In 2006, the administration of a state-run, secure juvenile correctional facility initiated an attempt to transform its institutional culture using a strength-based approach to assessment and case planning. This resulted in a rapid improvement in institutional climate. The current study revisits this setting several years later to see if those…

The relationship between cognitive functioning and play behaviors of children residing in an orphanage was examined. Twenty-six young children (15 boys) between 10 and 38 months of age participated. More developmentally competent play behaviors were highly related to better performance on cognitive functioning as measured by the Bayley Scales of…

Hybrid treatment models within prisons are staffed by both criminal justice and treatment professionals. Because these models may be indicative of future trends, examining the perceptions of prisoners/participants may provide important information. This study examines the perceptions of male and female inmates in three prisons, comparing those in…

In July 2006, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections began delivering a two-hour training session titled Reinforcing Positive Behavior to new employees as part of their required orientation to the Department. The purpose of the training was to inform all employees about their roles and responsibilities for reinforcing positive behavior and…

"Institutional autism" is understood as a "learned behavior" produced by an institutional environment such as an orphanage. Some autistic-like behaviors may be adaptive in an institution, but become mal-adaptive after the child's adoption into a family. A differential diagnosis between autism as a medical condition and learned…

Study evidence does not support familiar assumptions of deficiencies in intelligence, personality and value development, resulting because young children were separated from their natural mothers and given many years of institutional care. This paper was presented at the 45th annual meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, Chicago,…

The upcoming Bureau of the Census document titled, "The Survey of Institutionalized Persons" will provide complete information and data on long-term institutional care. Because this document provides data basically devoid of context, this discussion paper presents an ethnology of a total institution. In it, the author conveys his impressions and…

A large-scale, nationwide evaluation of cocorrections was carried out in which a wide range of data were collected over a four-month period. Preliminary analyses show that, although there appears to be a decrement with increasing size, the cocorrectional environment seems to be more facilitative of growth than the single-sex institutions. (Author)

A critical overview is presented of the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Zimbardo and his coinvestigators in which they attempted a structural analysis of the problems of imprisonment. Key assumptions are questioned, primarily on methodological grounds, which casts doubts on the plausibility of the experimenters' final causal inferences.…

Emphasis was directed toward three factors: (1) social density; (2) spatial density; and (3) overall institutional population level. In prisons, higher population years yielded higher death rates and higher rates of psychiatric commitments. Blood pressure was higher in more crowded housing. Degree of perceived crowding was related to space per…

This study investigated the temporal orientation of delinquents and nondelinquents while controlling institutionalization. Four groups were selected: institutionalized delinquents; institutionalized nondelinquents; noninstitutionalized delinquents; and noninstitutionalized nondelinquents. The affective attitudes of the nondelinquents toward the…

In the main body of this study, detailed attention is given to patient management practices and organizational factors that encourage dependent behavior that can be characterized as senile. (Author)