Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nat... more Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nation in the waning years of the 20th century are threatened less by a crime wave than a punishment wave. 1 A punishment
ABSTRACT As this special issue went to press, a lengthy opinion declaring the practice of death q... more ABSTRACT As this special issue went to press, a lengthy opinion declaring the practice of death qualification unconstitutional was issued by federal district court Judge G. Thomas Eisele (Grigsby v. Mabry, No. PB-C-78-32, Memorandum Opinion, Eastern District of Arkansas, August 5, 1983). Judge Eisele's opinion is based on a careful review of the relevant research, including the studies published in this issue, all of which was presented to the court in the course of a seven-day evidentiary hearing. The new Grigsby opinion is notable in several respects. It contains an extensive and meticulous discussion of the relevant social science data and, thus, represents a federal court counterpart to Hovey's impressive analysis. The decision also reverses the conviction of one of the defendants and orders a new trial on the issue of guilt. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nat... more Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nation in the waning years of the 20th century are threatened less by a crime wave than a punishment wave. 1 A punishment
The continued use of solitary confinement has sparked international public health and human right... more The continued use of solitary confinement has sparked international public health and human rights criticisms and concerns. This carceral practice has been linked repeatedly to a range of serious psychological harms among incarcerated persons. Vulnerabilities to harm are especially dire for persons with preexisting serious mental illness (“SMI”), a group that is overrepresented in solitary confinement units. Although there have been numerous calls for the practice to be significantly reformed, curtailed, and ended altogether, few strategies exist to minimize its use for people with SMI and histories of violence against themselves or others. This case study describes the “Oregon Resource Team” (ORT), a pilot project adapted from a Norwegian officer-led, interdisciplinary team-based approach to reduce isolation and improve outcomes for incarcerated persons with SMI and histories of trauma, self-injury, and violence against others. We describe the ORT’s innovative approach, the charact...
In contrast to most international definitions of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (CIDT), a... more In contrast to most international definitions of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (CIDT), and of torture per se, which focus primarily on individual acts or discrete forms of ill-treatment that are suffered at the hands of another (typically, a representative of the state), this chapter applies Bașoğlu’s “learning theory model of torture” to discuss the potential relationships between certain “contexts of ill-treatment”—especially, harsh conditions of prison confinement and other forms of involuntary detention—to CIDT and torture per se. It reviews the nature and adverse psychological effects of confinement and detention, including very severe conditions of the sort that exist in a number of international sites and are pervaded by unpredictable and uncontrollable traumas and stressors. This chapter also examines whether and how certain of these contexts of captivity may facilitate abuse, interact with and exacerbate other forms of ill-treatment and, at the extremes, themselves...
In this essay, we discuss the nature of what one commentator has termed "savage inequalities... more In this essay, we discuss the nature of what one commentator has termed "savage inequalities" in educational opportunity that separate minority students from the rest of the population in the United States. Notwithstanding the political importance of widespread liberal education to the integrity of the democratic process,2 there are pressing practical reasons to be increasingly concerned about persistent educational inequity. Rapidly changing demographics will soon redefine "majority" and "minority" populations in states across the country and produce unprecedented shifts in the composition of the American workforce. Yet, the combined effects of race-based disparities in educational opportunity and rapidly changing demographics are on a collision course with an increasingly advanced technological economy that will require greater numbers of better trained, more highly educated, and more intellectually skilled workers, managers, and policymakers. The dim...
This chapter places the prison that Gresham Sykes’s classic book made famous in a larger historic... more This chapter places the prison that Gresham Sykes’s classic book made famous in a larger historical and political context. It both acknowledges the timeless insights Sykes offered about the pains of imprisonment but argues that, by ignoring the prison’s history and avoiding any focus on the prison’s harshest realities (present at the time he studied it), he rendered his account of prison life more palatable than it actually was. Despite having outwardly changed from its brutal 19th-century origins, Sykes’s mid-1950s maximum-security prison had much more in common with them than he recognized. It retained a fundamental cruelty at its core that he unwittingly seemed to sanitize.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Sep 18, 2017
Bandura's research and theory on the mechanisms of moral disengagement demonstrate the various wa... more Bandura's research and theory on the mechanisms of moral disengagement demonstrate the various ways that persons distance themselves from their mistreatment of others to avoid or circumvent ethical constraints that should and otherwise would govern their behavior. This article examines the serious problem of prisoner abuse through the lens of moral disengagement theory to understand in part why such abuse occurs and persists. This application of moral disengagement theory underscores the importance of addressing these social psychological dynamics in any program of prison reform and the need for further research in a setting that traditionally has resisted in-depth empirical examination.
