Preface

• DOI: 10.1177/003288557705700201
• Published date: 01 October 1977
• Date: 01 October 1977
• Subject Matter: Articles

Preface
Someone once suggested that if you want to get a quick rule-of-
thumb evaluation of a prison, look for two things: (1) the degree to
which the community is involved in its operation, and (2) how much
the residents participate in the decision-making processes in the life
of the institution. The Prison Society is deeply concerned with both
of these areas, and this issue of The Prison Journal gives particular
attention to the latter.
A recent issue of The Journal (&dquo;Corrections in the Bicenten-
nial&dquo;) included an article by Peter Schai-f, as well as an editorial, on
democracy and prison reform. It evoked such a broad response that
the decision was made to invite Dr. Scharf to be guest editor for an
issue devoted exclusively to that topic. Scharf and his co-editor,
Joseph Hickey, succeeded in pulling together a wide range of auth.
ors, many of whom were subsequently invited to prepare similar
papers for the American Correctional Association Congress in Mil-
waukee in August, 1977.
To establish a democratic process in a prison is no easy matter,
and as the authors point out, experiments in this direction have often
been short lived, or have been so narrow as to be less than meaning-
ful. In some instances, the democratic process has been subverted by
power plays on the part of inmates and has thus lost...