Craig Haney is an American social psychologist and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, noted for his work on the study of capital punishment and the psychological impact of imprisonment and prison isolation since the 1970s. [1] He was a researcher on The Stanford Prison Experiment.
Haney obtained his B.A from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.A., Ph.D. in Psychology and J.D. from Stanford Law School. [2]
In 1971, while at Stanford, Haney collaborated with Philip Zimbardo in conducting what is known today as The Stanford Prison Experiment, [3] for which Haney served as a principal researcher. This experience help to set in course Haney's subsequent career and work with prison systems. It ingrained in Haney that “context matters, prisoners are people, mistreatment has consequences”, and perpetuated his passion about the psychological impact of incarceration, and his advocacy for humanization and reform. [4] [5]
Haney is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and the UCSC Presidential Chair (for a three-year term which runs from 2015 until 2018) at the University of California Santa Cruz [6] where he has been a member the faculty for some 39 years. He was selected as the university's Distinguished Faculty Research Lecturer in 2014. [7] He has taught Psychology and Law I & II, Social Justice, Society, and Policy, and Graduate Research Methods, and The Social Context. His work with graduate students involves applied research on criminal justice topics including: the effects of imprisonment, criminogenic social histories, the effects of death qualification, and the impact of pretrial publicity on legal decision making. Teaching awards include, in 2015, his second Excellence in Teaching award bestowed by the UC Santa Cruz faculty senate.
Haney has published five books, numerous research articles, and entries in law reviews, including: [8]
Haney has also written for the Huffington Post. [12]
Haney has served as an expert witness in several influential United States Federal Court cases related to the prison environment and punishment, including: Toussaint v. McCarthy (1984), Madrid v. Gomez (1995), Coleman v. Brown (1995), and Ruiz v. Johnson (1999). [13] Moreover, Haney's work was influential in the United States Supreme Court 5–4 ruling of Brown v. Plata (2011), which upheld a lower court ruling that the California prison population be reduced. [14] Commenting on this last case, Haney stated: "When prisons are unduly painful, they become harmful and the system begins to break down and fail." He noted further, "Prisoners can carry the consequences of that harm back out into the free world once they're released. I was very gratified to see the Supreme Court embrace that concept”.
In 2012, Haney testified before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary at a hearing on “Reassessing Solitary Confinement”. [15]
In 2014, he spoke on the National Public Radio program, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, about the impacts of solitary confinement. [16]
In 2018, Haney was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on a 60 Minutes segment that addressed the psychological consequences of long-term isolation. [17]
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.
Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which the inmate lives in a single cell with little or no meaningful contact with other people. A prison may enforce stricter measures to control contraband on a solitary prisoner and use additional security equipment in comparison to the general population. Solitary confinement is a punitive tool within the prison system to discipline or separate disruptive prison inmates who are security risks to other inmates, the prison staff, or the prison itself. However, solitary confinement is also used to protect inmates whose safety is threatened by other inmates by separating them from the general population.
The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in the summer of 1971. It was a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led the research team who administered the study.
Obedience, in human behavior, is a form of "social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure". Obedience is generally distinguished from compliance, which is behavior influenced by peers, and from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority. Depending on context, obedience can be seen as moral, immoral, or amoral.
Philip George Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which was later severely criticized for both ethical and scientific reasons. He has authored various introductory psychology textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox, and The Time Cure. He is also the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project.
George William "Bill" Domhoff is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and research professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a founding faculty member of UCSC's Cowell College. He is best known as the author of several best-selling sociology books, including Who Rules America? and its seven subsequent editions.
Elliot Aronson is an American psychologist who has carried out experiments on the theory of cognitive dissonance, and invented the Jigsaw Classroom, a cooperative teaching technique which facilitates learning while reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice. In his 1972 social psychology textbook, The Social Animal, he stated Aronson's First Law: "People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy," thus asserting the importance of situational factors in bizarre behavior. He is the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association to have won all three of its major awards: for writing, for teaching, and for research. In 2007 he received the William James Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science, in which he was cited as the scientist who "fundamentally changed the way we look at everyday life.” A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Aronson as the 78th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He officially retired in 1994 but continues to teach and write.
