The rising rate of women's incarceration over the past four decades has presented unique challenges for re-entry practitioners and policymakers alike. A record number of incarcerated women means a high number will also be returning to their communities. Further research that cen…
Reducing recidivism for drug offenders has been a challenge in Singapore since the late 1990s, when there was a spike in reentry into the system. In the year 2000, resources were invested in rehabilitation and reintegration programs to bring a reduction to the recidivism rate, b…
The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of incarceration on Black males’ mental health and coping skills. Transactional stress coping theory investigates stress as a by-product caused between a person and their environment and Afrocentric theory was used as the lens t…
Incarceration, especially in the United States, is deeply related to issues of racism, poverty, and citizenship. These particular experiences are the result of a history of biopolitical control affecting Black and brown communities and have a quintessential origin in enslavement…
This thesis reexamines the site of the Japanese American Incarceration Camps of World War II as a site of architectural precedent. The Camps occupy what has become a quiet chapter in the history textbook, often regarded as an eccentric aberration within American history. Yet the…
This dissertation examines the mediation of the public’s encounters with recordings of field hollers, work songs, and blues music collected by the folklorists John and Alan Lomax in prisons of the U.S. South from the 1930s to the 1950s. These recordings have, over the years, rea…
Research on loss has found that there are correlations between loss and individual factors in a persons’ life, such as substance use (Johnson, 2012; Vaswani, 2008; Zinzow et al., 2009), mental health symptomology (Godfrey, 2017; Harner, Hentz, & Evangalista, 2011), adverse child…
Criminal conduct has been discussed and in existence since the earliest times of civilization. Due to this longstanding history of deviousness, there is a significant number of varying definitions as to what actually constitutes ‘Criminal Behavior’ (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). Today…
This thesis examines the 1979 and 1989 Morales Feliciano prisoner-rights case in Puerto Rico. I argue that the cases reveal how prisoners entrapped in Puerto Rico’s carceral state used Puerto Rico’s colonial status as a legal strategy to force the Commonwealth to provide them wi…
In the criminal justice system, risk assessment instruments (RAIs) provide information about justice involved individuals that court officials use to make various decisions. This dissertation explores the adoption and impact of state-level policies regarding the use of risk asse…
America has a long history of placing a disproportionate number of minorities in the criminal justice system. Disproportionate incarceration/placement rates occur in both the adult and juvenile justice systems. This study investigates minority juvenile placement rates compared t…
The recidivism rates for formerly incarcerated women in the United States is as high as seventy-five percent. With rates that are higher than most industrialized nations, the church and its faith leaders who work with the incarcerated through their respective congregations, have…
What explains racial disparities in incarceration in North America? I examined a total of seven ethnic groups from the United States or Canada, with five non-white groups. I compared groups' share of the incarcerated population to their share of the total population in the state…
Background and purpose: Formerly incarcerated people die by suicide at a rate 6.75 times higher than the general population, but previous research has not identified factors that contribute to this heightened risk. The conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic may exacerbate both suic…
This dissertation is a contribution to the depth and breadth of prison media history. I position prison media of the 1970s as key antecedents to the prison reality television of the 2000s and today. The purpose of this arrangement is to bring attention to an era of prison media …
Incarcerated adolescent boys have an increased chance of creating a pregnancy and becoming adolescent fathers due to their engagement in certain high-risk activities (i.e. gang membership, substance use, and lack of school connectedness). The culture created by engaging in these…
Homelessness remains a pervasive, enduring national problem that brings intense suffering to individuals, families, and communities. Homeless people experience disproportionately high rates of mental health disorders and incarceration than the general population. Homeless adults…
Homelessness is a devastating experience that impacts hundreds of thousands of individuals in the U.S. each day. It has been widely reported that homeless persons experience higher rates of mental disorder, substance abuse, and physical illness than domiciled individuals. Homele…