Contrasts in freedom: Comparing the experiences of imprisonment in open and closed prisons in England and Wales and Norway

Open prisons are portrayed as less harmful custodial institutions than closed prisons, and prison systems that rely more heavily on low security imprisonment are typically considered to have a more humane and less punitive approach to punishment. However, few studies have systematically compared the subjective experiences of prisoners held in open and closed prisons, and no study has yet compared the role and function of open prisons across jurisdictions. Drawing on a survey conducted with prisoners (N = 1082) in 13 prisons in England and Wales and Norway, we provide the first comparative analysis of experiences of imprisonment in closed and open prisons, conducted in countries with diverging penal philosophies (‘neoliberal’ vs. ‘social democratic’). The article documents that open prisons play a much more significant role in Norway than in England and Wales; that prisoners in both countries rate their experience significantly more positively in open compared to closed prisons; and that while imprisonment seems to produce similar kinds of pains in both types of prisons, they are perceived as less severe and more manageable in open prisons. These findings suggest important implications for comparative penology, penal policy, and prison reform.

RACIAL CHANGE AND BLACK MOVEMENT EMERGENCE: A CASE FROM THE BLACK LIVES MOVEMENT

This article contributes to sociological understandings of race and social movements by reassessing the phenomenon of social movement emergence for Black social movements. Broadly, it addresses the possibility of organizational support for Black social movements. More narrowly, it seeks to understand the emergence of Black movements and racial change as outcomes of organizational transformation, specifically using the case of how the mixed-race prison reform organization Action for Police Reform (APR) joined the Black Lives movement. By providing a case of racial transformation and the spanning of tactical boundaries, I present two central arguments. First, it is necessary to look within organizational forms and at organizational dynamics to see how activists modify their organizations to support Black movements. Second, tailored more directly to the case of APR, sustained support for Black movements depends on organizational transformation, such as when activists repurpose an organization’s form and resources to maintain racially delimited tactics.

Missed Opportunities for Compassion: A Call to Action for Incarcerated Individuals Denied Compassionate Release

In 2016, a total of 4,117 state and federal prisoners died in publicly or privately operated prisons. Each year from 2001 to 2016, an average of 88% of deaths in state prisons were due to natural causes, with more than half of those due to cancer, heart disease or liver disease, conditions for which non-incarcerated citizens often benefit from palliative care and hospice. Prisoners age 55 and older are the fastest-growing segment of the population residing in prisons, as well as those with the highest mortality rate. Compassionate release of seriously ill prisoners became a matter of federal statute in 1984 and has currently been adopted by the majority of U.S. prison jurisdictions. The spirit of the mandate is based on the idea that catastrophic health conditions ie terminal illness affect the four principles of incarceration: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. Concerned about an aging prison population, overcrowded facilities, and soaring costs, many policy makers are calling for a wider use of compassionate release for persons with terminal illness as well as broader prison reform. The prognosticating criteria of compassionate release guidelines are clinically flawed, and the application and procedural barriers are prohibitive. In this paper we review cases of patients who qualified for compassionate release but had their applications denied. We will discuss the urgent need for access to quality palliative medicine for incarcerated persons with advanced illness and call healthcare providers to action with the aim of reducing suffering and promoting social justice for those in need.

The Rise of Juvenile Courts and the Consolidation of Child Removal

In the late nineteenth century, demands to curb parental sovereignty merged with campaigns for prison reform. As a result, calls gathered pace for juvenile courts which would remove children from the adult, criminal justice system and protect children from abusive parents and adults. The juvenile-court movement developed in the context of the growth of child-protection societies and child-protection legislation. Nevertheless, reformers remained frustrated by the enduring power of parental sovereignty and pushed for greater change. In 1899, reformers in Illinois achieved their ambition of creating courts that removed children from the criminal justice system, ensured children could be placed in reformatories, and empowered judges to curb guardianship rights. The courts also worked with family visitors and frequently preferred to place families and children on probation rather than move directly to child removal. Spaniards followed these developments in the USA and countries such as Belgium, and created their own courts.

Removing Children

This chapter traces the rising belief that the state could provide superior guardianship to abusive parents and that it should remove children from the company of dangerous adults. The prison-reform movement helped lead the way by proposing the removal of children from the company of corrupting adults and placing them in reformatories. These reformatories were to replace abuse and corruption with love and redemption and were increasingly organized along the lines of surrogate, and improved, families. Reformers across the world and in Spain also started to encourage visitors to the poor to intervene in family life and separate children from dangerous parents and adults. Social Catholics determined to move beyond charity work and to solve social problems became particularly attracted to this family visiting work. This work also offered Catholic women a chance to stake a claim for a public role in the defence of children and motherhood.

Genesis of the concept of correctional punishment: From antiquity to modern times

The article examines the genesis of the idea of correctional punishment. The authors analyse the concepts and views on the purpose of punishing Plato, Roman lawyers, European humanists, as well as English prison reformers of the XVIII century. The relevance of this topic for domestic legal science is due to the ongoing transformation of approaches to determining the purpose of punishment, the revision of strategies in the field of punishments in foreign penology and the development of correctional policy, taking into account new goals. The era of correctional punishment, admittedly, was the XIX century. The basis of penitentiary discourse during this period was the belief that with the help of a proper prison regime, segregation, humane treatment and spiritual care, it would certainly be possible to correct convicts. Although the ideas of correctional punishment appear in ancient times and acquire their practical implementation in the medieval Christian tradition of European states, the idea of the primacy of English and American prison reformers in the establishment of penitentiary systems prevails in historiography. An unbiased analysis of knowledge systems and the rejection of the methodology of ideological bias allowed proving that the penitentiary systems of the XIX century only developed the models of prison discipline that began in previous periods. In fact, there was a revival of the ancient paternalistic concept of correctional punishment, supplemented by a religious doctrine that provided for the influence not on the body, but on the soul of the offender to repent, correct and, as a result, return to society. At the end of the XVIII century, the secular authorities adopted these disciplinary models. They will be most widely implemented in correctional and penitentiary houses in England during the prison reform of the 70s and 90s and will later become the basis for the formation of penitentiary systems that will be implemented in practice in most countries of the world during the XIX-early XX centuries

War Imprisonment and British Prison Reform

In 1756, the young John Howard set out for Portugal. His ship was taken by a privateer, and Howard became a prisoner of war in France. Twenty years later, he launched the movement for prison reform in Britain. Renaud Morieux challenges historians to more fully connect war imprisonment and the debates it engendered about prisoners’ rights to the emergence of prison reform in the 1770s and 1780s (p. 92). In this article, I take up that challenge. I suggest, however, that the connections are complex and twisted. Concerns about prisoners of war may have inspired prison reform, but they also made the project more confusing.