Institutional Aggression in Prisons

• institutional aggression


  aggression that occurs within a place that's regulated by rules such as prisons.

  e.g. institutional aggression in prisons may be caused by the prison itself or the traits prisoners enter with
• dispositional explanations


  assumes aggression is caused by the individual and their personality rather than a consequence of situational factors inside a prison
• importation model


  assumes when individuals commit crime and receive a custodial sentence, they enter prison with traits or learned behaviours

  e.g. inmates may have a pro-crime attitude, and a variety of criminal experiences

  inmates also have personal characteristics such as race, gender, class or religious beliefs

  Irwin and Cressey propose it's these attitudes and traits that make some inmates likely to continue with criminal behaviours and violence once they're inside prison

  Offends important these antisocial behaviours into prison, and use them to navigate their way through their sentence and to deal with conflicts that may arise with other prisoners
• situational explanations


  refer to any explanation that assumes aggression & violence in prison is caused by features of the environment itself, rather than people who are there

  Clemmer - claims prisoners experiences 'pains of deprivation' inside prisons such as:

  Deprivation of freedom + autonomy whilst inside prison

  Deprivation of maternal goods e.g. money, personal belongings & resources
• deprivation model


  Assumes inmates become aggressive as a way of surviving in person or venting frustration

  E.g. whilst deprived of material goods, there's competition for resources between all inmates which could lead to aggression + conflicts

  In addition, inmates may experience frustration if they're bored or deprived of stimulation

  Aggression is therefore considered to be the result of pressures + frustration within the prison situation itself
• Strength - dispositional explanation is supported by research

  DeLisi investigated the behaviours of juvenile delinquents who entered institutions in California. The inmates shared dispositional traits such as experiences of trauma, aggression, abuse and addictions. In comparison to a control group, these inmates engaged in more violence behaviours and misconduct inside prison

  this shows that dispositional traits do increase the likelihood of inmates becoming aggressive once inside prison, supporting the importation model
• Weakness - both explanations are reductionist

  both the dispositional and situational explanation assumed violence in prison can be explained with just 1 influence, either traits of the inmate or the prison itself. Many propose that a more holistic and accurate view of prison aggression is an interactionist model. This model assumes some inmates enter prison with predispositions for aggression, whilst some don't but become aggressive due to the deprivations in prison. In addition, the model proposes that whilst the importation model can explain inmate on inmate violence, it's the situational explanation that's better suited to explaining why some inmates may be violent towards staff

  this suggests that no one single explanation of institutional aggression can explain the broad spectrum of aggressive incidents, and that a combined view of explanations is more suitable
• Weakness - most don't acknowledge the influence of staff running the prisons

  the ACM (administration control model) suggests aggression in prisons is likely to occur when prisons aren't running efficiently, when staff are abusive or distant from inmates, or where there's a lack of opportunity to be rehabilitated.

  this means that neither the dispositional or situational explanations of institutional aggression are thorough enough to explain all incidents of violence in prisoners
• Weakness - research that not all positive implications have had the same effect

  Hensley et al studied male and female inmates, who were allows conjugal visits, which would reduce the deprivation of intimacy

  However, incidents of aggression didn't reduce as expected, suggesting that situational factors may not be as influential in prison violence as first proposed