Through Their Eyes: How Prisoners Make Sense Of Their Incarceration

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Research Article Analysis Maria Sanchez CJA/334 August 13, 2014 Richard Bendelewski Research Article Analysis In the criminal justice system, research holds an important role between the research and policymaking process. Proper research is critical. Research is the primary tool used to help students, criminal justice professionals, and government policy makers gain knowledge. Through research, the most-effective approaches to law enforcement and the administration of justice can help identify and formulate several crime prevention tactics. Investigations or experiments allow researchers to interpret facts and revise laws or accepted theories. The following paper will identify the purpose, problem, and questions of a research study…show more content…
The focus of the study was to understand the individual experiences of punishment, in particular the perspective of each inmate’s experience, life change, and adjustment in a prison environment. The questions were tailored to understand and answer the focus of the study. According to Frederique and Sexton (2014), how do they understand and orient to being in prison? Do they interpret punishment in different…show more content…
The theory of the structure helped understand the subjective experience of punishment beyond just the aspects of incarceration. Severity and salience did not focus on describing the types of prisoners, but rather the different ways prisoners situated punishment in what their real life had become inside the prison. However, prisoners experienced more than one narrative, shifting from time to time. The narratives included: punishment as part of life, punishment as a separate life, punishment in many ways, punishment as suspension of life, and punishment as death. When the narrative was punishment as part of life, it involved both low in both salience and severity. Punishment as a separate life is when inmates’ reality becomes the life inside prison forming punishment as a new story. Punishment in many ways consist of punishment as part of life in low severity, and high in salience in punishment as a separate life. Punishment as suspension of life is the study that found that inmate’s life inside prison becomes suspended, while life outside prison is a continuing reality passing by in a blur. Punishment as death includes those inmates that believe that a life of punishment is no life at all and that punishment has ended their physical and psychological life as they knew

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