Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Abstract

Prison dog-training programs are a fairly new rehabilitative practice in women’s prisons. This study seeks to identify the effects dog-training programs have on women while incarcerated and then once reintegrated back into their family and community. This study includes an analytic literature review of the research on animal training programs and dog training programs in general. Most of the existing research, however, focuses on men and boys and shows that while prison-based dog-training programs are largely beneficial, they are less so for boys and do create unique vulnerabilities in men’s prisons. This study extends the previous research by examining the influences of dog training in prison for women. I interviewed eight people, including formerly incarcerated women who dogtrained in prison, instructors/volunteers who taught the women to dog-train, a head of a rescue and founder of a dog-training program, and a correctional officer who worked at a prison with a dog-training program. The benefits of dog-training programs were beneficial in many ways: dog-training a) helped rehabilitate the women trainers and had a healing effect to help women move past any trauma previously experienced b) helped women “pay back” the community they wronged while feeling like they were “worth something” and had value in prison, a place designed to strip women of dignity and c) helped a once unadoptable dog become adoptable again by the women using their nurturing/mothering skills to “raise”/train a dog in prison. Women express a need to nurture and love someone/something while imprisoned. Some interviewees lamented that a few women who entered the program were motivated to receive the benefits without doing the work, to a negative effect. Additionally, the warden plays a key gate-keeping role as the decision maker about whether to start a program, continue it, or stop it based on their feelings about if the women are deserving of the privilege dog-training gives them. This study concludes that dog-training programs positively impact incarcerated women while imprisoned and upon release. Additionally, the program creates a new life for the once unadoptable dogs, for whom waiting lists for adoption now existed. Correctional officers from the prison were number one on the waiting lists. I conclude that prison-based dog training is largely beneficial for incarcerated women.

Year of Submission

2024

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Women's and Gender Studies Program

First Advisor

Carissa Froyum

Date Original

4-2024

Object Description

1 PDF (x, 75 pages)

Language

en

Download

Comments?

Share

COinS