POWER POINT Presentation / Power Point Attached
Research Plan on Correctional Issues
Bryan Reitsma
Columbia Southern University
Introduction
The research aims at examining the deteriorating mental health of prisoners and its impact in the rehabilitation process.
Some prisoners come out of prison as hardened criminals, others try committing suicide while in prison, while others put their life in danger as they try devising ways to escape from prison.
Research questions:
Why is prison causing mental challenges to prisoners instead of helping crime offenders to change for the better?
What professional help prisoners should be offered to ensure they sustain physical, mental, and emotional health despite going massive restrictions and changes in life?
According to American Psychological Association (apa); https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/incarceration, over half of prisoners in the United States have recorded to develop a mental illness after imprisonment and cases have only become severe as the jail term progresses. Many of the prisoners that excessively bully others have proven to suffer from mental challenges which compromise their mental ability and hence act in the worst behavior they can think of (Armstrong, Winters, & Jaggers, 2018). It is evident that prison environment has been made unbearable even the work of correctional officers becoming tough and demanding due to increasing mental cases of prisoner.
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Research Method
The applicable method of this research is quantitative
Quantitative research for this study is that it would help identify the number of prisoners affected by mental conditions and the number of those that never benefited from imprisonment time allocated to them due to mental illness.
The method as well shows the number of those that have succumbed because of mental issues such as depression.
To answer the question, the study would provide explanation accompanied with figures to make it comprehensive
When conducting a research, one can make use of qualitative methods in the case the information needed in descriptive in nature. One can also make use of quantitative method in the case statistical data is required to analyse the situation on the ground. In this case, to make the situation clear and demonstrate the importance of the issue, it is important to address the issue in terms of numbers instead of descriptions only (Semenza, & Grosholz, 2019). Moreover, even where data is present, descriptions are also applied.
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Approaches to be used
The research can engage prisoners through one-on-one interviews and prison warders since they have a clear glimpse of the issue.
The second approach is conducting surveys that would bring people in one team and investigate the issue in an in-depth manner.
The last approach is the use of literature review .
The first approach would help in gathering relevant and uncompromised information and more so allows the research team to carefully select participants so as to gather relevant and reliable information (Semenza, & Grosholz, 2019).
There are a lot of real life case studies and news that have been reported that can be used to address the issue from past cases. This is important as the second approach would help in laying a proper and reliable foundation on the issue since there is a lot of news available about prisoners suffering from mental cases.
The last approach is the use of literature review where past researches that addressed the same issue can be used to shed light and support arguments raised in this research. Literature review can also be used to demonstrate the validity of arguments being shared currently.
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Hypothesis
Null Hypothesis: The rate of mental health effect among prisoners is not determined by gender or age. All prisoners are vulnerable (Bartlett, & Hollins, 2018). Nevertheless, the rate of female prisoners rates higher than the number of male prisoners despite the number of male prisoners in all prisoners superseding that of female.
The study would hence find out that despite all prisoners being possible victims of mental health while in prison, women due to the role they play in their families and society are more affected than men more so by General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) among many others.
In the case the study happens to proceeds, a lot of observations, investigations, and interrogations will take place. This is among prisoners and wardens guarding the prisoners and it is expected that the study would show that the challenges and hard life that comes with imprisonment is a major effect to the mental health of prisoners. Prison life whether one is in remand or already serving a sentence, the uncertainties that comes with the life exposes one to overthink and worry about one-self and close relatives.
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Incorporation of Ethics
The study would ensure that the target participants are first briefed about the study in order to understand the concepts and the role they are expected to role.
The second way is by ensuring that the participants are engaged in an ethical manner where there rights would be protected.
The third way would be through using collected data for the right purposes and also granting the participants a chance to get to know the results of the research.
The study is a professional study that would ensure that ethics are upheld and applied in the best way possible. There are various ways that ethics would be incorporated in the proposed study. One of these ways is by first seeking consent from the target participants.
It is only those that would volunteer to take part that would be issue with the consent form for signing before they can be allowed to take an active part.
With the second way, it means that no single interviews or interrogations would be done as long as the participant is not willing to share the information
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Standard Institutional Review Board
As a researcher, I would expect the standard institution review board to make improvement in the research proposal by highlighting some areas that could be omitted and would go a long way in gathering detailed information about the research. from the knowledge and experience they have in research, they can share insights on do’s and don’ts thereby making the process more professional and ethical a study that would meet the institution’s standards in terms of quality.
The standard institutional review board is an important body when it comes to going through a professional and ethical study
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Use of Literature Review
There are lots of reports across the world that prisoners serving their various jail terms in varying correctional facilities have been suffering intensely with the major impact being on their mental faculty.
Some available literatures shares critical insights that should be used in making the right amendments in order to make prisoners a place for rehabilitation and positive behavior change instead of the current times place of isolation, loneliness, and torture.
The American Psychological Association (apa) have been vocal on the issue raising alarm that a lot of challenges continue to face prisoners leading to their deteriorating mental health while as only limited actions have been taken by responsible bodies to contain the situation. The issue has attracted attention of massive researchers with intentions of understanding the reasons behind prisoners deteriorating mental health, the impact that situation has in them and possible amicable solutions.
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Use of Literature Review Cont’d
Life in prison is completely different from an ordinary free life that people are normally used to live as free citizens.
