Importation model

• Importation model is a dispositional explanation of institutional aggression
• Dispostional explanation - any explanation of behaviour that considers the importance of the individual's personality rather than situational influences in the environment
• Importation model - suggests that prisoners bring their own beliefs, values, norms, characteristics and violent pasts with them into the prison as a way of helping them cope with their environment
• Aggression is a way of prisoners establishing power, status influence and access to resources
• Prisoners are not blank slates when they enter the prison and many of the norms they developed on the outside are imported into the prison

  These previous behaviours may be gang membership, low self control, impulsivity, anger and anti social personality style.
• The importation model argues that aggression is not a product of the prison but of the prisoners themselves

  If there are enough individuals who value the aggression, it will become the norm