Centre for Policy on Ageing



Lifespan differences in the social networks of prison inmates
Author(s)	Gary D Bond, Laura A Thompson, Daniel M Malloy
Journal title	International Journal of Aging and Human Development, vol 61, no 3, 2005
Pages	pp 161-178
Source	http://baywood.com
Keywords	Prisoners ; Social contacts ; Life span ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America.
Annotation	L L Carstensen's Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) of 1992 and 1993 accounts for lifespan changes in human social networks and for the motivations which underlie these changes. SST is applied in this research with 256 prison inmates and non-inmates, ages 18-84, from Mississippi, Kansas and New Mexico. Two research questions sought to identify: whether inmate networks change in size; and whether overall closeness within an inmate's network changes over the adult years. Results indicate that much like older non-inmates, older inmates have few peripheral partners; they are buffered from the wider population of prisoners, and interact with a small group of very close partners. Although older inmates are not completely isolated, they do maintain fewer network partners as age increases, like their non-incarcerated counterparts, and overall are as emotionally close to network members as non-inmates. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-051118201 A
Classmark	TGF: TOA: BG6: 3J: 7T
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.