Institutional Aggression In The Context Of Prison: Situational Flashcards
What does the situational explanation explain?
That aggression in prisons is a result of the environmental factors. I.e. crowded environments can increase aggressive behaviour as well as that prisons are generally very stressful environments.
What did Skye put forward
The deprivation model - proposing that aggression results from a number of environmental deprivations
What is deprivation of liberty
Prisoners are deprived of their freedom - the main form of punishment when sent to prison. Prisoners often have to obtain permission to eat, shower etc…
What is deprivation of autonomy
Prisoners have very little power and very few choices - leads to feelings of helplessness, resulting in frustration and aggression
What is deprivation of goods
In prison access to things that we take for granted such as phones are denied or their accesses restricted. This brings about frustration, and therefore aggression
What is deprivation of heterosexual rekarions
Men may feel emasculated from the loss of heterosexual relationships; they feel less than a man’s. As well as that, the greater options for homosexual relations may increase anxiety for prisoners, and there more aggression
What is deprivation of security
Prisoners may live in fear of aggression from other inmates, which leads to heightened sense of physical threat. This feeling of perceived continual threat can result in higher chance of aggression in response to a potential threat
What did Cooke say were the situations in which aggression occurs
Overcrowding: uk govt reports in 2014 found that rates of murder, suicide and assaults were higher in much more overcrowded prisons. Yuma found that in Japan, prison population density had a large effect on the increase of inmate violence
Heat noise - prisons that are hot and noisy exacerbate aggressive behaviour. Griffitt and Veicht found that a combo of high temps and noise produced very negative emotions compared a control
Job burnout - prison staff get weary and care less for the prisoners. So inmates get more violent due to being treated worse
Strengths
Research support - Gaes et al. Found that overcrowding in prison can be the cause of not just ill health and general misconduct, but also aggression and violence. Gaes et al proposed that higher prison population densities heighten stress and therefore result in an overreaction to other factors in the prison
Practical applications - in 2005 Wilson set up two units in HMP woodhill where overcrowding was reduced, music was introduced to reduce other noisy conditions and the temp was controlled, he found that this successfully lowered aggression
Weakensss,
The theory can be criticised. Camp and gaes conducted a field experiment, splitting up 561 prison inmates into two groups. Some going to high security and the others going to low security. They were also matched on criminal history and reports found that 33% behaved aggressively in low security and 36% in high. There should be a significantly lower score in the low security prison but there wasn’t, suggesting that dispositional factors are more at play
McCorckle et al found that in 371 prisons across the US, there was little link between violence and overcrowding. He reported that all inmates pretty much experince stress, but not always resort to violence. The assumption states that this frustration always leads to aggression is flawed
