152 Prison Essay Topics & Corrections Topics for Research Papers

Welcome to our list of prison research topics! Here, you will find a vast collection of corrections topics, research papers ideas, and issues for group discussion. In addition, we’ve included research questions about prisons related to mass incarceration and other controversial problems.

🏆 Best Essay Topics on Prison

1. Prisons Are Ineffective in Rehabilitating Prisoners
2. Prison System Issues: Mistreatment and Abuse
3. Overcrowding in Prisons and Its Impact on Health
4. Prison Reform in the US Criminal Justice System
5. How ”Prison Life” Affects Inmates Lifes
6. The Comfort and Luxury of Prison Life
7. Rehabilitation Programs Offered in Prisons

✍️ Prison Essay Topics for College

1. How Education in Prisons Help Inmates Rehabilitate

   Criminal justice presupposes punishments for committing offenses, which include the isolation of recidivists from society.
2. Security Threat Groups: The Important Elements in Prison Riots

   Security Threat Groups appear to be an a priori element of prison culture, inspired and cultivated by its fundamental principles of power.
3. Norway Versus US Prison and How They Differ

   The paper states that the discrepancies between the US and Norwegian prison systems can be influenced or determined by various factors.
4. Prison System in the United States

   Depending on what laws are violated – federal or state – the individuals are usually placed in either a federal or state prison.
5. Prison Life in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts

   In the article Larry Goldsmith has attempted to provide a detailed history of prison life and prison system during the 19th century.
6. The Issue of Overcrowding in the Prison System

   Similar to terrorist attacks and the financial recession, jail overcrowding is an international issue that concerns all countries, regardless of their status.
7. Women Serving Time With Their Children: The Challenge of Prison Mothers

   The law in America requires that mothers stay with their children as a priority. Prisons have therefore opened nurseries for children of mothers who are serving short terms.
8. Early Prison Release to Reduce a Prison’s Budget

   The primary goal of releasing nonviolent offenders before their sentences are finished is cutting down on expenses.
9. Prison Culture: Term Definition

   There has been contention in the area of literature whether prison culture results from the environment within the prison or is as a result of the culture that inmates bring into prison.
10. Alcatraz Prison and Its History With Criminals

    Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary famously referred to as “The Rock”, served as a maximum prison from 1934-1963. It was located on Alcatraz Island.
11. Prisons and the Different Security Levels

    Prisons are differentiated with regard to the extent of security, including supermax, maximum, medium, and minimum levels. This paper discusses prison security levels.
12. Prison Makes Criminals Worse

    This paper discusses if prisons are effective in making criminals better for society or do they make them worse.
13. Prison Reform: Rethinking and Improving

    The topic of prison reform has been highly debated as the American Criminal Justice System has failed to address the practical and social challenges.
14. Prison Population by Ethnic Group and Sex

    Labeling theory, which says that women being in “inferior” positions will get harsher sentences, and the “evil women hypothesis” are not justified.
15. Mental Health Institutions in Prisons

    Mental institutions in prisons are essential and might be helpful to inmates, and prevention, detection, and proper mental health issues treatment should be a priority in prisons.
16. Researching of the Reasons Prisons Exist

    While prisons are the most common way of punishing those who have committed a crime, the efficiency of prisons is still being questioned.
17. Drugs and Prison Overcrowding

    There are a number of significant sign of the impact that the “war on drugs” has had on the communities in the United States.
18. “Picking Battles: Correctional Officers, Rules, and Discretion in Prison”: Research Question

    The “Picking Battles: Correctional Officers, Rules, and Discretion in Prison” aims to define the extent to which correctional officers use discretion in their work.
19. State Prison System v. Federal Prison System

    The essay sums that the main distinction between these two prison systems is based on the type of criminals it handles, which means a difference in the level of security employed.
20. The Role of Culture in the School-to-Prison Pipeline

    The school-to-prison pipeline is based on many social factors and cannot be recognized as only an outcome of harsh disciplinary policies.
21. School-to-Prison Pipeline: Roots of the Problem

    The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to the tendency of children and young adults to be put in prison because of harsh disciplinary policies within schools.
22. Administrative Segregation in California Prisons

    In California prisons, administrative segregation is applied to control safety as well as prisoners who are disruptive within the jurisdiction.
23. Women in Prison in the United States: Article and Book Summary

    A personal account of a woman prisoner known as Julie demonstrates that sexual predation/abuse is a common occurrence in most U.S. prisons.
24. The Stanford Prison Experiment

    The Stanford prison experiment is an example of how outside social situations influence changes in thought and behavior among humans.
25. The Stanford Prison Experiment Analysis

    Abuse between guards and prisoners is an imminent factor attributed to the differential margin on duties and responsibilities.
26. The Stanford Prison Experiment’s Historical Record

