Your First Five Crime Studies of March 22
All of today's research relates to prisons
I'm Aaron Jacklin, and this is Explaining Crime, an independent newsletter that helps you explain crime to your audience.
Your First Five is a daily series (M-F) that publishes a curated selection of recent research related to crime and justice. Each post contains links to new studies (each related to a single topic) that I hope will enhance your work explaining crime. The publication schedule is in flux for the moment.
These new studies related to criminology and criminal justice were published recently by journals I monitor:
1. Innate Health: A Novel Examination of What Explains Well-Being, Prosocial Behavior, and Aggression Among Men Living in a U.K. Prison, published in Criminal Justice and Behavior. (Open access)
2. The Unintended Effects of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in a Maximum-Security Prison for Women: Weaponization, Bullying, and Compulsory Heterosexuality, published in Crime & Delinquency. (Restricted access)
3. Mental Health Needs, Substance Use, and Reincarceration: Population-Level Findings From a Released Prison Cohort, published in Criminal Justice and Behavior. (Open access)
4. What is a ‘good enough’ prison? An empirical analysis of key thresholds using prison moral quality data, published in European Journal of Criminology. (Open access)
5. The experiences of men in prison who do not receive visits from family or friends: A qualitative systematic review, published in Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health. (Open access)
I might cover some of these studies further in Understanding Crime. If one sounds interesting or important, let me know in the comments.
Right now, I'm considering number 1. The following passage caught my eye:
Evidence shows that well-being for mental health in prison is an important component of prison rehabilitation efforts—including notably lowering recidivism rates after release. While support for well-being initiatives in U.K. prisons has grown, few prison programs offer a health-promoting focus or invest in well-being interventions. Therefore, this study seeks to replicate and extend emerging data on an innate health intervention.
Also, I didn’t know what “innage health” was:
Within the scientific literature, Sedgeman (2005) coined the term “innate health” as a capacity for health realization, where a positive state of mind can be accessed and sustained regardless of circumstances.