CT scan of a patient with traumatic brain injury.
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Women in prison with brain injury are at increased risk of substance abuse, poor mental health and suicide. Yet support for these women is scant.
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Asylums were once designed to aid mental recovery – perhaps modern prisons should take note.
Short-term sentences come with higher reoffending rates.
Michael Cooper/PA Wire
The British justice secretary's proposal to make short prison sentences a last resort is the right idea at the worst possible time.
Prisoners picking oakum at Coldbath Fields Prison in London (circa 1864)
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Most Victorian convicts left prison weighing the same as when they arrived. Some even gained weight.
Halden Prison, Norway.
Author provided
Introducing colour and light to a traditionally dark place.
An image from the International Space Station captures plumes of smoke from California wildfires on August 4, 2018.
NASA
From the curious to the serious – a bird's eye view of the unique ways in which The Conversation covers the world.
It is a national shame that Indigenous people make up 2% of the general population, but 28% of the prison population.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Indigenous Australians are vastly over-represented in the prison population, but the success of a new program is offering hope that it can be turned around.
Terri-Lynne McClintic, convicted in the death of an eight-year-old girl, is escorted into court in Kitchener, Ont., in September 2012. News that McClintic was transferred to an Indigenous ‘healing lodge’ has stoked outrage.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Geoff Robins
The politically and emotionally charged court of public opinion is not the place to make policy changes in areas as complex as corrections.
jonathan kho/unsplash
Open gates, good food and communal living make for a very different approach to incarceration.
Private companies can provide services - like catering - for inmates.
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Turning prisons into a market opportunity could open them up to corruption.
Los Angeles County women’s jail in Lynwood, California.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
A new public opinion survey reveals Americans largely agree on sentencing reform, and how money spent on prisons could be reinvested in communities.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was recently the subject of a racist video rant.
Lintao Zhang/EPA
Calls to impose harsh prison sentences for verbal crimen injuria are often premised on the need to deter such behaviour.
Even the most humanely designed prisons have negative effects on the people living and working inside.
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A wealth of research suggests prisons have serious detrimental effects on prisoners and prison workers.
Stigmatising and shaming ex-offenders hampers efforts to reintegrate them into society.
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Politicians' knee jerk dismissal of an idea that could help rehabilitate ex-offenders is
unhelpful.
Barbed wire surrounds the the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
A historian reminds us that protests in prisons are often followed by retaliation.
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Games such as chess should be a welcome addition to the activities available for prisoners.
Around half of prisoners have a substance dependence.
Karanik yimpat/Shutterstock
Some drug and alcohol programs
currently used in prisons have little evidence to support them.
California inmates take a break from their ‘jobs’ fighting fires to play some chess.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Prisoners in 17 states are striking to call attention to harsh conditions and low pay for their labor, something that may run afoul of the 13th Amendment and other legal commitments.
Corrupt practices in prison take many forms.
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Containing wealthy corruptors in underfunded, understaffed prisons is like putting a grizzly bear in a wobbly bamboo cage designed to hold goats guarded by unskilled shepherds.
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A new female offender strategy in England and Wales plans to put fewer women in prisons. Here's why that's so important.