Ex-Convicts Face Multiple Labor Market Punishments: Estimates of Peer-Group and Stigma Effects Using Equations of Returns to Schooling

We produced a data set from a survey of a population of convicts in probation. We combined this new data set with an official data set from the Brazilian government to study labor market discrimination faced by ex-convicts. We were interested in estimating two potential effects of discrimination, statistical (stigma) and behavioral (peer-group) effects. Our econometric results suggest that stigmatization leads to a 39% reduction in the wage earned by ex-convicts relative to the wage earned by non-convicts. They also suggest that the peer-group effect accounts for a reduction in the relative earnings of ex-convicts of 1.1% per year of study. In addition, we also show that ex-convicts earn 3.1% less per year of experience than non-convicts.Stigma Effect, Peer Effect, Crime Rate, Returns to Schooling, Wage Discrimination

Hubungan kebermaknaan hidup dan dukungan sosial keluarga dengan kesehatan mental narapidana (studi kasus nara pidana kota Semarang)

Convicts during being kept in socializing institutions lose their freedom of mobility and accompanying sufferings such as the loss of opportunity to have sexual intercourse, of private rights, of getting goodness and help, of their secrecy from bad prejudice from society, and being suffered from infantilism. Convicts also have to do duties, to adapt themselves, to obey socializing institutions’ regulations and all regulations formed secretly which apply among occupants of socializing institutions beyond officers’ reach. In facing life which was hard and full of problems, part of convicts still had healthy mental conditions, who showed determination, survival, and even they helped their fellow convicts. In contrast, part of convicts suffered from unhealthy mental conditions, who showed desperation, apathy, and a condition of losing their life spirit, even there were some convicts who committed suicide in order to free themselves from their sufferings. Among factors assumed as having influences on the condition were the meaningfulness of life and the social support of the family. By the meaningfulness of life, convicts were assumed as being able to take the appropriate attitudes so that the tragic experiences could reduce; even they could produce deeper meaning. Blessing and valuable lessons could be taken from those incidents which help the process of maturity and give contributions to the goodness in the future. This research was a quantitative research which aimed at testing empirically the correlation between the meaningfulness of life and the social support of the family and convicts’ mental health. The subjects of this research were convicts of Kedungpane Semarang First Class Socializing Institution. The technique of taking samples used in this research was random sampling, namely a technique of choosing randomly the existing individuals (407 convicts). By using the technique, 104 convicts were chosen in this research

The transportation of Narain Sing: punishment, honour and identity from the Anglo–Sikh Wars to the Great Revolt

This paper examines fragments from the life of Narain Sing as a means of exploring punishment, labour, society and social transformation in the aftermath of the Anglo–Sikh Wars (1845–1846, 1848–1849). Narain Sing was a famous military general who the British convicted of treason and sentenced to transportation overseas after the annexation of the Panjab in 1849. He was shipped as a convict to one of the East India Company's penal settlements in Burma where, in 1861, he was appointed head police constable of Moulmein. Narain Sing's experiences of military service, conviction, transportation and penal work give us a unique insight into questions of loyalty, treachery, honour, masculinity and status. When his life history is placed within the broader context of continuing agitation against the expansion of British authority in the Panjab, we also glimpse something of the changing nature of identity and the development of Anglo–Sikh relations more broadly between the wars of the 1840s and the Great Indian Revolt of 1857–1858

Convicts and coolies : rethinking indentured labour in the nineteenth century

This article seeks to shift the frame of analysis within which discussions of Indian indentured migration take place. It argues that colonial discourses and practices of indenture are best understood not with regard to the common historiographical framework of whether it was 'a new system of slavery', but in the context of colonial innovations in incarceration and confinement. The article shows how Indian experiences of and knowledge about transportation overseas to penal settlements informed in important ways both their own understandings and representations of migration and the colonial practices associated with the recruitment of indentured labour. In detailing the connections between two supposedly different labour regimes, it thus brings a further layer of complexity to debates around their supposed distinctions

Prison as Seen by Convict Criminologists

Most criminologists tend to base their view of prison on ideological assumptions gathered from secondary sources, with at best limited entry to the prison world. They nearly always get it wrong, as they systematically exclude the perspectives and real life experiences of their human subjects. These academic researchers have contributed to poor public policy that promotes the violent repression of prisoners in the USA and other countries. In response, Convict Criminologists are ex‐convicts working as criminology and criminal justice professors, along with “non‐con” associates, that insist that as a means for societies to develop humane, effective, and cost efficient prisons, we must develop ways to incorporate the voice of prisoners in our theorizing about, policy recommendations for, and management of the prison

The Unknown Legacy of the 13th Amendment

On January 31, 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, declaring slavery illegal in the United States. Or so it seemed. The second line of the Amendment, and the most oft unknown, states that slavery can still be used as a form of punishment for crimes, and this practice became widely used as a part of southern backlash to Reconstruction Era policies. After the end of the Civil War, many southern states struggled with rebuilding their infrastructures and government systems. In order to avoid falling into more debt, many of these states turned towards the convict lease system, which claimed that the state prison could lease out its convicts to local companies, usually in industries such as mining, lumbering, and railroad building, to not only house prisoners inexpensively but also regain the means of labor they had with slavery before the Civil War. By adopting the convict lease system, southern states were able to earn revenue and control the suddenly free black population of the South, and with the development of black codes, these states were able to legally disenfranchise African Americans up until the 1930s when Alabama became the last state to abolish the convict lease program. [excerpt

The Racial Oppression in America’s Mass Incarceration

This paper seeks to expose the racial oppression embedded within the United States\u27 practice of mass incarceration and will provide recommendations to ameliorate this discriminatory practice that harshly and inequitably impacts people of color. Many minority communities are stuck in a continuous cycle of poverty and incarceration, in part because they are targeted and oppressed by the criminal justice system more frequently than middle class white communities. Consequently, incarcerated people of color exhibit high rates of recidivism because of being stripped of resources and being sent back to impoverished, drug-ridden neighborhoods. The War on Drugs in the 1980s and the continuance of poor relations between law enforcement and minority communities are significant contributing factors that have led to the mass incarceration of racial minority groups. The economic, political, and societal oppression of minority communities that unquestionably contributes to mass incarceration will be highlighted throughout this paper. Creating policies that involve transforming the U.S. legal system and providing communal support will be crucial in eradicating this systemic racial oppression

Oscar Mallitte's Andaman photographs (1857-8)

This article examines the first Andaman Islands photographs, which were taken by the photographer Oscar Jean-Baptiste Mallitte during a Government of India survey whose brief was to find a site for a penal colony for mutineers and rebels sentenced to transportation after the Great Revolt of 1857. The Mallitte prints were long assumed to be lost or destroyed, but recently they have been discovered in the Queen's Collection at Windsor Castle. The article looks at the photographs as representations of the Andamans landscape and peoples just before permanent colonization, and focuses on a deeply affecting set of images of an Islander kidnapped by the survey party and taken back to Calcutta. As the photographic process was described in some detail in various contemporary publications, and because the photographs were widely copied and published as engravings, the images can be used to interrogate some of the textual and visual interconnections and slippages that were implied during the Islands' written and visual production and transformation. The article suggests that the photographs and their connected texts – visual and discursive – are of huge importance as signifiers of the violence of colonization, as evidence of some of the ambivalences that characterized the use of convict forced labour in colonization, and as a ‘missing link’ that enables us to examine some of the ways in which the Islands and its peoples were constructed and represented through the trope of colonial ‘tropicality’