SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON

 This course looks at issues of incarceration from a social psychological perspective. It will examine how the correctional system operates, media images of crime and punishment, the relationship between incarceration and pathology, the victims' rights movement, and attitudes toward rehabilitation. The ways that race, gender, and economic factors interface with these issues and with social psychological theory and research will be analyzed. It is difficult to consider prisons without considering other topics such as policing and the legal/judicial system, but those topics will not be a focus of the course.

REQUIRED TEXTS: (available in bookstore)

Allport, Gordon. The Nature of Prejudice
Conover, Tom. NewJack: Guarding Sing-Sing
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Franklin, Bruce J. Prison Writing in 20^th Century America
Mauer, Marc. Race to Incarcerate

A required packet of articles --- marked (P) on the syllabus --- will be sold in the Natural Sciences stockroom (0022)

There will be a midterm exam, a final exam, and several short assignments --- some of which will require internet searching. A journal assignment will be on-going (see below). In addition, each student will collect data for a class project. The course's success depends on students keeping up with the considerable amount of reading assigned. You are encouraged to speak with me if you are having difficulty completing the daily reading assignments.

Journal Assignment

You are responsible for completing Bruce Franklin's book, Prison Writing in 20^th Century America by the end of the semester. There will be no scheduled assignments from it in the syllabus and you need not read the selections in order, but you should read all of them. After reading each selection, you should write your reaction to the piece, making connections when possible to other material you've read in the course and to issues we've discussed in class. The selections in this book are more personal than much of what we will be reading and your journal entries will be an opportunity for you to react more personally to the course material. Three times during the semester you'll submit your journals. I encourage you to keep your journal entries up to date and not write them all the evening before they're due.

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Violence and victims
http://people.morehead-st.edu/fs/p.becker/topics.html

Prison sexuality
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/SPR/docs/prison-sex.html

National Crime Statistics
http://www.crime.org/links_nat.html

Federal Crime Statistics National Organizational Index
http://www.crime.org/fed-index.html

Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking
http://ssw.che.umn.edu/rjp/

Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants
http://www.curenational.org/index1.html

Prison Activist Resource Center
http://www.prisonactivist.org/

Prison Information and Papers
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/prisons/prisons.html

The Other Side of the Wall
http://myweb.wco.com/~aerick/

Prison links
http://web.syr.edu/~tckerr/PrisonLinks.html

Correctional Education Connections
http://www.io.com/~ellie/contents.html

Drug Policy Links
http://www.csdp.org/links.htm

Justice Policy Institute
http://www.cjcj.org/jpi/onemillionpr.html