A discussion of aggression, a personality inventory, a list of possible college courses for prison populations, and chocolate chip pancakes were followed by an assessment of learning over the course of the week. Bon appetit!...
Continue readingThe Pen and the Penitentiary
Today Professor Michele Tarter spoke to us about her work with her “wisewomen,” inmates in a women’s maximum security prison in Clinton, NJ. Dr. Tarter brought a sample of the women’s memoirs, called The Pen and the Penitentiary; the writing was memorable and heart-wrenching. The art work was evocative as was the presentation, which...
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Prison Design: Cannons and Hope
In spite of the cold the tour of Fort Mifflin revealed much about the life in a Civil War military prison. Some prison issues such as overcrowding and resources remain; a military prison presents unique problems in its treatment of traitors and prisoners of war. Back at school we prepared questions for our guest...
Continue readingConformity, social roles, obedience … oh my!
Prisons designed to depersonalize inmates trigger antisocial behavior. Students learned about the three keystones of the social psychology of prison life – the Stanford Prison experiment on social roles, the Yale Milgram studies of obedience, and the Swarthmore Asch work on conformity – as a prelude to understanding the social pressures on behavior. Today...
Continue readingC2559 – Pep, The Cat-Murdering Dog
Today we traveled to the Eastern State Penitentiary to learn about the “Quaker experiment” in criminal reformation. We studied the architecture of the building and its several expansions. Originally, reformation of the prisoners was to be accomplished by social isolation – no talking, no social interaction, no seeing other humans for the entire time...
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Prison Design: Our assumptions drive our decisions
Day One The assumptions we make about how to help prisoners drive the design of prisons. Historically the four models of helping prisoners – the moral model, the compensatory model, the medical model, and the enlightenment model – have informed the treatment of prisoners. Spaces in minimum security prisons, e.g., cafeterias, individual living spaces,...
Continue readingEnvironmental Psychology 2014
This Intensive Learning examines the effect of environment on human behavior. We punish criminals by putting them in a locked room, inside a locked building, and we leave them there for a specified period of time. Prisons are the warehouses where people are supposed to change. As...
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