Logically, it would seem that capital juries must be at least as fair, im partial, and representa... more Logically, it would seem that capital juries must be at least as fair, im partial, and representative as juries that sit in ordinary criminal prose cutions. But there is much evidence to suggest that this is not the case. In Witherspoon v. Illinois, the Supreme Court examined the process of "death qualification" used to impanel capital juries. The Court approved the exclusion of prospective jurors whose opposition to the death penalty would make it impossible for them to decide upon guilt fairly and im partially, but left open the question of whether the exclusion of others who would not consider imposing the death penalty under any circum stances violated the defendant's constitutional rights. Since Witherspoon, death qualification has been extensively studied. It has been found to affect both the composition of the jury panel that re sults and, through the process itself, jurors who are exposed to the pro cedure. The exclusion of characteristics or attitudes linked with opposi tion to the death penalty has meant that capital juries are unrepresentative of the community at large, predisposed to support the prosecution, and predisposed to convict persons brought before the court. The process of death qualification creates a second source of bias: Prolonged exposure to discussion of the penalty at the outset of jury qualification suggests that the defendant's guilt is presumed by the attorneys and judge, increases the acceptability of pro-death penalty attitudes, and has been shown to in crease both the likelihood that jurors will convict and their willingness to vote for the death penalty in hypothetical cases. A number of recommendations are. discussed as means of creating fairness in capital juries. 1. Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970); and Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972). 2. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 149 (1968), the case that extended Sixth Amendment rights to a jury trial in state courts. 3. Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 130 (1940). 4. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 530 (1975). 5. Chief Judge David Bazelon, dissenting in United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113 (D.C. Cir. 1972). 6. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 156 (1878). 7. Duncan v. Louisiana, at 156. 8. Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217, 277 (1946) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). 9. Williams v. Florida, at 100. 10. Gardner v. Florida, 97 S. Ct. 1197, 1207 (1977). 11. Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968). 12. Ibid., at 522, note 21. 13. Three distinct groups of people can be identified whose death penalty opposition might have very different implications for their role as jurors: (1) persons whose opposition would allow them to consider imposing the death penalty under certain circumstances, (2) persons who could not consider imposing it under any circumstances, and (3) persons whose opposition to the death penalty would make it impossible for them to decide upon guilt fairly and impartially. Witherspoon definitely excluded the third group, included the first, and reached no definite and final conclusion about how to handle the second group. 14. Witherspoon v. Illinois, at 520, note 18. 15. Two of those studies were subsequently published: Faye Goldberg, "Toward Expansion of Witherspoon: Capital Scruples, Jury Bias, and the Use of Psychological Data to Raise Presump tions in the Law," Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review, vol. 5 (1970), pp. 53-69; Hans Zeisel, Some Data on Juror Attitudes toward Capital Punishment (Chicago: Center for Studies of Criminal Justice, University of Chicago Law School, 1968). Cody Wilson's "Belief in Capital Punishment and Jury Performance," written in 1964, has not been published. 16. Witherspoon v. Illinois, at 518, note 11. See also Michael Meltsner, Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (New York: William Morrow, 1973), pp. 118-25. 17. Witherspoon v. Illinois, at 517. 18. The existing research on this topic was presented and discussed in elaborate detail in an evidentiary hearing to limit death qualification in People v. David Moore and Kenneth Moore (Alameda County Superior Court No. 67113) in August and September, 1979. The evidentiary record in that case was incorporated into the record of Hovey v. Superior Court (Alameda County Superior Court No. H-1440), and argued before the California Supreme Court on May 8, 1980). [The case was decided by the California Supreme Court on August 28, 1980. Because we were going to press, Professor Haney was unable to consider the California decision in the present article.-Ed.] 19. A series of extremely sophisticated and as yet unpublished studies on this topic have been conducted by Professor Phoebe Ellsworth and her colleagues: Claudia Cowan, Robert Fitzgerald, and William Thompson. The definitive presentation of these studies is, of course, best left to Professor Ellsworth herself. I will refer to them only in passing in the pages that follow, but note here that the results of her studies are…
Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nat... more Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nation in the waning years of the 20th century are threatened less by a crime wave than a punishment wave. 1 A punishment
