Inmate Research Interviews

Inmates, often called offenders (particularly by corrections professionals), are incarcerated individuals currently serving time in a jail, a federal or state prison, or another type of correctional location such as a community reentry center or court-mandated rehabilitation facility. Inmates do not include individuals on probation or parole. Researchers seeking to interview inmates face a unique set of challenges. These challenges include gaining access to the target population, navigating the processes of ethics committees and institutional review boards (IRBs), constructing interview instruments including consent and disclosure forms, self-presentation and self-disclosure both in the correctional facility and in the interview setting, negotiating time and data-gathering restraints unique to prison research, and presenting honest, accurate analyses of inmate interview data.

Interviewing is a qualitative data-gathering technique that typically involves ...