This qualitative study explored ex-offender’s community reintegration experiences following a prison sentence. Fourteen ex-offenders from the Offender Alumni Association participated in an in-person in-depth individual interview regarding their current roles, daily routines, living situation, activity participation, and current and future plans. A phenomenological approach using thematic analysis was employed for data collection and interpretation. The emerged themes were categorized under facilitators and barriers that influence healthy community reintegration. The facilitators included visualizing and committing to an ideal future, establishing a daily routine, upholding life balance, and discovering and connecting to external supports. The barriers included impediments to employment opportunities, lack of financial resources, social stigma, regulations imposed by the judicial system, disconnection from social advancements, and addiction to drugs and alcohol. The themes identified from the interviews suggest that current reintegration strategies and programs need to be improved in order to benefit ex-offenders seeking these services.

A considerable diversity of opinion exists on the definition of that part of the personality which is known as temperament, and some authorities go so far as to say that no practical advantage is to be obtained in differentiating it from character. Temperament, nevertheless, is the means in every-day use by which strangers provisionally gauge the extent of their affinity to each other.

CHARACTER IN YOUNG DELINQUENTS t TE BRITISN J~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~M EDICA JOURNAL to evoke a,strong morale in a-dolesets ay of whom CHARACTER IN YOUNG DELINQUENTS may have had little or no previous knowledge of the AN APPROACH FROM THE CRIMINAL significance of group membership. Experience also shows, GANG ASPECT * however, that, as a result of treatment, where the greater BY rigidity of the rules and conventions of a small group has been found to be particularly suited to the lad's attaiin-H. T. P. YOUNG, M.B., CH.B. ments his subsequent adjustment to the community at MIEDICAL OFFICER, H.M. PRISON, WORMWOOD SCRUS large may be one of considerable difficulty. It is probable that, among youths of this type, gang delinquency, In a recent publication' Professor McDougall has described where a common risk is shared, provides an objective, and character as " that part of the personality which is the reduction in the feeling of personal responsibility specially concerned in action, which manifests itself most which acconpanies adherence to a group supplies an inclearly in the higher forms of volition, and which is centive and helps to unite its members. The racing gang, gradually developed in and through social intercourse." which was much in evidence a few years ago, is an Character, in this special sense, together with intelligence, example of antisocial grouping of this kind, and in contemperament, disposition, and temper, constitutes the victs serving terms of penal servitude, where the environpersonality, in the opinion of this authority, and he is at mental factor is more prominent, a similar uniformity of pains to differentiate character from that which is repreemotion is attained. sented by the " sum total of those features, properties, or qualities of an individual organism (or of a species or

No abstract

From time to time in convict prisons examples are seen of certain morbid mental states which are described as distinct disease forms under the name of “prison psychoses.” These states may be defined as special types of mental reactions developing upon conflicts which arise as the result of imprisonment, and possibly from the shock attending the criminal act, trial and conviction. They have been the subject of much inquiry, but, on account of the variation in the material which was available and in the conditions under which the studies were pursued, some confusion of thought appears to exist as to what may or may not be regarded as belonging to this class of disorder, and whether, in fact, the classification is not redundant. The sole justification for the use of the term “true prison psychosis” lies in the ability to establish the disorder as a separate entity, lest the name should be applied to conditions which are adequately described under other titles, as has been the case with shell-shock and “barbed-wire” disease.