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Prisons today face what might be a nearly insurmountable task: somehow to meld humane, safe confinement and correctional programming within the context of expanding populations of offenders serving longer sentences. The use of prison religious programs presents one unique program opportunity to channel inmates’ energies in meaningful and beneficial ways. Although religion has always played a vital role in correctional programming, it has also evoked controversy because uninhibited religious expression may conflict with concerns relating to security and safety. In this article, the authors assess a variety of issues surrounding the provision of religious services in prison settings.

Even in total institutions, control is far from total. In custodial organizations, for example, staff and inmates negotiate their own interpretation of the social order, often rejecting formal rules and control techniques, and substituting alternatives that may be just as formal, although tacit, as those they replace. This creates “gaps” betwen formal organizational structure and individual behaviors which partially decouple formal rules from the behaviors intended to carry out those rules. This study integrates organizational and prison research to develop the concepts of negotiated order, loose coupling, and me‐sostructure. The goal is to examine the context in which negotiations occur and the manner in which negotiated order activates the interactions and understandings through and by which organizational structure is generated and maintained.

Most of us prefer ª doing rightº to the opposite. But sometimes it is not easy to determine either what constitutes right conduct or how to do it. In this special ethics issue of TIS, scholars involved in cyberspace research explore the problem of ª doing rightº in terms of research subjects. The participants here draw from their own research and the ethical dilemmas they confronted. The offerings illustrate how diverse ethical theories can lead to different views over which, or even whether, new formal guidelines are needed for on-line research.Most of us prefer ª doing rightº to the opposite. But sometimes it is not easy to determine either what constitutes right conduct or how to do it. In this special ethics issue of TIS, scholars involved in cyberspace research explore the problem of ª doing rightº in terms of research subjects.In Future Shock, Alvin Toffler observed that the future arrives too soon and in the wrong order. If the future ª happenedº in the right order, it would mean that our ability to understand and respond to changes would come before, rather than after, events occurred. If the future had the decency not to arrive too soon, we could better prepare for it by predicting potential problems and proactively identifying possible solutions. One of the problems arising from the future-is-now expansion of computer technology is establishing the ethics by which scholars ought proceed when venturing into cyberspace.Although some consider the term ª cyberspaceº a hackneyed one, it remains useful to denote something that happens with people using computers. By now, most of us realize that cyberspace is not a specific geographic or spatial location. Cyberspace connotes interaction with others by means of a personal computer and a modem. As we sit at the computer keyboard and magically etch our ASCII for others to see, we feel as if we leave it somewhere, and that ª somewhereº is simply a conceptually metaphoric way of identifying the experience of electronic communication. Cyberspace includes a variety of forums and activities ranging from bulletin board systems (BBSs); electronic mail; public access systems where people meet, shop, argue, heal, fall in and out of love, carouse, or 107 Jim Thomas is a professor of Sociology/Criminal Justice at Northern Illinois University, and has studied prison culture since 1980 and computer culture since 1988. He is co-editor of Computer underground Digest, an electronic newsletter addressing legal, cultural, and political issues of online life. His interests include methodological ethics in qualitative research.

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