Chapter Activities

Activity 1:

Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003

Instruct students to review the PREA screening guidelines for inmate housing assignments (https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/library/preascreeningguidelines.pdf). Direct attention to the section “Developing a Screening Instrument” for a description of the types of questions that should be included in a screening assessment. Instruct students to develop a brief screening instrument (5–10 questions) that address the ideas throughout this document while incorporating what is known about the prison subculture about gangs, code of silence (among inmates and guards), and risks associated with labeling (e.g., snitch, punk).

Activity 2:

Cube Writing on Prison Gangs

The cube writing technique allows students to examine a topic from six different perspectives (six sides to a cube).

Instruct students to examine the topic of correctional officer management of prison gangs through brief writing using the following prompts:

  1. Describe it
  2. Compare it
  3. Associate it with something else you have learned in this course
  4. Analyze it by breaking it into parts/elements
  5. Apply it to a situation you are familiar with
  6. Argue for or against it

Using the following subtopic areas, you may wish to narrow the discussion:

  1. Inmate housing and prison gangs
  2. Sex offenders as victims of prison gangs
  3. Importation theory as a precursor of prison gangs
  4. Relationship between street gangs and prison gangs
  5. Correctional officer use of inmate-balance theory to manage prison gangs