My research example for this week comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics published by the U.S. Department of Justice. It is a national inmate survey taken from 2011-2012  titled “Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates”. The report includes demographic data and reports of acts and behavior. This is the BJS third National Inmate Survey taken in 233 state and federal prisons, 358 jails, and 15 special confinement facilities operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Military. The survey was administered to 92,449 inmates age 18 or older, including 38,251 inmates in state and federal prisons, 52,926 in jails, 573 in ICE facilities, 539 in military facilities, and 160 in Indian country jails. The NIS is part of the National Prison Rape Statistics Program, which collects reported sexual violence from administrative records and allegations of sexual victimization directly from victims in the form of surveys of inmates in prisons and jails and of youth held in juvenile correctional facilities. Surveys consisted of an audio computer- assisted self-interview (ACASI) in which inmates used a touchscreen to interact with a computer-assisted questionnaire and followed audio instructions delivered via headphones. Some inmates completed a short paper form instead of using the ACASI. One weakness of the survey was that some inmates may not report sexual victimization experienced in the facility, despite efforts of survey staff to assure inmates that their responses would be kept confidential. The results showed that staff sexual misconduct was a prevalent issue in women’s prisons and provided insightful and useful information for my research, but failed to mention the gender of the prison staff as a variable in the investigation.

Beck, A. J., Berzofsky, M., Caspar, R., & Krebs, C. (2013). Sexual victimization in prisons and jails reported by inmates, 2011–12. Retrieved from http://www.bjs. gov/content/pub/pdf/svpjri1112.pdf

I found my research example for this week in the Journal of Urban Health. The study conducted by Nancy Wolff, Cynthia L. Blitz, Jing Shi, Ronet Bachman, and Jane Siegel, is titled “Sexual Violence Inside Prisons: Rates of Victimization”. The paper estimates the prevalence of sexual victimization within a state prison system. It also takes into account that sexual violence in prisons is a public health concern, since HIV infection rates are higher than in the general population. They conducted the study by surveying 6,964 men and 564 women utilizing an audio-CASI. Respondents were sampled through an invitation by researchers to participate in a survey. Surveys were conducted face to face as well as through questionnaires. The two main questions asked were: The questions were “Have you been sexually assaulted by (an inmate or staff member) within the past 6 months?” and “Have you ever been sexually assaulted by (an inmate or staff member) on this bid [conviction]?” Sexual violence was defined as nonconsensual sexual acts, which consisted of forced sex acts, including oral and anal sex, and abusive sexual contacts, which included intentional touching of specified areas of the body. One surprising result of the study was the prevalence of inmate on inmate sexual victimization in the female prison was higher than in the male prison. Additionally, the study found no statistically significant differences between males and females in rates of experiencing staff-on-inmate sexual violence. While female inmates were more likely to be sexually victimized by other inmates than by staff, male inmates were more likely to report an incident of sexual victimization perpetrated by staff.

Wolff, N., Blitz, C. L., Shi, J., Bachman, R., & Siegel, J. A. (2006). Sexual Violence Inside Prisons: Rates of Victimization. Journal of Urban Health : Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 83(5), 835–848. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-006-9065-2

The article I found this week comes from the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law. Written by Flyn L. Fresher, “Cross-Gender Supervision in Prison and the Constitutional Right of Prisoners to Remain Free from Rape”, examines cross-gender supervision in prisons as a lead cause of sexual assault, especially towards women, and the political actors that may hinder a prisoner from reporting their assault. This search took a more meta-analysis form in the sense that it pulled from previous research as well as public records and demographic data in order to explain the gender make up of prison staff and the reasons that allow for cross-gender supervision. The article explains that the problem with cross-gender supervision is that it exacerbates the problem by placing women in situations in which they cannot escape their attacker. Additionally, pat frisks and body cavity checks are more traumatizing for women, since a majority percentage of women prisoners have a history of sexual abuse. Furthermore, certain laws, like the Prison Litigation Reform Act, restrict prisoners from what they can and cannot litigate in court. This, in my opinion, not only takes away certain rights from prisoners, but discourages them from reporting events of assault and other conditions. The article concludes that there should be set laws that actually address the issue of sexual assault in prisons and make it concrete that it should not happen especially by male staff who are supposed to uphold the law. It is this absence of a law that specifically addresses sexual assault in prison that allows for male prison staff to continue their abuse and makes it difficult to hold them accountable.

Flyn L. Flesher. “CROSS-GENDER SUPERVISION IN PRISONS AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT OF PRISONERS TO REMAIN FREE FROM RAPE.” William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law 13 (April 1, 2007): 841–867.

For this week’s research example, I decided to read literature written by political activist Angela Davis who has done extensive research on the prison system and is an advocator for the abolition of the prison. In her book, Are prisons obsolete?, she writes a chapter titled “How Gender Structures the Prison System” which speaks largely to my research topic in examining the difference in how female and male prisoners are treated by prison staff. The data that Davis gathers comes in the form of writings and memoirs of incarcerated women, specifically women of color. In these excerpts, the women described the inadequate medical attention they received, the constant sexual violence they experienced by prison staff in the form of verbal and physical abuse, and use of drugs to control their behavior. She uses past published reports, such as the 1996 Human Rights Watch Report and All too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons, to illuminate the violations of power exerted by male officers that used their privileges to engage in sexual relations, threat, verbally degrade and harass women prisoners. Although her research does not produce original data, she utilizes the records of experiences of incarcerated women as well as published reports to expose the harsh and unjust treatment of women in prisons, treatment that is not just confided in prison walls, but also lives in the greater society. Thus, one of the major reasons to abolish the prison system is because of the institutionalized abuse of women in prisons that is seen as obsolete in the larger society.

