Convict Criminology Session 1: The Marion Experiment

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

The Marion Experiment gradually evolved over a 20-year period, from 1963-1983. The Marion wardens operated the prison as a modem “behavior modification laboratory." The experiments backfired. The behavior modification schemes did not work to turn the convicts into compliant subjects that would cooperate by testifying against each other. Instead, the result was work strikes, hunger strikes, assaults on staff and other inmates, and resistance. The convicts organized escapes and refused to “debrief.” The toughest convicts became the spiritual leaders of the resistance. By 1983, federal prison administrators knew the game was over. They wanted an excuse to end the “program” and convert all the housing units to total isolation Control Units. From the prisoners’ perspective, after 1983, with all the medical pretenses long gone, the real experiment began. They knew now, for sure, there was no way to “program out” of Marion. The struggle became staying alive, surviving the madness of long-term isolation.

Sub Unit

• Area I. Causes of Crime and Criminal Behavior / 1. Convict Criminology

Individual Presentations

• Convict Criminologist at USP Marion - Stephen C. Richards, University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh

• Responding to Crime: Psychological Jurisprudence, Normative Philosophy, and Trans-desistance Theory - Bruce A. Arrigo, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

• The Scene of the Crime: Children in Solitary Confinement - Christopher Bickel, California Polytechnic State University

• Israeli Maximum-Security Prisons - Lior Gideon, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Dror Walk, Israel Prison Service; Tomer Carmel, Israel Prison Service

Chair

• Stephen C. Richards, University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh

Discussant

• Michael Lenza, University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh