The DOI matches its Crossref record; 65 of the 65 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Why God Is Often Found Behind Bars: Prison Conversions and the Crisis of Self-Narrative
Abstract
The jail cell conversion from "sinner" to true believer may be one of the best examples of a "second chance" in modern life, yet the process receives far more attention from the popular media than from social science research. In this article, we explore prisoner conversions from the perspective of narrative psychology. Drawing on 75 original, life story interviews with prisoner "converts," we argue that the conversion narrative "works" as a shame management and coping strategy in the following ways. The narrative creates a new social identity to replace the label of prisoner or criminal, imbues the experience of imprisonment with purpose and meaning, empowers the largely powerless prisoner by turning him into an agent of God, provides the prisoner with a language and framework for forgiveness, and allows a sense of control over an unknown future.
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Cites
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(2020) · The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society · doi:10.4135/9781483375519.n617 · Cited by 4,707
Making good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives.
Maruna, S. (2001) · doi:10.1037/10430-000 · Cited by 3,575 · cited 6×
“Importantly, these narrative patterns seem to distinguish successful from unsuccessful ex-prisoners, predicting successful reform after imprisonment, in a variety of empirical tests (see Maruna, 2001, 2004).”
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Cited by
Religiously Motivated Desistance: An Exploratory Study
Hallett, M., & McCoy, J. S. (2015) · International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology · doi:10.1177/0306624x14522112 · Cited by 64
Exoffender accounts of successful reentry from prison
Hlavka, H., Wheelock, D., & Jones, R. (2015) · Journal of Offender Rehabilitation · doi:10.1080/10509674.2015.1057630 · Cited by 52
Prison as a Site of Intense Religious Change: The Example of Conversion to Islam
Wilkinson, M., Irfan, L., Quraishi, M., & Schneuwly Purdie, M. (2021) · Religions · doi:10.3390/rel12030162 · Cited by 50
O’Connor, T. P., & Duncan, J. B. (2011) · Religions · doi:10.3390/rel2040590 · Cited by 49
“" [5] Todd Clear and a group of colleagues, such as Harry Dammer and Melvina Sumpter, explored the meaning and impact of religious practice in prisons throughout the US in a series of ethnographic and empirical studies.”
Excavating Victim Stories: Making Sense of Agency, Suffering and Redemption
(2019) · The Emerald Handbook of Narrative Criminology · doi:10.1108/978-1-78769-005-920191023 · Cited by 43
Metadata
- Authors
- Maruna, S., Wilson, L., & Curran, K.
- Venue
- Research in Human Development
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2006-09
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 2-3
- Pages
- 161-184
- ISSN
- 1542-7609 (ISSN-L)
- 1542-7617
- OpenAlex
- W1964845442
- Cited by
- 274
- References
- 65
- FWCI
- 1.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