ABSTRACT As this special issue went to press, a lengthy opinion declaring the practice of death q... more ABSTRACT As this special issue went to press, a lengthy opinion declaring the practice of death qualification unconstitutional was issued by federal district court Judge G. Thomas Eisele (Grigsby v. Mabry, No. PB-C-78-32, Memorandum Opinion, Eastern District of Arkansas, August 5, 1983). Judge Eisele's opinion is based on a careful review of the relevant research, including the studies published in this issue, all of which was presented to the court in the course of a seven-day evidentiary hearing. The new Grigsby opinion is notable in several respects. It contains an extensive and meticulous discussion of the relevant social science data and, thus, represents a federal court counterpart to Hovey's impressive analysis. The decision also reverses the conviction of one of the defendants and orders a new trial on the issue of guilt. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nat... more Notwithstanding the claims of politicians and media pundits, the health and well-being of the nation in the waning years of the 20th century are threatened less by a crime wave than a punishment wave. 1 A punishment
The continued use of solitary confinement has sparked international public health and human right... more The continued use of solitary confinement has sparked international public health and human rights criticisms and concerns. This carceral practice has been linked repeatedly to a range of serious psychological harms among incarcerated persons. Vulnerabilities to harm are especially dire for persons with preexisting serious mental illness (“SMI”), a group that is overrepresented in solitary confinement units. Although there have been numerous calls for the practice to be significantly reformed, curtailed, and ended altogether, few strategies exist to minimize its use for people with SMI and histories of violence against themselves or others. This case study describes the “Oregon Resource Team” (ORT), a pilot project adapted from a Norwegian officer-led, interdisciplinary team-based approach to reduce isolation and improve outcomes for incarcerated persons with SMI and histories of trauma, self-injury, and violence against others. We describe the ORT’s innovative approach, the charact...
In contrast to most international definitions of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (CIDT), a... more In contrast to most international definitions of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (CIDT), and of torture per se, which focus primarily on individual acts or discrete forms of ill-treatment that are suffered at the hands of another (typically, a representative of the state), this chapter applies Bașoğlu’s “learning theory model of torture” to discuss the potential relationships between certain “contexts of ill-treatment”—especially, harsh conditions of prison confinement and other forms of involuntary detention—to CIDT and torture per se. It reviews the nature and adverse psychological effects of confinement and detention, including very severe conditions of the sort that exist in a number of international sites and are pervaded by unpredictable and uncontrollable traumas and stressors. This chapter also examines whether and how certain of these contexts of captivity may facilitate abuse, interact with and exacerbate other forms of ill-treatment and, at the extremes, themselves...
In this essay, we discuss the nature of what one commentator has termed "savage inequalities... more In this essay, we discuss the nature of what one commentator has termed "savage inequalities" in educational opportunity that separate minority students from the rest of the population in the United States. Notwithstanding the political importance of widespread liberal education to the integrity of the democratic process,2 there are pressing practical reasons to be increasingly concerned about persistent educational inequity. Rapidly changing demographics will soon redefine "majority" and "minority" populations in states across the country and produce unprecedented shifts in the composition of the American workforce. Yet, the combined effects of race-based disparities in educational opportunity and rapidly changing demographics are on a collision course with an increasingly advanced technological economy that will require greater numbers of better trained, more highly educated, and more intellectually skilled workers, managers, and policymakers. The dim...
This chapter places the prison that Gresham Sykes’s classic book made famous in a larger historic... more This chapter places the prison that Gresham Sykes’s classic book made famous in a larger historical and political context. It both acknowledges the timeless insights Sykes offered about the pains of imprisonment but argues that, by ignoring the prison’s history and avoiding any focus on the prison’s harshest realities (present at the time he studied it), he rendered his account of prison life more palatable than it actually was. Despite having outwardly changed from its brutal 19th-century origins, Sykes’s mid-1950s maximum-security prison had much more in common with them than he recognized. It retained a fundamental cruelty at its core that he unwittingly seemed to sanitize.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Sep 18, 2017
Bandura's research and theory on the mechanisms of moral disengagement demonstrate the various wa... more Bandura's research and theory on the mechanisms of moral disengagement demonstrate the various ways that persons distance themselves from their mistreatment of others to avoid or circumvent ethical constraints that should and otherwise would govern their behavior. This article examines the serious problem of prisoner abuse through the lens of moral disengagement theory to understand in part why such abuse occurs and persists. This application of moral disengagement theory underscores the importance of addressing these social psychological dynamics in any program of prison reform and the need for further research in a setting that traditionally has resisted in-depth empirical examination.
