Sexual Crime And The Experience Of Imprisonment

This book focuses on the experience of imprisonment from the perspectives of individuals with sexual convictions. It stresses the importance of a positive and rehabilitative prison climate. The volume begins with an exploration of the theoretical underpinnings of a rehabilitative prison climate and discusses some of the practical ways of creating rehabilitative cultures in prisons housing people convicted of sexual offences. Four empirical chapters focus on the experience of stigmatisation, prison officers’ attitudes towards prisoners’ offences, negotiating the ‘sex offender’ identity in prisons and the varied experience of ‘being’ in prisons exclusively for individuals with sexual convictions. Throughout the authors discuss the specific benefits of peer-support, such as the chance to earn self-forgiveness, construct adaptive identities and consequently move away from harmful labels. The book also spotlights a chapter on the experience of imprisonment written by a former service-user, this unique position offers an insightful account of an individual’s journey through the prison system.

Sex offenders remain the most hated group of offenders, subject to a myriad of regulations and punishments beyond imprisonment, including sex offender registries, chemical and surgical castration, and global positioning electronic monitoring systems. While aspects of their experiences of imprisonment are documented, less is known about how sex offenders experience prison and community corrections spaces – and the implications of their status on their treatment and safety in such environments. Violence, Sex Offenders, and Corrections critically assesses what is meant by the term ‘sex offender’, and acknowledges that such meanings are socially constructed, situated, and contingent. The book explores the person, crime, penal space, sexual orientation, legislation, and the community experiences of labelled sex offenders as well as the experiences of correctional officers working with said custodial populations. Ricciardelli and Spencer use conceptions of gender and embodiment to analyze how sex offenders are constituted as objects of fear and disgust and as deserving subjects of abjection and violence.

This study examines prison sexual violence in adult and juvenile New York State prisons. To an inmate, the formal structure of a prison – its planned work, recreation, and rehabilitation – may be a thin veneer. The ‘real’ world is the social environment, created by the convict community, and sexual violence is a traditional part of that environment. A range of sexual behaviors, all perceived as threatening and offensive by the targets of aggressors were examined, with discussion on the nature of the overture, the physical and verbal response of the target, his thoughts and feelings, the living patterns resulting from sexual pressure, and how peers and staff react. In this population, sexual aggression is shown to be racially-based: most aggressors were black, and most victims were white, of a slighter build than the aggressor, and perceived as having feminine physical and personality characteristics. About half of the 152 incidents examined involved physical violence, half initiated by aggressors coercing targets; the rest from targets reacting to threats. Both aggressors and targets tended to come from outside and prison social subcultures which used aggression as a primary means of relieving frustration and irritation. After fights, targets reported that aggressors left them alone, that they moved around the prison with less fear, felt better about themselves, and had a higher status among other prisoners. Sexual attacks increased fear, and victims continued to be affected emotionally months after the event. Prison staff did not usually intervene directly in the incidents, nor is there evidence that such intervention would be effective in reducing the problem. The author recommends the provision of program alternatives such as the Alternatives to Violence (AVP) and other conflict resolutions programs. (NCJRS, modified).

The past 25 years have seen a major paradigm shift in the field of violence prevention, from the assumption that violence is inevitable to the recognition that violence is preventable. Part of this shift has occurred in thinking about why violence occurs, and where intervention points might lie. In exploring the occurrence of violence, researchers have recognized the tendency for violent acts to cluster, to spread from place to place, and to mutate from one type to another. Furthermore, violent acts are often preceded or followed by other violent acts. In the field of public health, such a process has also been seen in the infectious disease model, in which an agent or vector initiates a specific biological pathway leading to symptoms of disease and infectivity. The agent transmits from individual to individual, and levels of the disease in the population above the baseline constitute an epidemic. Although violence does not have a readily observable biological agent as an initiator, it can follow similar epidemiological pathways. On April 30-May 1, 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Forum on Global Violence Prevention convened a workshop to explore the contagious nature of violence. Part of the Forum's mandate is to engage in multisectoral, multidirectional dialogue that explores crosscutting, evidence-based approaches to violence prevention, and the Forum has convened four workshops to this point exploring various elements of violence prevention. The workshops are designed to examine such approaches from multiple perspectives and at multiple levels of society. In particular, the workshop on the contagion of violence focused on exploring the epidemiology of the contagion, describing possible processes and mechanisms by which violence is transmitted, examining how contextual factors mitigate or exacerbate the issue. Contagion of Violence: Workshop Summary covers the major topics that arose during the 2-day workshop. It is organized by important elements of the infectious disease model so as to present the contagion of violence in a larger context and in a more compelling and comprehensive way.