    The Stanford Prison Experiment is a seminal investigation into the dynamics of peer pressure in human psychology.
27. The Lucifer Effect: Stanford County Prison

    In 1971, a group of psychologists led by Philip Zimbardo invited mentally healthy students from the USA and Canada, selected from 70 volunteers, to take part in the experiment.
28. The Prison Effect Based on Philip Zimbardo’s Book

    This paper explores the lessons that can be learned from Philip Zimbardo’s book “The Lucifer Effect” and highlights the experiment’s findings and their implications.
29. Ethical Decision-Making for Public Administrators at Abu Ghraib Prison

    The subject of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib Prison has garnered global attention and a prominent role in arguments over the Iraq War.
30. Bruce Western’s Book Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison

    The book by Bruce Western Homeward: Life in the Year after Prison provides different perspectives on the struggles that ex-prisoners face once released from jail.

👍 Good Prison Research Topics & Essay Examples

1. Psychology: Zimbardo Prison Experiment

   Despite all the horrors that contradict ethics, Zimbardo’s research contributed to the formation of social psychology. It was unethical to conduct this experiment.
2. Economic Differences in the US Prison System

   The main research question is, “What is the significant difference in the attitude toward prisoners based on their financial situation?”
3. Transgender People in Prisons: Rights Violations

   There are many instances of how transgender rights are violated in jails: from misgendering from the staff and other prisoners to isolation and refusal to provide healthcare.
4. The Prison-Based Community and Intervention Efforts

   The prison-based community is a population that should be supported in diverse spheres such as healthcare, psychological health, social interactions, and work.
5. The Canadian Prison System: Problems and Proposed Solutions

   The state of Canadian prisons has been an issue of concern for more than a century now. Additionally, prisons are run in a manner that does not promote rehabilitation.
6. American Prisons as Social Institutions

   The prison system of the U.S. gained features that distance it from the theoretical conception of a redemptive control mechanism.
7. Prisons as a Response to Crimes

   Prisons are not adequate measures for limiting long-term crime rates or rehabilitating inmates, yet other alternatives are either undeveloped or too costly to ensure public safety.
8. The State of Prisons in the United Kingdom and Wales

   Since 1993, there has been a steady increase in the prison population in the UK, hitting a record highest of 87,000 inmates in 2012.
9. Drug Abuse Demographics in Prisons

   Drug abuse, including alcohol, is a big problem for the people contained in prisons, both in the United States and worldwide.
10. My Prison System: Incarceration, Deterrence, Rehabilitation, and Retribution

    The prison system described in the paper belongs to medium-security prisons which will apply to most types of criminals.
11. The Criminal Justice System: The Prison Industrial Complex

    The criminal justice system is the institution which is present in every advanced country, and it is responsible for punishing individuals for their wrongdoings.
12. Penal Labor in the American Prison System

    The 13th Amendment allows for the abuse of the American prison system. This is because it permits the forced labor of convicted persons.
13. Private and Public Prisons’ Functioning

    The purpose of this paper is to discuss the functioning of modern private and public prisons. There is a significant need to change the approach for private prisons.
14. Recidivism in the Criminal Justice: Prison System of America

    One of the main issues encountered by the criminal justice system remains recidivism which continues to stay topical.
15. The Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Released From Jail or Prison

    The paper analyzes the issue of electronic monitoring for offenders who have been released from prison or jail.
16. “Episode 66: Yard of Dreams — Ear Hustle’’: Sports in Prison

    “Episode 66: Yard of dreams — Ear hustle’’ establishes that prison sports are an important aspect of transforming the lives of prisoners in the correctional system.
17. The Concept of PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act)

    Rape remains among the dominant crimes in the USA; almost every minute an American becomes a victim of it. The problem is especially acute in penitentiaries.
18. Recidivism in the Criminal Justice: Prison System of America

    The position of people continuously returning to prisons in the United States is alarming due to their high rates.
19. Prisonization and Secure Housing Units in Prisons

    The main issue of SHUs is that the absence of community forces a person to experience a significant mental crisis because humans are social creatures.
20. Prison’s Impact on People’s Health

    The paper explains experts believe that the prison situation contributes to the negative effects on the health of the convicted person.
21. Mass Incarceration in American Prisons

    This research paper describes the definition of incarceration and focuses on the reasons for imprisonment in the United States of America.
22. Contribution of Prisons to US Racial Disparities

    The USA showcases persistent racial disparities, especially in the healthcare system. The discriminatory regime has lasted from systemic inequality within essential systems.
23. Prisons in the United States

    In the present day, prisons may be regarded as the critical components of the federal criminal justice system.
24. Understanding the U.S. Prison System

