WITNESS
Craig Haney is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was one of the principal researchers on the highly publicized "Stanford Prison Experiment" in 1971 and has been studying the psychological effects of living and working in actual prison environments ever since. This work has taken him to numerous maximum security prisons across the United States and to several countries where he has evaluated conditions of confinement and conducted extensive interviews with prisoners and correctional staff about the mental health and other consequences of incarceration. He has served as a consultant to numerous governmental agencies and as an expert witness on prison-related issues in state and federal courts, addressing the psychological consequences of adverse conditions of confinement, including the effects of overcrowding and living in isolated or "supermax"-type facilities.
Professor Haney's scholarly writing and empirical research have addressed a wide range of crime and punishment related topics, including the background or "risk" factors associated with serious delinquent and criminal behavior, psychological mechanisms by which prisoners adjust to incarceration, and the adverse effects of prolonged imprisonment, especially under severe conditions of confinement. Haney has published widely on prison-related topics in a variety of scholarly journals, including the American Psychologist, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, and Crime and Delinquency. His forthcoming book on prison policy, Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment, will be published by the American Psychological Association in November 2005.
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STATEMENT
Overcrowding, widespread idleness, and the failure of many prison systems to address the basic needs of prisoners have changed the context of imprisonment. Prison administrators have been forced to anticipate and react to many volatile and potentially explosive situations. In many instances, their reactions have been predictable but problematic, serving to increase the amount of prison pain dispensed and making already dangerous situations, in the long run, moreso.
Indeed, in the face of extraordinary increases in the sheer numbers of prisoners, many prison administrators pressed for new tools with which to control and contain them.… Criminologists Malcolm Feeley and Jonathan Simon identified an emerging penological management style in which correctional decision makers now think about prisoners only in the "aggregate," as dangerous "populations" that need to be "herded," rather than as individuals in need of personal attention. Indeed, in terms that captured both the dehumanized consciousness of the decision makers, and the devalued status of the prisoners under their control, Feeley and Simon analogized the overcrowding-driven new penology as akin to a "waste management" function.
Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission
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