Blog Archives
US Bureau of Justice Statistics: Crime Against Persons With Disabilities, 2008-2010 – Statistical Tables
A report from the US Bureau of Justice. I have not started reviewing this material yet, and so may have more to post on in the future, but even the highlights are sadly instructive about the predictable impacts of social and societal devaluation on people in heightened vulnerability: “In 2010, for both males and females the […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: heightened vulnerability, prison, social devaluation
SRV In the News: Disabled inmates denied crucial access, judge says
This article from the San Francisco Chronicle, details the trouble that inmates of county jails in California have had in gaining access to basic aids for their physical impairments. According to the district judge interviewed in the article, prisoners have been denied access to canes, wheelchairs, sign language interpreters and telephone-assistance devices. The judge claims […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: devaluation, disability, heightened vulnerability, news media, prison, role circularity, Social Role Valorization, SRV
Debbie Kilroy: women and prison
Debbie shared stories of her own life, as someone who was jailed both as a young person and later as an adult. She compellingly described her own early life as one of cascading vulnerability: being locked up as a teen, abused, surrounded by low negative stereotypical expectations, socialized into prisoner role … all the while […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: prison, SRV, SRV conference
Equal Justice Initiative
We recently received an annual report from the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization that primarily works with poor defendants/prisoners who have not received fair treatment in the US court and corrections systems. One of their major areas of concentration is on capital cases, i.e., death penalty cases. I want to focus in this blog post […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: culturally valued analog, devalued roles, heightened vulnerability, model coherency, prison, restraint
commentary: ‘Doing time, with a degree to show for it’
This commentary from the Chronicle for Higher Education relates to our recent post about imprisonment. A few SRV points from the commentary: • The importance of competency enhancement in supporting devalued and vulnerable individuals/groups in valued roles: specifically, the importance of making university-level education available to prisoners • The potential benefits of helping those in […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: college student role, heightened vulnerability, prison
op ed: ‘The prison boom comes home to roost’
This Boston Globe op-ed piece about prisons and the high rate of incarceration in the US raises many SRV relevant points, such as: • the pervasive influence of non-programmatic factors, such as the employment and profit incentive behind the prison boom • the link between impoverishment and imprisonment (particularly in light of societal devaluation and […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: devalued role, heightened vulnerability, impoverishment, non-programmatic, prison
Role of prison guard
I ran across this reference to an article about the social roles and self-perceptions of prison guards. If anyone can access the full article and let us know about it, it could be quite interesting. Abstract Penal institutions determine their expectations of their own guards’ social role. The adequate performance of this social role, however, […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: prison, social role
Iwawa Island, Rwanda
One of my (admittedly narrow) interests in human service history has been in the location of various types of human service programs, including but not limited to prisons, on islands. This NY Times article describes how the government in Rwanda has been sending beggars, homeless people and petty criminals to an island in Lake Kiwu […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: abuse, congregation, island, isolated dislocation, prison, segregation
Stanford Prison Experiment
Dr. Philip Zimbardo (who conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment) in a brief interview talking about how quickly the students in the experiment took on the roles of guard and prisoner. Tweet
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: devalued roles, prison, role expectations
Physical setting: prison architecture
In Social Role Valorization theory and in the PASSING manual, we talk about the power of the physical setting when it comes to communicating roles and images, setting expectations, affecting competency, and so on. This 2009 NY Times Magazine article describes a prison in Austria that is architecturally quite different from most prisons. From the […]
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: competency enhancement, image communicators, physical setting, prison, role communicators, Social Role Valorization, SRV