scholarly journals A Quarter Century's Progress in Penal Institutions for Adults in the United States

1933 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 140
Author(s):  
Thorsten Sellin
2020 ◽  
pp. 33-51
Author(s):  
Benjamin Wiggins

From the mid-to-late nineteenth century, in the period after the use of branding and before the use of fingerprinting, penal institutions faced the problem of how to identify repeat offenders. In this interim, Alphonse Bertillon, a clerk in the Paris Prefecture of Police, developed an anthropometric system that measured the bodies of criminals at their intake and catalogued these measurements in order to identify them should they offend again. Calculating Race’s second chapter traces the importation of the Bertillon System of Classification to the United States, where its data collection practices were racialized. It then investigates University of Chicago sociologist Ernest Burgess’s 1920s work on this data set to build a formula for sentencing and parole decisions. The resulting algorithm from Burgess’s work relied heavily on race-based Bertillon data and factored race into its recommendations for length of sentence and supervised release, installing racial statistics as a key variable in matters of criminal justice.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brennan Klein ◽  
C. Brandon Ogbunugafor ◽  
Benjamin J. Schafer ◽  
Zarana Bhadricha ◽  
Preeti Kori ◽  
...  

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of incarcerated people in the United States decreased by at least 16%---the largest, fastest reduction in prison population in American history. Using an original dataset curated from public sources on prison demographics across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, we show that incarcerated white people benefited disproportionately from this decrease in the U.S. prison population, and the fraction of incarcerated Black and Latino people sharply increased. This pattern deviates from a decade-long trend before 2020 and the onset of COVID-19, during which the proportion of incarcerated Black people was declining. Using case studies of select states, we explore and quantify mechanisms that could explain these disparities: temporary court closures that led to fewer prison admissions, changes in the frequency of police interactions, and state-level prison release policies that sought to de-densify congregate settings. These findings illuminate how systemic racism pervades juridical and penal institutions and is the engine of mass incarceration in America.


1976 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Arno Liivak

In 1830 Alexis de Tocqueville managed to be sent on an extensive trip to the United States in order to study new world penal institutions. His main interest was the culture and civilization of the United States rather than its jails. Although he conscientiously investigated the penitentiaries and subsequently wrote a report, he considered democracy to be the real subject of his study.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Haney

Unprecedented numbers of mentally ill persons are now housed in prisons and jails in the United States and elsewhere in the world. In many jurisdictions penal institutions have become the default placement for the mentally ill, in lieu of more humane and appropriate facilities in which to treat them. This article briefly reviews some of the causes of the unprecedented influx of the mentally ill into prisons and jails, examines the characteristics of these environments that render them singularly inappropriate placements in these cases, and discusses the various ways that the pains of imprisonment can exacerbate rather than alleviate various forms of mental illness and psychological vulnerability.


Author(s):  
A. Hakam ◽  
J.T. Gau ◽  
M.L. Grove ◽  
B.A. Evans ◽  
M. Shuman ◽  
...  

Prostate adenocarcinoma is the most common malignant tumor of men in the United States and is the third leading cause of death in men. Despite attempts at early detection, there will be 244,000 new cases and 44,000 deaths from the disease in the United States in 1995. Therapeutic progress against this disease is hindered by an incomplete understanding of prostate epithelial cell biology, the availability of human tissues for in vitro experimentation, slow dissemination of information between prostate cancer research teams and the increasing pressure to “ stretch” research dollars at the same time staff reductions are occurring.To meet these challenges, we have used the correlative microscopy (CM) and client/server (C/S) computing to increase productivity while decreasing costs. Critical elements of our program are as follows:1) Establishing the Western Pennsylvania Genitourinary (GU) Tissue Bank which includes >100 prostates from patients with prostate adenocarcinoma as well as >20 normal prostates from transplant organ donors.


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