Solitude is a state of seclusion or isolation, meaning lack of socialisation. Effects can be either positive or negative, depending on the situation. Short-term solitude is often valued as a time when one may work, think, or rest without disturbance. It may be desired for the sake of privacy. Undesirable long-term solitude may stem from soured relationships, loss of loved ones, deliberate choice, infectious disease, mental disorders, neurological disorders such as circadian rhythm sleep disorder, or circumstances of employment or situation.
Psychological punishments are punishments that aim to cause mental pain or discomfort in order to punish an individual. Psychological punishments are usually designed to cause discomfort or pain through creating negative emotions such as humiliation, shame and fear within an individual or by depriving the individual of sensory and/or social stimulation.
The Experiment is a 2002 BBC documentary series in which 15 men are randomly selected to be either "prisoner" or guard, contained in a simulated prison over an eight-day period. Produced by Steve Reicher and Alex Haslam, it presents the findings of what has subsequently become known as the BBC Prison Study. These findings centered around "the social and psychological consequences of putting people in groups of unequal power" and "when people accept inequality and when they challenge it".
Anthony R. Pratkanis is a researcher, author, consultant, media commentator and a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several books, and has published research papers in scientific journals on the topics of social influence, fraud, terrorist and dictator propaganda, marketing and consumer behavior, and subliminal persuasion.
Christina Maslach is an American social psychologist and professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, known for her research on occupational burnout. She is a co-author of the Maslach Burnout Inventory and Areas of Worklife Survey. Early in her professional career, Maslach was instrumental in stopping the Stanford prison experiment. In 1997, she was awarded the U.S. Professor of the Year.
A prisoner is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison.
Mahlon Brewster Smith was an American psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association. His career included faculty appointments at Vassar College, New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago and University of California, Santa Cruz. Smith had been briefly involved with the Young Communist League as a student at Reed College in the 1930s, which resulted in a subpoena by the U.S. Senate in the 1950s. That activity caused him to be blacklisted by the National Institute of Mental Health for ten years without his knowledge.
In the United States penal system, upwards of 20 percent of state and federal prison inmates and 18 percent of local jail inmates are kept in solitary confinement or another form of restrictive housing at some point during their imprisonment. Solitary confinement generally comes in one of two forms: disciplinary segregation, in which inmates are temporarily placed in solitary confinement as punishment for rulebreaking; and administrative segregation, in which prisoners deemed to be a risk to the safety of other inmates, prison staff, or to themselves are placed in solitary confinement for extended periods of time, often months or years.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a 2015 American docudrama thriller film directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, written by Tim Talbott, and starring Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano, Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Thirlby, and Nelsan Ellis. The plot concerns the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, conducted at Stanford University under the supervision of psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, in which students played the role of either a prisoner or correctional officer.
Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Criminal justice reform can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, and sentencing.
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil is a 2007 book which includes professor Philip Zimbardo's first detailed, written account of the events surrounding the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) — a prison simulation study which had to be discontinued after only six days due to several distressing outcomes and mental breaks of the participants. The book includes over 30 years of subsequent research into the psychological and social factors which result in immoral acts being committed by otherwise moral people. It also examines the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in 2003, which has similarities to the Stanford experiment. The title takes its name from the pious story of the favored angel of God, Lucifer, his fall from grace, and his assumption of the role of Satan, the embodiment of evil. The book was briefly on The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller and won the American Psychological Association's 2008 William James Book Award.
Confined environment psychology is a refined subcategory of environmental psychology. There can be severe neurological impacts upon remaining in a confined environment over a prolonged period of time. Confined environment psychology can come in different forms, including; by location and lack of or limited human interaction. The broad subcategory also includes the effects of social isolation on animals.
Prisoners' Justice Day is a solidarity movement that takes place annually on August 10. The movement began in Canada in 1974 in support of prisoners’ rights and to remember all the people who have died of unnatural deaths while incarcerated. The first Prisoners' Justice Day was held at the Millhaven Institution on August 10, 1975, on the first anniversary of Edward Nolan's death. In addition to a day of mourning, six prisoners took part in an eighteen-day hunger strike. In 1976, August 10 was recognized as a memorial day where prisoners would strike in opposition to the use of solitary confinement and to protest inmate conditions within the Prison System by going on a one-day hunger strike and refusing to work.
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