The Importation Model

• The importation model argues that prisons are not completely insulated from the happenings of everyday life outside the 'real world'.
• Inmates come from the real world, and they bring with them a subculture typical of criminality, which includes a history of aggression and aggressive norms.
• Prisoners are wiling to use violence to settle disputes in prisons, which reflects the life they had before they entered prison.
• Aggression in prisons is alternatively caused by aggressive characteristics of inmates. It is imported from the outside by prisoners, and is no fault of the environment itself.
• Such inmates are predisposed to using violence and would do so in any setting, which is why they do the same in prison. Therefore, this leads to institutional aggression.
• The importation model is a dispositional explanation of aggression.