Institutional Aggression In The Context Of Prisons Flashcards
What has been suggested prisoners bring in eith them
Inmates bring with them a subculture typical of criminality including beliefs, values, norms, attitudes, learning experience and personal characteristics
Why do inmates import these ideas
To negotiate their way through the unfamiliar prison environment in which existing inmates use aggression to establish power, status and access to resources
What is aggression the result on
Individual characteristics of inmates and not of the prison environment
What do prisoner characteristics include
Anger and traumatic experiences
What did DeLisi et al study
Juvenile delinquents in California institutions Who imported several negative dispositional features e.g. Childhood trauma
What did DeLisi et al find
Inmates were more likely to engage in suicidal activity and sexual misconduct - committed more acts of physical violence brought to attention by one of the parole board
What did Clemmer argue
That harsh prison conditions cause stress for inmates who cope by behaving aggressively
What else is aggression influenced by
Another situational factor - and unpredictable present regime that regularly uses lock-ups to control behaviour
What do lock ups cause
Creates frustration and reduces access to goods (e.g. TV)
In the case of deprivation what is aggression
This is a recipe for aggression which becomes an adaptive solution to the problem of deprivation
Give an example of psychological factors
Deprived of freedom
Give an example of physical factors
Deprivation of material goods
What did Steiner do
Investigated factors predicting inmate aggression in 512 prisons
What was found about inmate-on-inmate violence
Was more common in prisons where there were higher proportions of female staff
Why are these findings prison level factors?
Because they are independent of individual characteristics of prisoners - they reliably predicted aggressive behaviour in line with the deprivation model
Name a strength of institutional aggression
Importance model is research support - researchers placed half of their male inmate participants in a low security Californian prison and the other half in second highest category - no significant difference between levels of aggression- random allocation of inmates to prisons
Name a limitation of institutional aggression
Alternative may be better - researchers claim importation model is inadequate to explain institutional aggression because it ignores roles of prison officials and factors linked to running prisons - proposed ACM which states poorly managed prisons are more likely to experience most serious forms of inmate violence - casts doubt over validity
