Criminology Research Council grant ; (8/77)
This study, for various reasons, was not completed according to the original proposal approved by the Council. Unexpended funds were returned to the Council. However, two publications emerged from this study dealing with life changes of prisoners and their social networks. In each study recidivists were compared with first time prisoners.
The first study hypothesised that prisoners would report a greater accumulation of recent life changes than non-prisoner controls and this hypothesis was supported by the findings. Differences were also found between recidivists and first time prisoners, with recidivists reporting more life changes and more interpersonal adversity in the previous six months.
In the second study the structural and interactional characteristics of the social networks of first time prisoners and recidivists were studied. First time prisoners showed personal networks where kin and friends were closely tied to each other with multi-stranded links. The recidivist networks were contrasted by size and evidence of a diminution of friendship links. The study offered elaboration and explanations of these findings.
Citation details of these publications are:
'Recent Life Changes Amongst Recidivist and First Time Prisoners Prior to Imprisonment', Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Vol. 14, June 1981, 95-102.
'Social Networks of Recidivists and First Time Prisoners: Observations in a Tasmanian Prison', Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Vol. 14, June 1981,103-109.