INMATE SOCIETY IN THE ERA OF MASS INCARCERATION.

Inmate social organization was once a central area within criminology that stalled just as incarceration rates dramatically climbed. In this review, we return to seminal works on this topic before summarizing the changes that mass incarceration wrought in correctional contexts and the potential impacts of these changes for inmate society. We then review the few recent studies that document contemporary inmate social life and call for increased researcher-practitioner partnerships that embed criminologists within carceral settings. We suggest that network approaches are particularly useful for building on past qualitative and ethnographic insights to provide replicable results that are also easily conveyed to correctional authorities. As the era of mass incarceration peaks, we argue that the time is ripe for renewed interest in inmate society and its connections to prison stability, rehabilitation, and community reintegration.

Situational Variations in, and Women's Accounts of, Avoided Acts of Serious Intimate Partner Violence.

This study explores how both situations and persons contribute to the probability that a serious incident of intimate partner violence (IPV) can be avoided. Data, on both completed and avoided acts of serious partner violence, were collected from jailed women in Baltimore. Factors that increase the odds of avoiding a serious incident of IPV are a woman's age, her partner's initiation of a threat/attack, and being accompanied by a family member. Factors that decrease the odds of avoided serious violence include an indicator of what the dispute was about, her partner's substance abuse, prior experiences with avoided acts of violence, and lifetime arrests.

"Police Wouldn't Give You No Help": Female Offenders on Reporting Sexual Assault to Police.

Sexual assault remains one of the most underreported violent crimes. When victims report, they often are dissatisfied with the police response. The factors influencing one's decision to invoke the law have been widely examined. However, less research examines (a) how the victim's criminality affects this decision and (b) women offenders' characterization of their reporting decisions. We use mixed methods to explore the factors related to an offender's decision to report sexual victimization to police and consider their descriptions of police response when they do report the crime. Our findings provide insight into the gendered relations between offenders and police.

Strangers in a strange land: coping with imprisonment as a racial or ethnic foreign national inmate.

A wide range of scholarship examining the global effects of neo-liberalism draws attention to the precarious position of individuals who are not seen as part of the social body. While immigrants, racial minorities, and common criminals are central to this discourse, relatively little research has examined how the experiences of these individuals may vary based on statuses other than citizenship when they are imprisoned. Our research focuses on the interactions (between prisoners and between prisoners and correctional staff) of a racially diverse group of Dutch foreign national prisoners incarcerated in England. Although all of these prisoners clearly saw themselves as 'outsiders,' visible minorities faced a unique set of challenges relative to their White counterparts. We consider both the practical and theoretical import of these findings.

Micropolitics of race and ethnicity in women's prisons in two political contexts.

Research over the past two decades has focused on the topic of race as important for understanding order and compliance in men's prisons. However, relatively little research considers how subjective understandings of imprisonment are influenced by race, particularly in the case of women prisoners. The current study analyses 139 interviews conducted with women prisoners in California and England in order to determine how race and ethnicity shape prisoners' experiences and abilities to cope with institutional confinement. Findings suggest that women's understandings of their racial identities differ substantially in these two contexts. In California, where the conditions of confinement are more extreme and white women assume a minority status, racial identity emerges as a salient factor in coping with the adversities of prison life. By contrast, in England, it is the women of colour, and particularly foreign nationals, who have a greater appreciation of the role of race and ethnicity in their daily lives. These findings have implications for our understanding of how prisoners draw on their lived experiences to make sense of their carceral worlds.

Revictimizing the victims? Interviewing women about interpersonal violence.

Research on women's experiences of interpersonal violence has grown dramatically and, as a result, the ethical issues surrounding this research are a concern. Although regulatory procedures ensure that research participants are protected from undue risk, little is known about the impact of victimization research on participants. In this study, the authors examine the differences in the abilities of a "vulnerable" population (142 incarcerated women) to complete interviews about the extent and nature of their violent experiences. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis, the authors assess whether the prevalence and incidence of women's victimization experiences, other stressful life events, and personal backgrounds are related to response rates to specific questions and completion rates. The authors find that the cumulative effect of violence over the life course has a significant relationship to women's disclosure of sensitive issues and that providing multiple avenues for disclosure of prior victimization is critical for facilitating a positive outcome for research participants.

Patterns of intimate partner violence and their associations with physical health, psychological distress, and substance use.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this work is to formally model patterns of intimate partner violence (IPV) separately for males and females and to assess the unique contributions of different types of violence exposure to health related outcomes. METHODS: Using data from the National Violence Against Women Survey--a national probability sample of U.S. men and women--latent class analyses produced a map of the underlying structure of IPV for both males and females that is defined by specific types of violent acts. Multivariable logistic regression analyses assessed the differential physical health, mental health, and substance use consequences of exposure to IPV by gender. RESULTS: Women and men experience similar types of IPV, although the prevalence of the different types of violence is much greater for women than men. Second, exposure to IPV for both women and men is associated with a range of negative health outcomes including increased odds of poor physical health and physical disability, psychological distress and mental illness, and heightened recreational and non-recreational substance use. Finally, there is some evidence that experiences with IPV have stronger and broader associations with negative health outcomes among women, likely reflecting differences in the severity of violence experienced by men and women. CONCLUSIONS: More attention to the ways in which interpersonal violence is conceptualized, measured, and screened for is crucial. Specifically, while women have greater exposure to IPV, and subsequently a greater range of health problems, the effects on men should not be ignored.

Linked lives: stability and change in maternal circumstances and trajectories of antisocial behavior in children.

Drawing on the notion of linked lives, this study examined the effects of stability and change in maternal circumstance on developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior in children 4 to 7 years of age. Using data from a national sample of young mothers and growth curve analysis, the study demonstrated that early maternal circumstances influences early antisocial behavior, whereas stability and change in these circumstances both exacerbate and ameliorate behavior problems. Of particular note, meaningful escape from poverty attenuates antisocial behavior whereas persistence in poverty or long-term movement into poverty intensifies such problems. These findings highlight the importance of structural context for parenting practices and the need to consider child development in light of dynamic and changing life-course fortunes of parents.