News and Notes
Recent Events
Ripple Effects Cause Tidal Waves: Community Impacts of Prisons in Appalachia
Half of all U.S. families will experience the incarceration of an immediate family member. While incarcerated, people continue their membership in family systems as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, etc. Indeed, when one person is locked up, everyone who loves them is locked up too. Research shows that maintaining familial connections is paramount to the well-being of families, particularly the person incarcerated. People who are incarcerated who feel supported by families are less likely to become “prisonized” and are, therefore, more likely to successfully reenter society. With nearly 60,000 Virginians incarcerated at any given time, there are thousands of families across the state whose lives revolve around a loved one isolated in a remote mountain facility, often hundreds of miles from home. Ripple Effects highlights the strength of familial ties and the power of love. The panelists share the consequences of incarceration on family systems and how they navigate the criminal legal system. Hearing their lived experiences demonstrates the profound challenges and complexity of having a loved one behind bars.
Ripple Effects centered on local voices and perspectives, which are featured in the following three panel discussions. The panels are comprised of parents, partners, and children of people behind bars, along with researchers and leading advocates working to address the collateral consequences on community members.
Panel 1: Staying Connected, Staying Community focuses on the importance, challenges, and costs of staying connected with family. This panel includes family members who are featured in the documentary Calls from Home, a radio program that airs messages from family members to their incarcerated loved ones.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rd96WNAOWG6pzrNgcVpeDDdJBzTImbWI/view?usp=sharing
Panel 2: What Is It Like to Love Someone Behind Bars explores the joys, value, impacts, challenges, and costs of incarceration on loved ones’ lives. This panel Includes parents, partners, and children of formerly incarcerated individuals.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yvw3kwiTbPjNFFArDhAJ1_kPMFaNOBEQ/view?usp=sharing
Panel 3: What is the visitation room really like and why does it matter? This panel focuses on the benefits of prison visitation. Panelists share their experiences of being there, as both visitors and incarcerated individuals, in the visitation spaces. They also discuss recent changes to visitation and the recent degradation of VA visitation policies, opportunities, and treatment. They argue for improvements to visitation to keep families connected and discuss upcoming legislative efforts to do just that!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1goSODpDC4qPGG_45R6e4faBO-LySWwsU/view?usp=sharing
Additional Recent Events
Dr. Jillian Peterson: "Understanding and Preventing School Violence"
Prisons in Appalachia: Music, Healing and Restorative Radio
Educational Mission:
We continue to support both graduate and undergraduate students. Each year, we grant two or three graduate thesis/dissertation research awards and four travel awards. Some of the topics included:
1) A study of male discrepancy from masculine ideals and corresponding endorsement of aggression and misogyny;
2) the role of community cohesion in fighting extremism;
3) interventions in the Imvepi Refugee Settlement, Uganda;
4) a study of the United Nations.
Outreach and Special Events:
This past year we partnered with local and regional organizations to help promote dialogue on peace, violence, and human rights issues.
1) Co-sponsor Dr. Tania Pérez-Bustos, Material Stories of Healing, Survival, and Dignity in Colombia’s Struggle for Peace;
2) Co-sponsored a lecture by Dr. Aaron Ansell on “The Responsible Exercise of Academic Freedom in an Age of Polarization”;
3) Sponsored a public lecture by Dr. Vjeran Pavlakovic on “The Muralization of var: A Comparative Approach to Graffiti, Murals, and Memory Politics”;
4) Co-sponsored with the Coalition for Justice “Singing through it All: Songs and stories about the lived experiences of parents and their children while in prison and beyond”;
5) Co-sponsored a public panel discussion Ripple Effects Cause Tidal Waves: Community Impacts of Prisons in Appalachia;
6) Supported “This is not a scam!!” Workshop series to raise awareness of online and telephone scams against older individuals;
7) Worked with various university offices to offer a three-day workshop on Foundations of Restorative Justice
Faculty Research:
The Center awarded several Peacebuilding Research Grants to faculty exploring violence and violence prevention. All of the projects were designed to integrate our three missions of research, education, and outreach in the area of violence prevention. Topics include:
1) gun safety awareness;
2) examination of online groupthink rhetoric in resisting covid-19 health mandates and practices;
3) community-based approach to developing a brief couples intervention for co-occurring alcohol use disorder and intimate partner violence.;
4) community-led community capacity building and violence prevention in a Rio de Janeiro favela;
5) forced migration and/in mass incarceration
Publications:
Our book Perceptions of a Pandemic: A Cross-Continental Comparison of Citizen Perception, Attitudes, and Behaviors During Covid-19 published by Emerald Press was released in early 2025. The book is the result of a year’s collaboration between the Center of Peace Studies and Violence Prevention, the Virginia Tech Libraries, and the University of Turku in Finland. In addition, the CPSVP is planning a traditional conference about crime in Appalachia in the fall of 2026 that will gather scholars who are specialists in rural crime and crime in Appalachia. The plan will be to invite selected presenters to an authors’ workshop that will result in a book consisting of the papers presented and discussed there.
Our Director:
Dr. Hawdon continues to work with several center affiliate from across the university and beyond. He continues his research online extremism, both domestic and cross-national. His most recent book Online Hate and Extremism: Patterns of Production, Exposure, and Interventions in a Cross-National Context, continues this work. He is also currently working with CPSVP affiliates on research concerning if counternarratives can potentially change the behavior of those who post online hate. He is also studying how fake news contributes to political polarization. He and several Center affiliates are also continuing their work on cybercrime. He and center affiliate Dr. Heidi Williams received grant funding to continue researching on how police can use community mediation as a strategy for dealing with disputes before they escalate to violence.