    This study will look at the various issues surrounding the punishment and rehabilitative aspects of U.S. prisons and determine what must be done to improve the system.
25. American Criminal Justice System: Prison Reform

    Public safety and prison reform go hand-in-hand. Rethinking the way in which security is established within society is the first step toward the reform.
26. Private Prisons: Review

    In the following paper, the issues that are rife in connection with contracting out private prisons will be examined along with the pros and cons of private prisons’ functioning.
27. Crimes and the Federal Prison Comparison

    Boesky and Milken admitted to the charges and sought guilty plea favour while Martha was defensive of not having committed any crime.
28. Arkansas Prison Scandals Regarding Contaminated Blood

    A number of scandals occurred around the infamous Cummins State Prison Farm in Arkansas in 1967-1969 and 1982-1983.
29. Prisons in the United States Analysis

    The whole aspect of medical facilities in prisons is a very complex issue that needs to be evaluated and looked at critically for sustainability.
30. Sex Offenders and Their Prison Sentences

    Both authors do not fully support this sanction due to many reasons, including medical, social, ethical, and even legal biases, where the latter is fully ignored.

🎓 Controversial Corrections Research Topics

1. Criminal Punishment, Inmates on Death Row, and Prison Educational Programs

   This paper will review the characteristics of inmates, including those facing death penalties and the benefits of educational programs for prisoners.
2. Prison System for a Democratic Society

   This report is designed to transform the corrections department to form a system favorable for democracy, seek to address the needs of different groups of offenders.
3. Healthcare Among the Elderly Prison Population

   The purpose of this article is to address the ever-increasing cost of older prisoners in correctional facilities.
4. Prison Staffing and Correctional Officers’ Duties

   The rehabilitative philosophy in corrective facilities continually prompts new reinforced efforts to transform inmates.
5. Women’s Issues and Trends in the Prison System

   The government has to consider the specific needs of the female population in the prison system and work on preventing incarceration.
6. What Makes Family Learning in Prisons Effective?

   This paper aims to discuss the family learning issue and explain the benefits and challenges of family learning in prisons.
7. Overcrowding in Jails and Prisons

   In a case of a crime, the offender is either incarcerated, placed on probation or required to make restitution to the victim, usually in the form of monetary compensation.
8. Unethical and Ethical Issues in the Prison System of Honduras

   Honduras has some of the highest homicide rates in the world and prisons in Honduras are associated with high levels of violence.
9. Prison Reform in the US

   Up until this day, the detention facilities remain the restricting measure common for each State. The U.S. remains one of the most imprisoning countries.
10. The Stanford Prison Experiment Review

    The video presents an experiment held in 1971. In general, a viewer can observe that people are subjected to behavior and opinion change when affected by others.
11. Whether Socrates Should Have Disobeyed the Terms of His Conviction and Escaped Prison?

    Socrates wanted to change manners and customs, he denounced the evil, deception, undeserved privileges, and thereby he aroused hatred among contemporaries and must pay for it.
12. Psychological and Sociological Aspects of the School-to-Prison Pipeline

    The tendency of sending children to prisons is examined from the psychological and sociological point of view with the use of two articles regarding the topic.
13. US Prisons Review and Recidivism Prevention

    This research paper will focus on prison life in American prisons and the strategies to decrease recidivism once the inmates are released from prison.
14. Discrimination in Prison Problem

    The problem of discrimination requires a great work of social workers, especially in such establishments like prisons.
15. Meditation in American Prisons from 1981 to 2004

    Staggering statistics reveal that the United States has the highest rate of imprisonment of any country in the world, with the cost of imprisonment of this many people is now at twenty-seven billion dollars.
16. Impact of the Stanford Prison Experiment Have on Psychology

    This essay will begin with a brief description of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment then it will move to explore two main issues that arose from the said experiment.
17. Use of Contingent Employees at the Federal Bureau of Prisons

    Contingent employment is a staffing strategy that the Federal Bureau of Prisons can use to address its staffing needs as well as achieve its budgetary target.
18. Privatization of Prisons in the US, Australia and UK

    The phenomenon of modern prison privatization emerged in the United States in the mid-1980s and spread to Australia and the United Kingdom from there.
19. Death Penalty from a Prison Officer’s Perspective

    The death penalty can be considered as an ancient form of punishment in relation to the type of crime that had been committed.
20. Recidivism in American Prisons

    At present, recidivism is a severe problem for the United States. Many prisoners are released from jails but do not change their criminal behavior due to a few reasons.
21. The Grizzly Conditions Prisoners Endure in Private Prisons

    The present paper will explore the issue of these ‘grizzly’ conditions in public prisons, arguing that private prisons need to be strictly regulated in order to prevent harm to inmates.
22. Keeping Minors and Adult Inmates Separate to Address the Problem of Violence in Prisons