Davis, Angela Y., and Angela Y. Davis. Are prisons obsolete? an open media book. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010.

The article that I found this week comes from the American Journal of Criminal Justice. The article, titled “Prison Violence, Gender, and Perceptions: Testing a Missing Link in Discretion Research”, is written by David M. Bierie. This article illuminates how agents of criminal justice (police officers, judges, prison staff,etc) exercise their authority and power over those they are in control of. The article examines how gender and perceptions of violence through past experiences can influence the force exerted by those agents. Men and women have different perceptions of violence because of how violence is presented to them in their life experiences. For example, women are more likely to be victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, while men are more likely to be perpetrators of this kind of violence. This impacts their perception when a violent situation occurs and how they react to it. The article focuses on 2 research questions: (1) do male and female officers show similar perceptions of serious violence, yet diverging perceptions of minor assault? and (2) do women perceive less minor violence than men? The study drew from the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ annual Prison Social Climate Survey (PSCS), which contained the opinions of 2,184 correctional staff across 112 prisons in the U.S. The survey used a stratified proportional probability random sampling design to draw a pool of staff from each institution. Each respondent was asked to estimate the number of assaults they knew to have occurred within the last 6 months. They looked at common assault, armed assault and sexual assault. They survey also consisted of demographic data (e.g. race) and job characteristics. They tested where gender impacts perceptions of violence through a fixed-effects regression framework. Information was gathered from the staff in different ways (witnessing, communication, etc.). In conclusion, the study did find that gender and perception do matter.

Bierie, David. “Prison Violence, Gender, and Perceptions: Testing a Missing Link in Discretion Research.” American Journal of Criminal Justice 37, no. 2 (June 2012).

The journal article I found this week that relates to my research topic is titled “Gender and Violence Risk Assessment in Prison” written by Janet Warren, James Wellbeloved-Stone, Park Dietz, and Sara Millspaugh. The study examines “violence perpetuated during incarceration by female and male inmates”. They looked into 3 types of violence: threatened, physical, and sexual. They measured these types of violence in 2 ways: inmate self-report and formal institutional fractions. This study also seeks to assess the risk of prison violence for future references and either prevent it from happening or reduce the occurrence of it. This is especially true in the case of sexual assault in prisons in an effort to prevent, detect, and respond to prison rape. The study design  examines the effect of gender on violence risk assessments. They researched the perpetration of violence by male and female inmates at low-, medium, and high security prisons across 2 states in the United States. The study participants were collected through a random sample of male and female prisoners. The inmates who were interested in participating in the research were provided with an explanation of the study and asked to sign consent forms. After this, the investigators interviewed the selected inmates. These interviews took about 3.5 hours each. The other data that the investigators collected came from either self reported physical fights by the inmates themselves, or through surveys/ questionnaires that asked about sexual violence. They used statistical analysis and input it in a chart to analyze the data. However, race was not taken into account when they collected this data. I think the research was conducted well, however it would have been interesting and possibly more enlightening to intersect race and gender in the study.

Warren, J. I., Wellbeloved-Stone, J. M., Dietz, P. E., & Millspaugh, S. B. (2017, November 27). Gender and Violence Risk Assessment in Prisons. Psychological Services. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ser0000217

My research topic examines the social, economical, and medical effects of food deserts in low-income communities across the United States. I found a related article to my research question in the Rural Sociological Society Journal. The article, titled Food Deserts and Overweight Schoolchildren: Evidence from Pennsylvania by Kai A. Kraft, Eric B. Jensen, and C. Clare Hinrichs, utilizes Geographic Information System (GIS) in order to identify food desert areas in Pennsylvania. Additionally, it analyzes student body index (BMI) data with census and school-district data to determine the extent to which the percentage of a school district’s population resides within a food desert is positively associated with increased incidence of obesity among students within the district. The type of data the researchers used was demographical and organizational. The data gathering methods they used included gathering information from census bureaus such as the Missouri Census Data Center, National Center for Education Statistics, the BMI data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and from the U.S. Census Bureau. In the first stage, they compared demographic, household, and community characteristics across all rural school districts in Pennsylvania based on food-desert status. The next analysis compared school-district characteristics — including weight status of students — by whether or not the school is located near a food desert. The third stage of the analysis used a multivariate approach to model the relationship between the rates of children overweight and the percentage of a school’s district’s population residing within a food-desert area. By utilizing GIS mapping methods, the researchers were clearly able to see on a map the school districts in comparison with food deserts. By using the demographic census data they were able to see the economic status of people who lived in close range to the food districts. Lastly by using BMI information, they were able to find a correlation between obesity in children, low-income status, and food deserts.

Schafft, Kai A., Eric B. Jensen, and C. Clare Hinrichs. Food Deserts and Overweight Schoolchildren: Evidence from Pennsylvania. Rural Sociology 74, no. 2 (2009): 153-77. doi:10.1111/j.1549-0831.2009.tb00387.x.