Prison is a place with total freedom and privacy taken away (MacDonald, 2018).
With increased rates of crime in the society, prisons faces overcrowding challenge which is the basis of other issues leading to deteriorating mental health of prisoners.
Mental health of prisoners remains completely threatened (Semenza & Grosholz, 2019)
As a result of high number of prisoners, the overall focus is diverted to how they feed and fit in the society. It is up to the prisoners to fight for their space and adapt to the hard life. The challenge is that with high number of prisoners, the situations easily get out of hard. Some hardened criminals take advantage of the situation through bullying other prisoners to make their life comfortable (MacDonald, 2018).
Thousands of prisoners hence live in constant fear and worry of the bullies that the prison warders do not even have the intention of taming. At the same time, squeezed environment makes the prisoners to start regretting their action and current lifestyle. The fact that they are not issued any form of counselling and support, they start getting mentally and physically affected.
Prisoners health deterioration results from the challenges of justice system where before judgment, individuals are remanded. After judgment they are sent to the prison where reality strikes. Separation from families, and friends attracts loneliness and feeling of uncertainty which attracts stress tat gradually piles up inot depression (Lee & Cain, 2020)
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Use of Literature Review Cont’d
The feeling f loneliness is more common and has a higher impact on female prisoners as compared to male prisoners (Lee & Cain, 2020).
Prison is a place marked with strict rules and regulations that must be observed by all without compromise
it is possible to solve the mental issues in prisons through making the environment habitable, constant mental assessment among prisoners, having guidance and counselling programs, and ensuring that issues like overcrowding and malpractices like bullying are addressed (Stringer, 2019)
the hard labor, limited resting time, poor and unbalanced meals; and sometimes harsh punishments like being kept in dark isolated tiny room for days for those in violation. Many of the prisoners find the lifestyle completely unhealthy for them leading to depression and other mental condition (Stoliker, & Galli, 2019).
The challenge is that being taken in for medical attention while in prison is a lengthy process and this denies the prisoners and wardens a chance to take action whenever they detect one of the prisoners have started developing mental challenges.
It is a fact stringer’s article has not provided clear information on how all these recommendations can be put in place but have proven how the implementation would solve the negative impacts emanating from deteriorating mental health of prisoners.
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Data Analysis
Data will be collected with the use of:
Interviews: The interview will be structured with clarity on gathering information concerning the deteriorating mental health of prisoner and the impact it has on the rehabilitation process America.
Questionnaire: The questions will be standardized and will follow a scheme of order to obtain information on correctional issues of mental health of prisoners in the rehabilitation process. (Clark & Vealé, 2018)
A questionnaire will involve a form that has a series of written or printed multiple choice questions that the informants must mark. An interview will incorporate a formal dialogue in which both the interviewer and the respondent participate in a question-and-answer session. (Moser & Korstjens, 2018)
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Data Sampling and Distribution
Only those with mental illnesses or substance use disorders will be selected, and only combined jail and prison prevalence estimates will be reported.
The samples will be chosen based on substance use, excluding the high incidence of substance use disorders co-occurring with mental diseases in jailed people.
The reason for this is that such a sample would not yield accurate estimates of mental diseases in general.
Men, women, the general prison population, and several particular prison populations are all included in the target sample. The method of case ascertainment (e.g., through case files or a specific screening or diagnostic equipment), diagnostic classification system, and current vs lifetime prevalence are all factors to consider.
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Data Analysis
Statistics software to be used for the analysis will be SPSS
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences is a complicated statistical data analysis program used by a variety of scholars. SPSS includes procedures for analyzing, transforming, and producing a distinctive pattern between various data variables.
Alternatively, the Microsoft excel spreadsheet might be used for the recording and analysis of the statistical data. (Duan, Ge, & Feng, 2020)
References
Armstrong, E. R., Winters, D. E., & Jaggers, J. W. (2018). Mental health in prison populations: Policy, practice, and challenges.
Bartlett, A., & Hollins, S. (2018). Challenges and mental health needs of women in prison. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 212(3), 134-136.
Duan, Y., Ge, Y., & Feng, Y. (2020). Pricing and personal data collection strategies of online platforms in the face of privacy concerns. Electronic Commerce Research, 1-21.
Haney, C. (2017). “Madness” and penal confinement: Some observations on mental illness and prison pain. Punishment & Society, 19(3), 310-326.
Lee, L. H., & Cain, D. S. (2020). Mental Health Policy for Justice-Involved Persons: Exploring History, Perspectives, and Models in the United States. Best Practices in Mental Health, 16(2), 55-68.
MacDonald, M. (2018). Overcrowding and its impact on prison conditions and health. International journal of prisoner health.
Moser, A., & Korstjens, I. (2018). Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 3: Sampling, data collection and analysis. European journal of general practice, 24(1), 9-18.
Semenza, D. C., & Grosholz, J. M. (2019). Mental and physical health in prison: How co-occurring conditions influence inmate misconduct. Health & justice, 7(1), 1-12.
Stoliker, B. E., & Galli, P. M. (2019). An examination of mental health and psychiatric care among older prisoners in the United States. Victims & Offenders, 14(4), 480-509.
Stringer, H. (2019). Improving mental health for inmates. Monitor on Psychology, 50(3), 46.
Clark & Vealé, 2018