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70 Prison J. i (1990)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl70 and id is 1 raw text is: Preface If we select certain prisoners to bear the burden of heavier sentences... surely we have a moral obligation at least to allow those serving extended terms an opportunity to make some constructive use of the time we have demanded of them. And unless we intend to lock them away forever, our reasons for attempting to rehabilitate these prisoners are not only moral but eminently practical. (Norval Morris, The Future of Imprisonment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). When the Pennsylvania Prison Society asked me to edit a special issue of the Prison Journal on the topic of long-term incarceration and long-term prisoners, it was an opportunity for me to return to my scholarly roots. When I began to study long-term inmates nearly 15 years ago, it was with the encouragement of Professor Donald J. New- man. Newman wisely predicted that much of what we now call sentencing reform would eventually produce more prisoners, more long-term prisoners, and fewer relief valves for correctional administrators to manage the resulting prisoner population. In addition, Newman argued that virtually nothing was known about the prison experience of long-term inmates and that policy and program development in this area were embry- onic. Therefore, he concluded, whatever one wrote about long-term inmates in the mid- 1970s was destined to become a seminal work in the area! It would be difficult to argue with the accuracy of Donald Newman's prediction about the effects of sentencing reform on state and federal prison populations in the United States. Correctonal administrators across the country are today struggling to keep ahead of the demand for prison space. Most are beginning to recognize that many more of the prisoners that they receive from the courts today will spend the majority of their adult working lives in confinement. The influx of unprecendented numbers of long-term prisoners into state and federal prison systems in the U.S. and abroad presents several dilemmas. First, the long sentences that these prisoners are serving represent a long-term demand on an increasingly expensive resource -cell space. More importantly, we are beginning to realize that we lack models for understanding how to organize a long prison sentence toward a goal of constructive or meaningful use of time. Given an inmate with 36 months to serve, we are adept at prescribing a series of programs with discrete learning objectives directed toward measurable improvement in skills, knowledge and experi- ence by the time of release. Facing an inmate with 36 years to serve, however, produces a muddled response that reveals our inability to think about such lengthy sentences in the same terms. Morris reminds us that we have an obligation to provide opportunities for inmates serving extended terms to make constructive use of their time, and the papers in this volume are a first step in initiating this dialogue. The authors of these papers dis- cuss, describe, propose, examine, criticize and question current thinking on long-term prisoners. Efforts to improve the prison experience of long-term inmates are described. The kinds of thinking and investment needed to deliver better, more effective correc- tional services for long-term inmates are described. To assess the problem from the ground level, I asked a select group of leading correctional administrators to comment on the administrative and policy challenges posed by an increasing volume and proportion of long-term inmates in their prisons, and to describe the kinds of information, programs, policies and priorities that are needed to address the challenge. These Reports From the Field provide an invaluable per- spective, from the point of view of those who are charged with organizing and adminis- tering prisons for long-term inmates. Finally, Professors Robert Sherwin and James Acker debate a proposal for radically altering the basis for criminal sentencing in America. -1-

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