| Beyond the prison paradigm: from provoking violence to preventing it by creating "anti-prisons" (residential colleges and therapeutic communities). | |
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MedLine Citation:
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PMID: 15817746 Owner: NLM Status: MEDLINE |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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Prisons were supposedly created for the purpose of the tertiary prevention of violence (i.e., reducing the frequency and severity of future violence on the part of people who have already become violent). However, there is much evidence that this method of attempting to prevent violence is often, though not always, either ineffectual or counterproductive, in which case it is either a waste of money or actually exacerbates the problem it was ostensibly intended to solve. This article reviews evidence concerning those questions including an analysis of the effect of punishment (one of the main purposes of prisons) on violent behavior. Punishment--the infliction of pain--will be distinguished from restraint (incapacitation, separation from the community). Successful examples of violence prevention in unconventional prison programs, emphasizing therapy and education rather than punishment, and restorative rather than retributive justice, will be summarized, together with evidence that these programs reduce re-incarceration rates so substantially that they actually save the taxpayers more money than they cost, in addition to enhancing the safety of the general public. The position is taken that traditional prisons provoke more violence than they prevent and are so fundamentally flawed that they cannot be reformed; we argue that they should instead be abolished and replaced by "anti-prisons," that is, locked, secure residential colleges, therapeutic communities, and centers for human development. Prisons will come to be seen as a well-meaning experiment that failed, rather like the use of leeches in medicine. |
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Authors:
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James Gilligan; Bandy Lee |
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Publication Detail:
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Type: Journal Article |
Journal Detail:
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Title: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Volume: 1036 ISSN: 0077-8923 ISO Abbreviation: Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. Publication Date: 2004 Dec |
Date Detail:
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Created Date: 2005-04-08 Completed Date: 2008-08-08 Revised Date: - |
Medline Journal Info:
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Nlm Unique ID: 7506858 Medline TA: Ann N Y Acad Sci Country: United States |
Other Details:
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Languages: eng Pagination: 300-24 Citation Subset: IM |
Affiliation:
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Department of Psychiatry, Criminology and Public Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA. jamesgil@ssw.upenn.edu |
Export Citation:
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| MeSH Terms | |
Descriptor/Qualifier:
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Female Humans Male Prisons / statistics & numerical data* Recurrence Residential Treatment / statistics & numerical data United States / epidemiology Universities / statistics & numerical data* Violence / prevention & control*, statistics & numerical data* |
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
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