BIO

I am Charlie Tyson, born and raised in Florida. Criminology, specifically pertaining to the U.S. prison system, has always been a strong interest of mine. As I continue in both my personal and professional lives, I wish to make a positive impact on the criminal justice system: promoting a higher quality system that inspires rehabilitation and denies recidivism.

Incarceration Difficulties of Prisoners With Substance Abuse

Abstract

The incarceration of those who have been criminalized offers challenges that are within the realm of ignorance for the average citizen. There is a good amount of literature that delves into the realm of the U.S. prison system but there is difficulty in understanding these experiences from only statistical research. The purpose of this investigation is to examine difficulties via incarceration that prisoners dealing with substance abuse may experience and to find which difficulties are most common among this group; furthermore, these difficulties/experiences are coded using a program named NVIVO, which uses parent nodes and sub-nodes to properly showcase commonalities between prisoners. Through interviews organized with a model focusing on experiences of pre-incarceration, current incarceration, and plans of re-entry into civilian life, we assessed the described experiences of 88 prisoners incarcerated due to drug-related crimes who participated in the research. Overall, this study aims to identify relevant difficulties faced by prisoners dealing with substance abuse and find correlations between said experiences and the prison system.

Keywords: Prison, Criminology, Prisoners, Incarceration