Restorative Practice in the Criminal Justice System: Examining a Restorative Reasoning Programme in a Women’s Prison

This paper is an analysis of a six-week Restorative Reasoning Programme that took place with 13 women in a UK women’s prison. It is an exploratory evaluation based on an adapted version of the QUALIPREV scheme. This two-stage evaluation examines both the processes of the programme, in terms of how well it ran, as well as the outcomes of the programme, in terms of how effective it was in supporting the women to address problem behaviours. Data comprise interviews with the two programme designers and facilitators and with two Prison staff responsible for activities and training; the programme materials used during the scheme; session evaluation forms; and post-programme self-completion reflections from the women engaged in the programme. Overall, the scheme had a range of positive impacts for the women: many expressed a change in attitude, including being more open for discourse and discussion around the harm they may have caused, being more willing to consider the repair needed in their personal relationships, and in some cases seeking subsequent referrals for further restorative work.

Property of Corrections: The Experience of Incarceration for Female Inmates in a New Zealand Prison

<p>This thesis examines what it means to be an inmate as experienced by female inmates serving sentences at Christchurch Women’s Prison. Using an auto-ethnographic methodology, combined with a mixed-methods approach, 82 female inmates completed a questionnaire and 10 were interviewed via semi-structured conversations. The data from the questionnaire are presented and analysed within the context of research from overseas studies. The conversations are further analysed and complemented by my own insider knowledge of prison life. This study was undertaken when I was a serving inmate and I made the decision to situate myself in this body of research. Excerpts from my prison journal entries, consisting of shared personal reflections from my years of imprisonment, are interspersed throughout the thesis. Three primary motivations drove this research. The first was to discover and interrogate what it means to be a prisoner from the prisoner’s perspective. The second was to explore how the prison experience relates to the possibility of future successful reintegration and, finally, I wanted to give women inmates a platform to share their stories in the hope that it would empower them. It achieves all three. The stories that the women shared, and their understandings of lived prison life, illustrate the ineffectiveness of incarceration and its inability to serve as a foundation for successful future reintegration. The findings provide a preliminary platform for further studies in this area and contribute to the extant academic understanding of an often misunderstood population.</p>

Property of Corrections: The Experience of Incarceration for Female Inmates in a New Zealand Prison

<p>This thesis examines what it means to be an inmate as experienced by female inmates serving sentences at Christchurch Women’s Prison. Using an auto-ethnographic methodology, combined with a mixed-methods approach, 82 female inmates completed a questionnaire and 10 were interviewed via semi-structured conversations. The data from the questionnaire are presented and analysed within the context of research from overseas studies. The conversations are further analysed and complemented by my own insider knowledge of prison life. This study was undertaken when I was a serving inmate and I made the decision to situate myself in this body of research. Excerpts from my prison journal entries, consisting of shared personal reflections from my years of imprisonment, are interspersed throughout the thesis. Three primary motivations drove this research. The first was to discover and interrogate what it means to be a prisoner from the prisoner’s perspective. The second was to explore how the prison experience relates to the possibility of future successful reintegration and, finally, I wanted to give women inmates a platform to share their stories in the hope that it would empower them. It achieves all three. The stories that the women shared, and their understandings of lived prison life, illustrate the ineffectiveness of incarceration and its inability to serve as a foundation for successful future reintegration. The findings provide a preliminary platform for further studies in this area and contribute to the extant academic understanding of an often misunderstood population.</p>

The description of inmates’ coping skills of class IIA women's prison in Semarang

