prisoner’s everyday ethnic identifications. We focus especially on the way prisoners reinforce and essentialize ethnic differences by reference to institutional spatial divisions; particularly the division between regular wings and drug treatment wings. We find that ethnic Danish prisoners spending time in a treatment wing are often viewed as ‘soft’ and ‘weak’ by prisoners with ethnic minority backgrounds in regular wings, whereas these prisoners in regular wings are in turn perceived as troublemakers and chaotic by the ethnic Danish prisoners in drug treatment. We also show how ethnic categories are at times blurred in actual practice. We conclude by discussing the implication for policy and practice; especially, we debate whether new spatial prison policies may unintentionally partake in accentuating ethnic stereotypical thinking.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony D. Kauders

Summarizing the activities of the Sigmund-Freud-Institute (SFI) in Frankfurt am Main in 1969, its director Alexander Mitscherlich painted a bleak picture of recent events. Psychoanalysis had always faced opposition in Germany, he wrote, but of late Freudianism contended with several broadsides simultaneously: critics still maintained that it placed too much emphasis on sexuality; some added that behavioral therapy or sophisticated medication did a better job at treating patients than long-term analysis; yet others argued that Freud's teachings may have been relevant in 1900, but that society no longer resembled turn-of-the-twentieth-century Vienna. On top of all this, Mitscherlich complained, a new generation demanded that psychoanalysis figure as chief witness for an antiauthoritarian education that emphasized indulgence rather than sublimation. “Society” continued to make life difficult for psychoanalysis, then, and it was for this reason that the government needed to assist the SFI in its efforts to train a new generation of analysts in Germany.


2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda Barcellos Serralta ◽  
John Stuart Ablon

Abstract Introduction: The Psychotherapy Process Q-Set (PQS) prototype method is used to measure the extent to which ideal processes of different psychotherapies are present in real cases, allowing researchers to examine how adherence to these models relates to or predicts change. Results from studies of short-term psychotherapies suggest that the original psychodynamic prototype is more suitable for studying psychoanalysis and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy than its time-limited counterparts. Furthermore, culture probably influences how therapies are typically conducted in a given country. Therefore, it seems appropriate to develop Brazilian prototypes on which to base studies of short-term psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral processes in this country. Objective: To develop prototypes for studying processes of short-term psychotherapies and to examine the degree of adherence of two real psychotherapy cases to these models. Methods: Expert clinicians used the PQS to rate a hypothetical ideal session of either short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (STPP) or cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Ratings were submitted to Q-type factor analysis to confirm the two groups. Regressive factor scores were rank ordered to describe the prototypes. These ideal models were correlated with ratings of actual therapy processes in two complete psychotherapy cases, one STPP and the other CBT. Results: Agreement levels between expert ratings were high and the two ideal models were confirmed. As expected, the PQS ratings for actual STPP and CBT cases had significant correlations with their respective ideal models, but the STPP case also adhered to the CBT prototype. Conclusion: Overall, the findings reveal the adequacy of the prototypes for time-limited therapies, providing initial support of their validity.


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