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Purpose: This chapter illuminates the ways in which the coherent arrangements of prisons contribute to variation in implementation, functioning, and consequences of a purportedly gender neutral policy, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), between women’s and men’s prisons.

Methodology/Approach: Guided by grounded theory, two waves of qualitative interviews with inmates, staff, and volunteers at two Midwest women’s prisons were conducted for a total of 61 interviews. Interviews were supplemented with archival data obtained from state historical archives, news outlets, and the Iowa Department of Corrections, as well as participant observation of prisoner advocacy group meetings and the Iowa Board of Corrections’ meetings, and a content analysis of an online discussion forum for correctional officers.

Findings: We find that the gender subtext of prisons shapes the way the PREA is perceived and implemented. Overall, we argue that due to founding logics that differentially shaped the coherent arrangements of men’s and women’s prisons, blanket policies operate differently in these institutions. The gender subtext of prisons, specifically the structural arrangements and cultural processes within women’s and men’s prisons form different landscapes in which the PREA is perceived, enforced, and responded to.

Practical Implications: Given these findings, we call for gender-informed policy that takes gender subtext into account but that also avoids the trap of statistical discrimination present in some gender responsive policies.

Without knowledge of prison censorship restrictions and its impact on collection development, public and academic libraries may find initiating and continuing collaborative projects with prisons challenging. This chapter provides a background on the American Library Association’s correctional-facility guidelines, an introduction to prison censorship restrictions and collection policies, an introduction to what specific challenges collaborators may encounter, and a flowchart to show how to navigate such challenges.

While steroid use in the sports context has already been extensively studied by academic researchers, its patterns and implications in the prison context have received scant attention. Why do inmates use androgenic–anabolic steroids (AAS)? How does this use relate to sports activities, in particular fitness training, and what does it mean vis-à-vis the body image that is promoted in this environment? Does it even relate to fitness or sport? How do prison authorities regulate or prevent prisoners' AAS use? This empirical study is based on 28 interviews with 19 inmates and nine staff members (guards, managers) of four Belgian prisons. We showed that steroid use is largely connected with fitness activities and that it has an instrumental, goal-oriented dimension. AAS are used for athletic/performance purposes, e.g. increasing muscular strength. They also help gain or maintain a satisfactory body (self-)image, which has implications on the own identity, prestige and power relations within the prison community. In jail, the body is a major type of symbolic capital that is intended to reinforce status and cope with the difficulties and actual conditions of incarceration. We also observed differences in the perceived legitimacy of the various drugs that are used in prison. While guards are more tolerant towards AAS than other drugs, prisoners are less prone to openly confess to using AAS. Admitting to using AAS would damage the inmate's reputation, the legitimacy of his muscled body, and the subsequent goals of individual power and prestige.

A lack of access to information due to censorship still exists in today’s society, one example being within our prison facilities. In 2018, Big House Books (BHB), a nonprofit organization that sends free books by request to prisoners in Mississippi correctional facilities, filed a lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections and the South Mississippi Correctional Institution located near Leakesville, Mississippi, when the institution started returning books to BHB and requesting they only send religious books instead. Later that same year, the Human Rights Defense Center, a nonprofit organization working for criminal justice reform, filed a suit on behalf of prisoners of the Forrest County Jail located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, stating that all books and periodicals other than the Bible and occasionally other Christian publications had been banned from the facility.

The current study is an in-depth case study of these two cases of censorship in southern Mississippi correctional facilities. Through a series of qualitative interviews with individuals connected to the cases, the study seeks to better understand the current phenomenon of censorship in prisons. Participants included prison employees, lawyers, and others involved in the two cases. Whether it be through services such as an actual library or information center provided by the prison facility, or the facility allowing books and other materials to be sent to inmates, incarcerated individuals have the right to access information. This study seeks to enlighten and act as a catalyst for change regarding censorship that is occurring within prisons today.

This paper is intended as an overview and think piece, contributing to literature identifying accounting’s impact in making things knowable. Critical accounting research has always sought alternative ways of understanding the discipline and the legacy is extended here by considering pathways forward. Accounting continually impacts public policy in what it privileges for selecting and in what it silences and neglects. Given that humans are meaning-making we have choices, and this essay interrogates accounting techniques operating as façades while disguising social impacts. Promoting qualitative accounting research that reimagines these complexities and considers moral contexts is the substance of this essay, for advancing the public interest in accounting.

Supermaxes across the United States detain thousands in long-term solitary confinement, under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. Almost every state built a supermax between the late 1980s and the late 1990s. This chapter examines the role of federal prisoners’ rights litigation in the 1960s and 1970s in shaping the prisons, especially supermaxes, built in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. This chapter uses a systematic analysis of federal court case law, as well as archival research and oral history interviews with key informants, including lawyers, experts, and correctional administrators, to explore the relationship between federal court litigation and prison building and designing. This chapter argues that federal conditions of confinement litigation in the 1960s and 1970s (1) had a direct role in shaping the supermax institutions built in the subsequent decades and (2) contributed to the resistance of these institutions to constitutional challenges. The history of litigation around supermaxes is an important and as-yet-unexplored aspect of the development of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence in the United States over the last half century.

This chapter explores the work of a library adult literacy programme working closely with other education providers in Risdon Prison in Australia. The Literacy Service operates as a form of outreach to the prison population who have low literacy levels and are not yet engaged in education or using the prison library. In this context, it is a form of radical inclusion, creating opportunities for those most disadvantaged to access learning. The library services help to create a literate environment for prisoners and provide opportunities for prisoners to increase their engagement in lifelong learning and everyday literacy practices, giving them a better chance of developing their literacy skills. Strategies explored for engaging this cohort include a range of creative projects, small group work and one to one tutoring. The Literacy Service has developed best practice approaches to deliver effective literacy support using strategies and approaches that align with research and these are adapted for work in the prison context. The Literacy Service approach is aligned with the wider prison goals of rehabilitation and reintegration and the chapter explores a theory of change to identify how prison education may be most effective in supporting rehabilitation (Szifris, Fox, & Bradbury, 2018). The library Literacy Service offers safe spaces, opportunities to create social bonds, reshape identity, engage in informal learning and set new goals – key elements found to be critical in rehabilitation. The Prison Library Impact Framework, developed by Finlay and Bates (2018), connects these elements with the theory of change model to propose a tool that may be useful to evaluate prison library services in the future.