Browsing by Subject "prison"
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(2018)Finnish prisons were in a new situation after fall 2015. The country had received a historical amount of asylum seekers and this also affected prisons, where the number of foreign prisoners, especially remand prisoners, rose. Many of these new prisoners had a Muslim background. At the same time, there were several jihadist motivated terrorist attacks in Europe, where attackers have had a background in prison. These attacks raised public concern in Finland, too. While in many European countries prisons have taken a more accommodating approach to multi-faith, Finland has still very little services for minority religions, such as Islam. This study aims to understand prison officers’ capability to recognise and prevent Muslim radicalisation in Finnish prisons. It is important to bring the prison officers’ voice to the discussion on radicalisation. They are with inmates every day, and they are the ones who will notice the changes in prisoners. The prison officers’ behaviour can both prevent and expose to radicalisation. I did my research in two Finnish prisons using semi-structured interviews and observing. There were altogether 12 interviews of prison officers, and in addition to this, I spent 11 days in prisons in May and June 2017. I will use Peter R. Neumann’s list of factors that help prevent radicalisation inside prisons as a tool to analyse the findings. In addition to this, I also use concepts of misrecognition and mediated recognition as a supporting tool to deepen the analysis. After analysing my data, I present some recommendations in the last chapter, Key findings and discussion. These recommendations are based on the findings of this study and the previous research on the topic. As the scope of this research is limited, I see the role of my study as preliminary research which aims to find themes that affect prison radicalisation from the prison officers’ perspective.
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(2023)The United States has been built on centuries of oppression of incarcerated people alongside systemic racism toward minorities. Once again these inequities entered the public discourse following a pandemic, rising unemployment, political uncertainty, and several high-profile police killings of unarmed Black people. Millions of Americans protested in the streets and called attention to the necessary criminal justice reforms on social media. Suddenly, terms like prison abolition, defund the police, #BlackLivesMatter, and police brutality entered everyday conversations. The American criminal justice system was built in the aftermath of the Civil War to disenfranchise and oppress Black Americans, and later other racial minorities, as well. Racist media and political campaigns furthered the myth of Black criminality resulting in widespread support for harsh criminal penalties. This led to the United States having the highest incarceration rate in addition to one of the highest recidivism rates in the world. The question remains, “How should systemic racism in the American criminal justice system be addressed?” Finland, with its focus on rehabilitating offenders and establishing a strong welfare state, serves as a point of inspiration. The hypothesis of this study was that the reasoning behind Finnish people’s support of a rehabilitative approach was that incarceration status was less stigmatized in Finland. Interviews with formerly incarcerated people in Finland appeared to indicate that this is the case. However, studies with more participants and greater diversity are needed to add to this research. Moving forward, America should institute reforms to reduce the stigma attached to incarceration like automatically expunging criminal records for those eligible or establishing employment programs that begin upon release from prison.
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