Logically, it would seem that capital juries must be at least as fair, im partial, and representa... more Logically, it would seem that capital juries must be at least as fair, im partial, and representative as juries that sit in ordinary criminal prose cutions. But there is much evidence to suggest that this is not the case. In Witherspoon v. Illinois, the Supreme Court examined the process of "death qualification" used to impanel capital juries. The Court approved the exclusion of prospective jurors whose opposition to the death penalty would make it impossible for them to decide upon guilt fairly and im partially, but left open the question of whether the exclusion of others who would not consider imposing the death penalty under any circum stances violated the defendant's constitutional rights. Since Witherspoon, death qualification has been extensively studied. It has been found to affect both the composition of the jury panel that re sults and, through the process itself, jurors who are exposed to the pro cedure. The exclusion of characteristics or attitudes linked with opposi tion to the death penalty has meant that capital juries are unrepresentative of the community at large, predisposed to support the prosecution, and predisposed to convict persons brought before the court. The process of death qualification creates a second source of bias: Prolonged exposure to discussion of the penalty at the outset of jury qualification suggests that the defendant's guilt is presumed by the attorneys and judge, increases the acceptability of pro-death penalty attitudes, and has been shown to in crease both the likelihood that jurors will convict and their willingness to vote for the death penalty in hypothetical cases. A number of recommendations are. discussed as means of creating fairness in capital juries. 1. Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970); and Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972). 2. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 149 (1968), the case that extended Sixth Amendment rights to a jury trial in state courts. 3. Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 130 (1940). 4. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 530 (1975). 5. Chief Judge David Bazelon, dissenting in United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113 (D.C. Cir. 1972). 6. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 156 (1878). 7. Duncan v. Louisiana, at 156. 8. Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217, 277 (1946) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). 9. Williams v. Florida, at 100. 10. Gardner v. Florida, 97 S. Ct. 1197, 1207 (1977). 11. Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968). 12. Ibid., at 522, note 21. 13. Three distinct groups of people can be identified whose death penalty opposition might have very different implications for their role as jurors: (1) persons whose opposition would allow them to consider imposing the death penalty under certain circumstances, (2) persons who could not consider imposing it under any circumstances, and (3) persons whose opposition to the death penalty would make it impossible for them to decide upon guilt fairly and impartially. Witherspoon definitely excluded the third group, included the first, and reached no definite and final conclusion about how to handle the second group. 14. Witherspoon v. Illinois, at 520, note 18. 15. Two of those studies were subsequently published: Faye Goldberg, "Toward Expansion of Witherspoon: Capital Scruples, Jury Bias, and the Use of Psychological Data to Raise Presump tions in the Law," Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review, vol. 5 (1970), pp. 53-69; Hans Zeisel, Some Data on Juror Attitudes toward Capital Punishment (Chicago: Center for Studies of Criminal Justice, University of Chicago Law School, 1968). Cody Wilson's "Belief in Capital Punishment and Jury Performance," written in 1964, has not been published. 16. Witherspoon v. Illinois, at 518, note 11. See also Michael Meltsner, Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (New York: William Morrow, 1973), pp. 118-25. 17. Witherspoon v. Illinois, at 517. 18. The existing research on this topic was presented and discussed in elaborate detail in an evidentiary hearing to limit death qualification in People v. David Moore and Kenneth Moore (Alameda County Superior Court No. 67113) in August and September, 1979. The evidentiary record in that case was incorporated into the record of Hovey v. Superior Court (Alameda County Superior Court No. H-1440), and argued before the California Supreme Court on May 8, 1980). [The case was decided by the California Supreme Court on August 28, 1980. Because we were going to press, Professor Haney was unable to consider the California decision in the present article.-Ed.] 19. A series of extremely sophisticated and as yet unpublished studies on this topic have been conducted by Professor Phoebe Ellsworth and her colleagues: Claudia Cowan, Robert Fitzgerald, and William Thompson. The definitive presentation of these studies is, of course, best left to Professor Ellsworth herself. I will refer to them only in passing in the pages that follow, but note here that the results of her studies are…
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