14 Jan Discuss a criminal justice topic requesting instructor approval of the topic.

Discuss a criminal justice topic requesting instructor approval of the topic. In your discussion post discuss what you have identified in the current peer-reviewed literature. Briefly discuss the literature and express what still needs to be researched or requires further research on the topic you would like to address in your research proposal. In other words, did the authors of the studies already done on this topic you reviewed call for further research on the topic or something to do with the topic? Then again, perhaps you identified a problem that still needs to be researched on the topic where the current literature is lacking.  If so, discuss what it is and how it pertains to the topic and why it needs to be researched and who would benefit from the research. After doing so, you are to provide a ‘Working Title‘ to obtain (instructor approval) for your Research Proposal, as discussed in this week’s lesson. Understanding this may change as your Research Proposal develops during the course. 

The working title for my research paper is The Difficulties of Reentering Society after being in Prison. One peer reviewed article that I will be using is written by a man name Bruce Western in 2015 called Stress and Hardship after Prison. This article really stood out to me. Western had done his own research on all the different elements that could affect the life of a person that is in prison and then they are released. There are many different factors that are thought of for these predicaments and these include very common factors such as race, age, education, the amount of time that had been served in prison, and even the type of offense that had caused the person to go to prison in the first place. Using all of these different factors, are there certain instances in which different people are in different opportunities and do these instances give them a better chance in being successful or unsuccessful after their release?

There were other different types of research done by Western that had shown the impact that a supportive family could have on the person that was released. It is important to try to figure out if the people in society have a better opportunity at not being sent back to prison if their family is successful. There are also plenty of instances in which different things like mental disabilities and drug addiction could cause more hardship when trying to get used to getting back into society. A lot of these questions and statements can be answered or supported within Western’s research.

It should be mentioned that most of the research in this article is spent researching the specific predicaments from before prison and the environment they enter once they are released. One question that would be beneficial to answer would be the effect that educational and skill teaching programs have on the person that is being released? For example, lets just assume that a person is a low risk prisoner and teach them some things that would be beneficial to them in the outside world, would they have a better chance in surviving in the new world? How about vice versa? Not only the research that was conducted by Western, but there was also research done by the Washington State Institute that helped to give new ideas as to how to help prisoners who are released. For example, it is said that if the world would invest more money into prison programs to help prisoners, there could actually be money saved by the tax payers based on the cost of arrest, incarceration, and supervision (Aso, 2001). There are definitely many benefits of working with prisoners before and after they are released because they may not end up back in prison by hurting another person, destroying property, etc.

References

Aso, Steve (2001). The Comparative Costs and Benefits of Programs to Reduce Crime. Olympia:

Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

Western, Bruce (2015). Stress and Hardship after Prison. AJS; American journal of sociology,

Volume 120, Issue 5