Grant Recipient: University of Missouri
Principal Investigator(s): Kelli Canada, Beth Huebner
Term: 2024 – 2029
Funding: $2,861,432
Summary: The Missouri Prison Transformation Project (MPTP) aims to improve prison conditions and the wellbeing of people living and working in adult correctional facilities. The interdisciplinary research team and the Missouri Department of Corrections collaboratively developed MPTP.
The MPTP intervention is centered on the concepts of normalcy (i.e., prisons mirror or imitate the outside world as much as possible), principles of humanistic psychology (i.e., emphasizing the whole person), and dynamic systems and security (i.e., creating safety through rapport building and respectful communication between residents and officers). Those concepts ground the intervention’s four pillars: training for staff, altering the core components of the physical environment, self-improvement and skill-building opportunities for incarcerated people, and fostering a sense of community connection between staff and incarcerated people. It will be implemented in seven housing wings across one female and three male correctional facilities in Missouri using a randomized control trial design.
The primary study outcomes include violations during incarceration and recidivism following release.
