Institutional (prisons)

• An institutional environment is an environment that is governed by authority and strict social guidelines. Aggression in prisons is an important area of research as there has been an increase in serious assaults.
• The deprivation model, proposed by Clemer, is a situational explanation for aggression in prisons, emphasising that the cause of violent behaviour is due to the stressful nature of the prison environment itself.

  • How inmates who experience deprivations of freedom, safety and material goods are influenced to behave violently as a means of coping with the stress of the conditions.
• Supporting evidence for the deprivation model

  • McCorkle et al
  • conducted a major study of 371 US prisons and looked at situational factors such as overcrowding and a lack of meaningful activity
  • significantly influenced the amount of violence inmates displayed, with both inmate on inmate and inmate on staff assaults, which suggests that peer violence is used to relieve or cope with the deprivation experienced in prisons
• Steiner et al

  Further supporting evidence comes from a study of 512 US prisons, reported that inmate on inmate violence was more common in prisons where there was a higher proportion of female staff, overcrowding and more inmates in protective custody. This also supports the deprivation model as these factors are independent of the individual characteristics of the prisoners.
• Real life value for deprivation model

  • can be used to reduce violence in prisons
  • changing the conditions of a harsh prison environment in HMP Woodhill by decreasing factors such as overcrowding or overheating, Wilson found a reduction in assaults on prisoners and staff members.
  • supports the idea that situational variables are the main cause of prison violence and can be successfully applied to prison environments to reduce violent behaviour amongst inmates.
• The importation model

  • Irwin and Cressey suggest that aggression is the produce of individual characteristics of inmates and not of the environment
  • Prisoners bring existing norms with them into the prison (import) and these can include aggressive ones & being granted the respect that someone deserves
  • The willingness of the inmates to use violence inside the prison to settle dispute reflects lives before they were imprisoned
• Dispositional characteristics include anger, anti social personality, impulsivity and a low self control
• Gang membership is consistently related to prison violence and other forms of anti social behaviour. Inmates who had been gang members prior to imprisonment were more likely to commit murder, hostage taking and assault with a deadly weapon.
• Supporting evidence for the importation model

  DeLisi et al

  • 813 juvenile offenders who brought negative dispositional features into prisons
  • these inmates committed more acts of physical violence compared to a control group with fewer negative dispositional features
  • supports the idea that inmate behaviour stems from the characteristics inmates import with them into prison
• However, in contrast to this...

  Both theories have a role to play in explaining the types of aggressions within prisons. Research looking at disciplinary reports from a prison in the US found that the importation model was best suited to explaining the violence towards other inmates whereas the deprivation model was best explaining violence towards staff.
• Limitation to importation model

  • research evidence is contradictory and in practice, it is likely that both factors play a part and there is an interaction of deprivation and individual characteristics