Institutional Aggression In The Context Of Prisons

Question 1

What has been suggested prisoners bring in eith them

Answer 1

Inmates bring with them a subculture typical of criminality including beliefs, values, norms, attitudes, learning experience and personal characteristics

Question 2

Why do inmates import these ideas

Answer 2

To negotiate their way through the unfamiliar prison environment in which existing inmates use aggression to establish power, status and access to resources

Question 3

What is aggression the result on

Answer 3

Individual characteristics of inmates and not of the prison environment

Question 4

What do prisoner characteristics include

Answer 4

Anger and traumatic experiences

Question 5

What did DeLisi et al study

Answer 5

Juvenile delinquents in California institutions Who imported several negative dispositional features e.g. Childhood trauma

Question 6

What did DeLisi et al find

Answer 6

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

Question 7

What did Clemmer argue

Answer 7

That harsh prison conditions cause stress for inmates who cope by behaving aggressively

Question 8

What else is aggression influenced by

Answer 8

Another situational factor - and unpredictable present regime that regularly uses lock-ups to control behaviour

Question 9

What do lock ups cause

Answer 9

Creates frustration and reduces access to goods (e.g. TV)

Question 10

In the case of deprivation what is aggression

Answer 10

This is a recipe for aggression which becomes an adaptive solution to the problem of deprivation

Question 11

Give an example of psychological factors

Answer 11

Deprived of freedom

Question 12

Give an example of physical factors

Answer 12

Deprivation of material goods

Question 13

What did Steiner do

Answer 13

Investigated factors predicting inmate aggression in 512 prisons

Question 14

What was found about inmate-on-inmate violence

Answer 14

Was more common in prisons where there were higher proportions of female staff

Question 15

Why are these findings prison level factors?

Answer 15

Because they are independent of individual characteristics of prisoners - they reliably predicted aggressive behaviour in line with the deprivation model

Question 16

Name a strength of institutional aggression

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Name a limitation of institutional aggression

Answer 17

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