Prison as a culture: Assimilation and Adjustment

• Welcome to the Outcome Assessment forum by John Grohol, 9/18/96
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    • Cross Cultural:: Therapeutic Communities in Prison. by David Szymanowski, 11/29/96
      
      

Viewing prison as a (cross) cultural experience is a very obvious idea and I'm very pleased to see work being thought of in this manner. I've tried to conduct some research, using Martin Seligman's Optimism Scale, as a predictor of assimilation following Seligman's posits that a.) inmates enter prison relatively optimistic and b.) inmates leave prison pessimistic and depressed. Seligman says that it's obvious something happens during incarceration which changes an inmate's cognition. I would posit that the point at which this change occurs is extremely relative to the point at which an inmate "assimilates". I would love to go in detail about methodology ideas, so contact me. gsreynolds@delta.is.tcu.edu Crystalization scales and adjustment scales have also been used as "assimilation" scales. Check Burrough's Scale Index.

There is however a huge difference between viewing inmates the same way as refugees. Refugee's are fleeing there country for reasons of "unsafe" atmosphere. Perhaps war, for example Bosnia/Croatia, Rwanda; Perhaps politics, for example Cuba, Vietnam. Inmates are extracted from there previous culture, so there maybe more issues of hatred. email Emily Russ at emmylour@juno.com for further information concerning refugees.

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