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to determine the coping skills of inmates in living their lives. Method - The method used in this research was descriptive quantitative, with a population of 378 people consisting of 48 adult prisoners, 330 adult inmates. Sampling was based on the Krecjie table with a sample total of 182 people.Result - The results of calculating the coping skills of the inmates from the five indicators that have been determined obatained an average number of 76.7%. Based on the results of the average coping skills, it can be concluded that the coping skills of Class II A Women's Prison in Semarang are included in the good category.Implications – The results of this study are expected to be input in improving correctional services at the Class IIA Women's Prison in Semarang.Originality - This research is the study analysis coping skills of inmates in living their lives in the Class IIA Women's Prison in Semarang.***Tujuan - Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui keterampilan koping narapidana dalam menjalani kehidupan mereka.Metode - Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kuantitatif, dengan populasi 378 orang yang terdiri dari 48 tahanan dewasa, 330 narapidana dewasa. Pengambilan sampel didasarkan pada tabel Krecjie dengan total sampel 182 orang.Hasil - Hasil penghitungan keterampilan koping narapidana dari lima indikator yang telah ditentukan ditampati jumlah rata-rata 76,7%. Berdasarkan hasil rata-rata keterampilan koping, dapat disimpulkan bahwa keterampilan koping dari kelas II penjara perempuan di Semarang termasuk dalam kategori baik.Implikasi - Hasil penelitian ini diharapkan menjadi input dalam meningkatkan layanan pemasyarakatan di penjara perempuan IIA kelas di SemarangOriginalitas - Penelitian ini adalah penelitian studi keterampilan mengatasi narapidana dalam menjalani kehidupan mereka di penjara wanita IIA di Semarang.

Em busca da "redenção de Cam": racialidade e interseccionalidade numa prisão de mulheres

<p>O artigo tem como objetivo discutir os atravessamentos do constructo racial no Brasil e sua configuração em espaços intramuros, reconhecendo a prisão como um dos lócus que permanece pouco permeável ao processo de construção da identidade negra vivenciado nas últimas décadas no país. Discute-se os elementos formadores do racismo moderno, levando em conta as especificidades do contexto brasileiro frente à experiência fundante do sequestro e da escravização africana no período colonial e seus prolongamentos, através dos conceitos branqueamento, contrato racial e dispositivo da racialidade, como categorias de inteligibilidade do racismo contemporâneo e suas reinvenções em sociedades que vivenciaram a escravidão moderna. Tais categorias são analisadas a partir dos relatos sobre relações inter-raciais elaborados por uma mulher cisgênero e um homem transgênero, reclusas (os) numa prisão em São Paulo, e revelam como as opressões vividas de modo interseccional, pelas presas racializadas, lhes impõem dificuldades adicionais ao processo de reconhecimento da identidade negra.</p><p> </p><p>Looking for the “Redemption of Cam”: Raciality and Intersectionality in a Women’s Prison</p><p>This article discusses the overlap between racial constructs in Brazil and their configuration in intramural environments, recognizing the prison as a relatively impermeable locus in the process of Black identity construction in Brazil during recent decades. The paper discusses the formative elements of modern racism, taking into account specificities of the Brazilian context in the face of foundational experiences of African kidnapping and enslavement in the colonial period and their legacies, the concepts of whitening, racial contract and raciality device, as intelligibility categories of contemporary racism and its reinventions in societies that have experienced modern slavery. These categories are analyzed based on the reports on interracial relations elaborated by a cisgender woman and a transgender man, inmates in a female penitentiary in São Paulo, and show how the oppression experienced in an intersectional way, by racialized prisoners, imposes additional difficulties on them in their process of recognizing a Black identity.</p><p>Interracial relations | Intersectionality | Whitening ideology | Gender | Prison</p>

An Experimental Study of a Peer-Facilitated Violence Prevention Program for Women in Prison

The literature has shown a strong correlation between victimization and violence. As the majority of treatment programs for violence and the associated research have been focused on men, it is vital that services are also oriented to the needs of women who perpetrate violence. Beyond Violence ( BV) was developed to fill the gap in violence prevention programming for justice-involved women with histories of violence victimization and perpetration. This randomized controlled trial reports the results of a peer-facilitated model of the BV program implemented in a women’s prison. Women volunteered for the intervention and the study. Participants were randomized to either the 20-session BV condition or to a waitlist control (WC) condition. All 145 participants were asked to complete a preintervention (Time 1) and postintervention (Time 2) survey that included validated measures to assess for depression, anxiety, PTSD, anger/aggression, and emotional dysregulation. Preliminary analyses of the background characteristics and preintervention outcome scores showed no significant differences between the groups at Time 1, indicating that randomization was successful. Separate ANCOVAs were run for 13 outcomes measured using the pretest scores from study participants as the covariate and group assignment as the independent variable. Hypotheses were predominantly supported, and findings showed that the BV participants had significant reductions in the majority of the outcome measures at the postintervention assessment when compared to the WC participants. Future research should continue to explore the advantages of peer-facilitated program models and should incorporate postrelease outcomes to assess change over time.