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
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
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
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