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Intersectional Inequality and Women's Imprisonment -- 2. Pathways and Intersecting Inequality -- 3. Prison Community, Prison Conditions, and Gendered Harm -- 4. Searching for Safety through Prison Capital -- 5. Inequalities and Contextual Conflict -- 6. Intersections of Inequality with Correctional Staff -- 7. Gendered Human Rights and the Search for Safety -- Appendix 1: Methodology -- Appendix 2: Tables of Findings -- Glossary -- B -- C -- D -- F -- G -- I -- J -- H -- J -- K -- L -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- W -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Recent decades have seen a widespread effort to imprison more people for sexual violence. The Stains of Imprisonment offers an ethnographic account of one of the worlds that this push has created: an English prison for men convicted of sex offenses. This book examines the ways in which prisons are morally communicative institutions, instilling in prisoners particular ideas about the offenses they have committed—ideas that carry implications for prisoners' moral character. Investigating the moral messages contained in the prosaic yet power-imbued processes that make up daily life in custody, Ievins finds that the prison she studied communicated a pervasive sense of disgust and shame, marking the men it held as permanently stained. Rather than promoting accountability, this message discouraged prisoners from engaging in serious moral reflection on the harms they had caused. Analyzing these effects, Ievins explores the role that imprisonment plays as a response to sexual harm, and the extent to which it takes us closer to and further from justice.

The Journey from Prison to Community: Developing Identity, Meaning and Belonging with Men in the UK provides a practical guide for practitioners working with men to successfully make the transition between prison and the community. This transition presents significant challenges, especially for those who have served many years in prison; for those who have experienced multiple cycles of release/recall; for those whose personality traits make it harder for them to build relationships and cope with strong emotions; and for those whose lives have been characterised by trauma, chaos, crime and institutionalisation. Drawing on the authors' clinical expertise and the lived experiences of real service-users, alongside the latest research in the field, the book identifies key issues in transition and explores the impact of these issues. Crucially, it provides guidance, tools and support to professionals working with men in the UK to build a crime-free, socially integrated and meaningful life after incarceration, featuring real-life stories of those who have made the transition. This is an essential read for professionals working in a range of settings across prison and community environments, while the wide variety of professional experience represented in the book broadens its appeal to forensic and clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, probation officers, prison staff and those working in the third sector. It is also valuable resource for qualified professionals, those in training, support roles, and managers involved in planning strategy and service delivery.

With contributions from leading authorities, this is the definitive guide to current criminological theory, research, and policy.The Oxford Handbook of Criminology provides a comprehensive collection of chapters covering the core and emerging topics studied on criminology courses, indispensable to students, academics, and professionals alike.· 43 chapters written by over 85 leading academics exploringrelevant theory, cutting-edge research, policy developments, and current debates, encouraging students to appreciate the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of criminological discourse· Includes detailedreferences to aid further research· Chapters updated to reflect recent cases, statistics, and scholarship, as well as significant current events such as Covid-19 and social justice movements.· New chapters added presenting research on topical issues including victimology, hate crime, desistance, cybercrime, atrocity crimes, convict criminology, security and smart cities, prison abolitionism, comparative criminology, sex offending, and networkcriminology.Digital formats and resourcesThe seventh edition is available for students and institutions to purchase in a variety of formats, and is supported by online resources.- Thee-book offers a mobile experience and convenient access along with functionality tools, navigation features and links that offer extra learning support: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/ebooks- The accompanying online resources include essay questions and links to useful websites for each chapter, along with guidance on answering essay questions and access to chapters from previous editions.