Search

Minimum security imprisonment is a prison reform widely advocated but little studied. A systematic examination of its origins, characteristics and purposes reveals considerable conceptual and practical confusion. This paper describes four ideal typical models of minimum security based on the different purposes it serves within a total prison system. Each model indicates different criteria for deciding which prisoners should be assigned to the highly desirable minimum security unit(s). Placement in minimum security may be as important to the prisoner as the sentencing decision itself and ought to be made on the basis of explicitly articulated standards rooted in a clear conceptual model. While this article presents a specific analysis of the case of minimum security, it raises general questions about equity and purpose common to all decisions about correctional disposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who should be sent to prison is inseparably connected with the question of what the purpose of prison is. At times it may seem that the tail wags the dog; having conceptualized prisons as a part of either the criminal justice system or the social welfare system, policy-makers then move on to the issue of how to choose clients to fill the institutions. A rational analysis of the place of prison in society must begin with a conceptual discussion which aims to locate prisons as institutions within a broader societal context. The role of prisons, the details of prison conditions, and the choice of clients for the prison cannot be decided without placing the prison within the context of social control and social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that scholars and practitioners in correction should turn their attention to the prison system as a crucial unit of analysis. Almost every state has a centralized correctional department with jurisdiction over a variety of institutions ranging from traditional custodial maximum-security warehouses to community-based innovative halfway houses and treatment centers. How prisoners and resources should be distributed among these institutions is the key problem. The central thesis of this paper is that any prison system can be described and analyzed according to the functional relationships among its institutions. The "hierarchical" system is based on a highly elaborated punishment-reward structure that holds out the incentive of minimum-security living conditions in exchange for cooperation with administration. In this system social control is shifted from the individual institutions to the system as a whole. The "differentiated" system is designed for the delivery of treatment services, but it requires a degree of autonomy that correctional systems currently do not enjoy. Finally, the "autonomous" system is made up of small, functionally independent institutions with heterogeneous populations; though attractive because of low cost and moral neutrality with respect to the etiology and treatment of crime, it is also unstable because the type of institution that evolves depends largely on the warden anal the natural history of the particular institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]