Doctoral Dissertation Research - Effects on a Captive Audience: Civic Engagement Post-Incarceration

少年派：亨利·A·布雷迪和艾米·E·勒曼：对于越来越多的社会群体来说，监禁已经取代了一些更传统的生活事件，成为一种决定性的经历。在少数民族和低收入人群中尤其如此；非裔美国男性在监狱中度过的时间明显高于在军队中度过的时间，而且在监狱中度过时间的可能性是获得学士学位的两倍。在这项研究中，我试图解决这样一个问题，即一旦囚犯离开监狱环境，某些类型的监狱是否真的会对他们产生负面影响。监禁的经历可能会灌输具有特定价值观、身份、对权威的态度和应对机制的人，其中一些教训可能会阻碍亲社会参与社区生活。换句话说，生活在某些类型的监狱里可能会教人们思考和行为的方式，这实际上会降低他们作为富有成效的守法公民重返社会的可能性。该项目的目标是在监狱的具体特征和各种个人结果之间建立明确的联系，从累犯到社会和家庭关系，再到就业和参与社区组织。这项研究利用了几个独特的机会。最重要的是，由于囚犯基本上被随机分配到加利福尼亚州的监狱，而且该州监狱的文化差异很大，本研究使用自然实验来确定不同监狱文化对个人出狱后态度和行为的影响。作为衡量每个监狱文化的关键部分，我对加利福尼亚州的惩教官员进行了一项调查。这项调查将收集加州每所监狱一系列主题的关键数据，包括人手不足、工作人员准备和培训、机构暴力、康复计划的质量、帮派活动的水平和类型，以及官员对囚犯和惩教政策的态度。与此同时，我还从加州惩教和康复部门收集了大量关于假释犯的态度和行为的数据。其中一些数据来自国家几个月前通过的一项计划，这项研究将是第一次将它们分析用于社会研究。我希望这项研究将揭示法律和制度能够影响公民态度和行为的各种不同方式。这是对机构官僚主义和政策效果领域的学术工作的重大贡献。然而，这项研究的更广泛的影响将是那些每年接收越来越多从美国刑罚系统释放的公民的社区。尽管在过去几十年里对监狱进行了全面的研究，但很少有人研究刑事政策对整个社会的影响。监狱经常被作为孤立的社区进行研究，而不是作为大多数被监禁者所在的低收入社区、城镇的延伸。因此，监狱通常被认为有别于社区生活，而不是被视为在许多社区面临的无数贫穷和犯罪问题中发挥核心作用。与此同时，每年约有650000名公民在这些社区和监狱系统之间来回奔波，经常往返。通过确定人们在被监禁期间的特殊经历如何影响他们重返社会后所主张的公民态度和行为，有可能设计出提高人们在释放后健康重新融入社会的潜力的机构，并帮助他们重返社会，使他们重返社会，使他们重返社会，而不是成为他们返回的社区的负担。

PI: Henry A. Brady and Amy E. LermanSES: 0617505For an increasingly large segment of society, incarceration has replaced some of the more traditional life events as a defining experience. This is particularly true among ethnic minority and low-income populations; African American men are significantly more likely to spend time in prison than in the military, and are twice as likely to spend time in prison as they are to earn a Bachelor's degree.In this study, I seek to address the question of whether some types of prisons may actually have negative effects on inmates, once they leave the institutional environment. The experience of incarceration may inculcate people with particular values, identities, attitudes towards authority, and coping mechanisms, and some of these lessons may discourage pro-social participation in community life. In other words, living within some types of prisons may teach people ways of thinking and behaving that actually diminish their likelihood of returning to society as productive, law-abiding citizens.The goal of this project is to draw clear connections between specific characteristics of prisons and a variety of individual outcomes, from recidivism, to social and family relationships, to employment and participation in community organizations. This study takes advantage of several unique opportunities. Most centrally, because inmates are essentially assigned at random to prisons in California, and because prisons in the state differ dramatically in their culture, this research uses a natural experiment to establish the impacts of different prison cultures on the attitudes and behaviors of individuals once they leave prison.As a key part of measuring each prison's culture, I have undertaken a survey of Correctional Officers in the state of California. The survey will gather critical data on a host of topics at each of California's prisons, including understaffing, staff preparedness and training, institutional violence, quality of rehabilitation programs, level and types of gang activity, and officers' attitudes towards inmates and towards correctional policy. At the same time, I have also gathered a wide variety of data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on the attitudes and behaviors of parolees. Some of these data come from a program adopted by the state only a few months ago, and this study will represent the first time they have been analyzed for use in social research.It is my hope that this study will shed light on a variety of different ways that laws and institutions can affect the attitudes and behaviors of citizens. This represents a significant contribution to scholarly work in the areas of institutional bureaucracy and policy effects. Yet the far broader impact of this research will be on those communities that each year absorb a growing number of citizens released from America's penal system.Despite the panoply of research on prisons over the last several decades, little work has addressed the effects of penal policies on society at large. Prisons are often researched as isolated communities, rather than as extensions of the low-income neighborhoods, cities and towns from which most incarcerated people come. As a result, prisons are generally considered to be distinct from community life rather than seen as playing a central role in the myriad problems of poverty and crime that many communities face. Meanwhile, some 650,000 citizens each year move back and forth, and often back again, between those communities and the prison system.By identifying how the particular experiences people have while incarcerated affect the civic attitudes and behavior they assert once they return to society, it may be possible to design institutions that increase people's potential for healthy post-release reintegration, and help them return to society as a benefit to, rather than a burden on, the communities to which they return.