institutional aggression in prisons

• Importation model


  Inmates bring with them a subculture of criminality from the real world, including beliefs, values, norms, attitudes, and a history of learning experiences as well as other personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and class
• '…people who prey on others on the streets also prey on others in the prison'
• Conflict subculture


  Inmates import such behaviours as a means of negotiating their way through the unfamiliar and frightening prison environment in which existing inmates use aggression to establish power, status, influence and access to resources
• The importation model concludes that aggression is the product of individual characteristics of inmates and not of the prison environment
• DeLisi et al studied 813 juvenile delinquents confined in institutions in California and found that these inmates were more likely to engage in suicidal activity, sexual misconduct and committed more acts of physical violence that was brought to the attention of the parole board (compared to a control group of inmates with fewer negative disposition features)
• Deprivation model


  Places the causes of institutional aggression within the prison environment itself, i.e. a situational explanation. Harsh prison conditions are stressful for inmates, who have to cope by resorting to aggressive and often violent behaviour
• If the prison regime is unpredictable and regularly uses 'lock ups' to control behaviour, then this creates frustration, reduces stimulation by barring other more interesting activities, and reduces even further access to 'goods' (such as TV)
• Steiner investigated the factors that predicted inmate aggression in 512 prisons in the United States and found that inmate-on-inmate violence was more common in prisons where there was a higher proportion of female staff, overcrowding and more inmates that were in protective custody for their own safety
• Camp and Gaes studied 561 male inmates with similar criminal histories and predispositions to aggression and found that 33% of prisoners in the low security prisons and 36% in the higher category prisons were involved in aggressive misconduct within two years, a difference that was not statistically significant
• Dilulio (1991) claims that the importation model is an inadequate explanation of aggressive behaviour because it ignores the roles of prison officials and factors relating to the running of prisons
• Cunningham et al. (2010) analysed several 25 inmate homicides in Texas prisons and found that motivations for the behaviours were linked to some of the deprivations identified by Clemmer, particularly arguments over drugs, homosexual relationships and personal possessions
• Hensley et al. (2002) studied 256 male and female inmates of two prisons in Mississippi, a state which allows conjugal visits (visits that allow partners to have sex) and found no link between these visits and reduced aggressive behaviour
• Jiang & Fisher-Giorlando suggest that the importation model is a better explanation of violence between inmates, but that the deprivation model is more useful in understanding inmate aggression against prison staff
• Dobbs & Waid argue in favour on an interactionist model where inmates entering prison for the first time will suffer deprivation but the deprivation does not necessarily lead to violence unless or until it combines with the individual characteristics is imported into the prison inmates, and which influence prison's culture
• Interactionist model (Dobbs & Waid, 2004)

  • Inmates entering prison for the first time will suffer deprivation but the deprivation does not necessarily lead to violence unless or until it combines with the individual characteristics is imported into the prison inmates, and which influence prison's culture