Browsing by Subject "Incarceration"
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Item Carceral Subjectivity and the Exercise of Freedom in Israel-Palestine(2020-02) Gortler, ShaiWhat do 20th century attempts of Israelis, Palestinians, and Humanitarians to affect subject formation in Israeli prisons reveal about the relation between domination and freedom? Literatures of carceral subject formation regard prisons as sites where subjectivity is either irrelevant (Wallace 2015, Guenther 2013), liberatory (Nashif 2008, Bargu 2014, Dilts 2014), or manipulated (Daka 2011). The resulting analyses of these approaches regard Israeli incarceration of Palestinians as a site of “neutral and objective” humanitarian work by the Red Cross, purely liberatory political action by Palestinian prisoners, or an all-catching Israeli top-down apparatus that is able to harness every attempt of Palestinian political action to its own benefit. To offer a competing approach, my dissertation builds on newly exposed archival materials from Israeli, Palestinian, and Red Cross archives on Israeli prisons between the arrest of the first self-proclaimed Palestinian political prisoner in 1965 and 2019. With and against contemporary political and social theorists such as Michel Foucault, Iris Young, and Walid Daka the dissertation traces how the Israeli Prison Service attempted to use the prisoners’ actions—such as their leadership structures, hunger strikes, demands for improved material conditions, and inner-relations—to amplify Israeli interests. It further traces how the Red Cross’s “neutral” humanitarian work participated in the constitution of the prisoners as individualized consumers and limited the prisoners’ ability to act collectively. Last, it traces how the prisoners were nevertheless able to change their reality by cultivating alternative kinships, textures of collectivity, and senses of selves. The result is a differentiation between practices where the Palestinian prisoners were only able to act according to definitions set by others and those rare moments when they were able to participate in defining the structure of their participation.Item Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing? General Assistance welfare crime, and punishment in the United States(2013-07) Shannon, SarahBoth the welfare state and the criminal justice system have undergone tremendous changes in the past 50 years. While the "right hand" carceral state has swelled through increased populations and spending, the "left hand" welfare state has simultaneously shifted caseloads and spending toward programs that support and reward the working poor and away from cash programs for those in deep poverty. This dissertation examines the theoretical and empirical connections between the changes in these two "hands" of the state using the particular case of General Assistance (GA) welfare programs from 1960 to 2010. In three sets of analysis, this study examines what factors account for major changes in GA policy since the late 1950s, as well as how GA welfare provision has affected state incarceration rates and crime rates at the state and county level over time and space. Results from these analyses highlight two important points: 1) the outlook for low-income men (and others not eligible for federal welfare programs) has become more dire over the last several decades as states have ended income supports for this population in conjunction with higher rates of incarceration; and 2) the loss of such income supports impacts public safety since greater provision of GA is associated with reductions in several types of crime.Item Forever changed: women's lived experiences of growing up with an incarcerated Father(2014-08) Trombley, Holli MariaThis study explored the lived experiences of women who grew up with an incarcerated father. Thirteen women were interviewed using open-ended, semi-structured questions. The research design was based on Martin Heidegger's original philosophical construct of Hermeneutic Phenomenology and was guided by Max van Manen's six-step methodical structure approach to obtain meaning making from the participants regarding their lived experience (van Manen, 1997, 2014). Feminist framework is also incorporated to recognize the uniqueness of the female experience, which has often been neglected in research related to fathering. Findings reflected the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of participants in relation to how incarceration influenced their relationship with their father as well as how this phenomenon affected other dimensions of their life and their interpersonal relationships. The findings resulted in three overarching domains for paternal incarceration: 1) daughter's perception of parental response, 2) effect on daughter's personal well-being, and 3) influence on daughter's interpersonal relationships. Future implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.Item Navigating Traumatic Stress, Substance Use and Parental Incarceration: A Phenomenological Study(2021-06) Bailey, MollyMass incarceration in the United States has left millions of parents behind bars. These parents face barriers to wellbeing throughout their lifespan, navigating demographic and structural barriers, cumulative disadvantage characterized by stress, harsh institutional practices and sociopolitical factors impacting their access to resources pre, during, and post incarceration. Little to no research has explored the intersection of traumatic stress, substance use and parental incarceration. Guided by ecological systems, family stress, and critical social science theories this study explores the lived experiences of parents who have been incarcerated, exposed to traumatic stress, and substance use. Employing hermeneutic phenomenology, qualitative interviews were conducted focusing on the way parents see and make meaning around navigating this milieu in their lives. Seven essential themes emerged from this analysis: (a) Interconnections between traumatic stress, substance use and incarceration (b) Stress pile-up characterizes life, (c) Peer relationships are critical, (d) Many information gaps exist, (e) Incarceration is harmful, (f) Spirituality is transformative resource, and (g) Desire for a better life. Primarily current policies and services for justice-involved families are not family oriented, systemic, or preventative and lack an overall fit with the lived experiences of the parents in this study. Theories guiding intervention development for justice-involved families need to account for proximal processes that impact life trajectories. Policies need to be just and consider the impact of the family, and traditionally siloed sectors need to work together to bring about healing and well-being for justice-involved families.Item Racial Disparity of Child Poverty in Minnesota: The Hidden Consequence of Incarceration(Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 2009-05-15) Myslajek, CrystalRelative to the rest of the United States, Minnesota incarcerates only a small percentage of its population. In fact, Minnesota has the second lowest imprisonment rate of all the states. Yet disaggregating the imprisonment rate by race reveals the troublesome fact that African American Minnesotans are in prison at a rate twelve times the rate of whites. Mounting evidence suggests that rather than disrupting a person’s criminal career, incarceration detrimentally impacts a person’s future transitions into conventional domains of life such as employment, education, and family. More immediately, incarceration disrupts not only criminal behavior but other activities as well, such as employment and parenting. As a result, parents who are either in prison or have an incarceration record may have a decreased ability to financially support their children. Thus, it follows that children whose parents are incarcerated are more likely to face poverty. Given this logic, it is not surprising that in addition to the high rate of incarceration for African American adults relative to white adults, a greater percentage of African American children in Minnesota live in poverty than do white, non-Hispanic children. In fact, both the black-white ratios of incarceration rates (12:1) and child poverty rates (6:1) are above the national averages (7:1 and 3:1) (Western 2008; U.S Census Bureau 2009). I argue that incarceration has an often overlooked but critical effect on the racial disparity of child poverty in Minnesota. This effect emerges as a result of incarceration’s disruption to educational attainment, employment, and family dynamics. Furthermore, bans on federal benefits for felony-drug offenders may function to exacerbate incarceration’s impact on child poverty. To provide context, this work examines some of the policies contributing to the black-white disparity of incarceration in Minnesota.