    Managing aggressive behaviors in prison and preventing the instances of violence is a critical issue that warrants a serious discussion.
23. Evaluation of the Stanford Prison Experiment’ Role

    The Stanford Prison Experiment is a study that was conducted on August 20, 1971 by a group of researchers headed by the psychology professor Philip Zimbardo.
24. American Prison Systems and Areas of Improvement

    The current operation of the prison system in America can no longer be deemed effective, in the correctional sense of this word.
25. Prison Crowding in the US

    Most prisons in the United States and other parts of the world are overcrowded. They hold more prisoners that the initial capacity they were designed to accommodate.
26. School-to-Prison Pipeline in Political Aspect

    This paper investigates the school-to-prison pipeline from the political point of view using the two articles concerning the topic.
27. School-to-Prison Pipeline in American Justice

    This paper studies the problem by reviewing two articles regarding the school-to-prison pipeline and its aspects related to justice systems.
28. Prison Population and Healthcare Models in the USA

    This paper focuses on the prison population with a view to apply the Vulnerable Population Conceptual Model, and summarizes US healthcare models.
29. Prisoners’ Rights and Prison System Reform

    Criminal justice laws are antiquated and no longer serve their purposes. Instead, they cause harms to society, Americans and cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
30. Contracting Out Private Prisons

    The issue of contracting the private prisons for accommodating the inmates has been challenged by various law suits over the quality of service that this companies offer to the inmates.

💡 Hot Corrections Topics for Research Papers

1. Prison Dog Training Program by Breakthrough Buddies
2. Prison Abuse and Its Effect On Society
3. The Truth About the Cruelty of Privatized Prison Health Care
4. Prison Incarceration and Its Effects On The United States
5. The United States Crime Problem and Our Prison System
6. Prison Overcrowding and Its Effects On Living Conditions
7. General Information about Prison and Capital Punishment Impact
8. Problems With The American Prison System
9. Prison and County Correctional Faculties Overcrowding
10. People Who Commit Murder Should Be A Prison For An Extended
11. African American Men and The United States Prison System
12. Prison Gangs and the Community Responsibility System
13. Prison Overcrowding and Its Effects On The United States
14. Prison Should Not Receive Free College Education
15. Pregnant Behind Bars and The United States Prison System
16. Prison Life and Strategies to Decrease Recidivism
17. Penitentiary Ideal and Models Of American Prison
18. The Various Rehabilitation and Treatment Programs in Prison
19. Prison and Mandatory Minimum Sentences
20. Prisoner Visit and Rape Issue In Thai Prison
21. Private Prisons Are Far Worse Than Any Maximum Security State Prison
22. Prison Gangs and Their Effect on Prison Populations
23. Overview of Prison Overcrowding and Staff Violence
24. Classification and Prison Security Levels
25. Prison and Positive Effects Rehabilitation Assignment

❓ Prison Research Questions

1. Can Prison Deter Crime?
2. What Are the Two Theories Regarding How Inmate Culture Becomes a Part of Prison Life?
3. What Prison Is Mentioned in the Movie “Red Notice”?
4. What’s the Worst Prison in Tennessee?
5. What Causes Students to Enter the School of Prison Pipeline?
6. How Can the Prison System Rehabilitate Prisoners So That They Will Enter the Society as Equals?
7. Should Prison and Jail Be the Primary Service Provider?
8. How Can Illegal Drugs Be Prevented From Entering Prison?
9. How Does the Prison System Treat Trans Inmates?
10. What Is the Deadliest Prison in America?
11. Should Prison and Death Be an Easy Decision for a Court?
12. Why Is It Called Black Dolphin Prison?
13. Does Prison Strain Lead to Prison Misbehavior?
14. Why Is the American Prison System Failing?
15. What Country Has the Best Prison System?
16. Does Prison Work for Offenders?
17. Should Prison for Juveniles Be a Crime?
18. What Is the Most Infamous Prison in America?
19. What Is the World’s Most Secure Prison?
20. What Do Russian Prison Tattoos Mean?
21. What Causes Convicted Felons to Commit Another Crime After Release From Prison?
22. What Are the Implications of Prison Overcrowding and Are More Prisons the Answer?
23. Can Private Prisons Save Tax Dollars?
24. Is Incarceration the Answer to Crime in Prison?
25. What Are Prison Conditions Like in the US?
26. Who Escaped From Brushy Mountain Prison?
27. Why Does the Public Love Television Show, Prison Break?
28. What Is the Scariest Prison in the World?
29. When Did Brushy Mountain Prison Close?
30. Which State Has the Most Overcrowded Prison?