An empirical test of the social support paradigm on male inmate society

While social support theory has been applied to a variety of criminal justice settings, there has been little empirical research on the effect of social support on inmate behavior. In this article, we test Cullen’s proposition that social support, in whatever form it manifests itself, has an effect on Korean inmates’ experiences. Specifically, we examine whether social support in an all-male prison environment explains inmate misconduct, victimization, fear of victimization, and the intent to commit crime in the future. We build upon previous research by using unique measures of the instrumental and the expressive dimensions of social support to determine their effect on reducing criminogenic engagement in a prison setting. The results indicate that social support is an important factor in reducing prison violence, enhancing pro-social behavior, and potentially reducing recidivism.     

Opting Out: The Role of Identity,Capital, and Agency in Prison Visitation

An emerging body of research suggests that prison visitation has implications for better understanding inmate institutional and post-release behavior, but not all inmates receive visits. The goal of the current study is to document barriers to visitation from the inmate perspective and describe the perspectives of those who receive very few or no visits. We also describe how inmate perceptions of visits impacts the way one does time and negotiates subsequent visitation. Using data from qualitative interviews, we find evidence that inmates make willful decisions when negotiating prison visits that are guided by one’s sense of self and further colored by the perceived social and economic strain on families. Our results challenge the perception of a universally positive visitation experience, and introduce the role of inmate choice in selecting into and out of prison visits.     

Social support and inmate rule violations: A multilevel analysis

Social support theory is important in explaining inmate behavior within prison but has been largely ignored in the research. Using multilevel analysis, the study examined the effect of social support on inmate misconduct measured by disciplinary infractions in the 1997 Survey of Inmates of State Correctional Facilities in the United Slates. Findings indicate that several social support variables at both the inmate level and prison level affect inmate rule violations per month.     

Correlates of Institutional Misconduct Among State Prisoners

As with participation in illegitimate activities in the larger society, involvement in rule infractions within prisons is not normally distributed among prisoners. Rather, a small segment of the inmate population is disproportionately represented in official records of disciplinary activity. In this research, factors associated with differential levels of involvement in prison disciplinary infractions were examined.
The findings indicate that the inmate's age at commitment, history of drug use, current offense (particularly homicide/nonhomicide categories), and the type of sentence that the inmate served were significantly related to high-rate infraction status. For one subgroup of the inmate population, race was also significantly related to infraction-rate status. However, these variables are not sufficiently predictive of institutional misconduct to justify their use as classification factors. The implications of the findings for the study of social control mechanisms in prisons are discussed.     

The Path of Least Desistance: Inmate Compliance and Recidivism

Scholars have speculated that inmate behavior may provide a signal about the probability of desistance. One such signal may be the successful avoidance of prison infractions or the cessation of them during the course of incarceration. Drawing on studies of prison socialization, recidivism, and desistance, we assess whether patterns of inmate misconduct throughout the course of incarceration provide insight into the likelihood of a successful transition back into society. Specifically, using data on a cohort of state prisoners, this study examines whether, after controlling for potential confounders, inmate misconduct trajectories predict recidivism. The analyses indicate both that unique misconduct trajectories can be identified and that these trajectories predict the probability of recidivism and desistance net of factors associated with recidivism. Results of the study lend support to scholarship on desistance and signaling, which emphasizes the salience of in-prison experiences for understanding reentry and, in particular, reoffending.     

Social isolation and inmate behavior: A conceptual framework for theorizing prison visitation and guiding and assessing research

Purpose

Scholarship suggests that prison visitation is important because it allows inmates access to social ties that, in turn, can offset social isolation and help inmates cope with the transition back into society upon release. Only a small number of empirical assessments of visitation exist, however, and existing studies have typically overlooked how the heterogeneity inherent in visitation may influence whether visitation is beneficial, harmful, or has no effect. The goal of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for theorizing this heterogeneity and its impacts, evaluating visitation research, and guiding future research aimed at estimating visitation effects.

Methods

The paper reviews theory and research on inmate visitation. In so doing, it systematically examines heterogeneity in visitation and the implications of this heterogeneity.

Results

The paper identifies five dimensions—visitation timing, longitudinal patterns in visitation, visitor type, visitation experiences, and inmate characteristics—that can be used to characterize visitation events or patterns that, themselves, may have varied effects on in-prison outcomes and reentry outcomes.

Conclusions

More nuanced theories of, and empirical research on, inmate visitation are needed both to understand better the implications of visitation, and inmate social ties more broadly, and to advance theory, research, and policy.     

Relational Violence in Women's Prison: How Women Describe Interpersonal Violence and Gender

Using data from interviews with former female inmates, I focus on how women describe aggression and violence in prison. Interviewees outline the connection between prison violence, gender, and interpersonal relationships. Similar to in previous studies on adolescent girls, women describe ostracism and rumors as a form of aggression. Furthermore, they detail how some inmates fight over correctional officers as the only men in their lives. I define this form of aggression as relational violence, which is commonly described as adolescent behavior. This article broadens the current work on gender and inmate conflict by focusing on violence used by adult female offenders. Moreover, it extends understanding of inmate culture by allowing interviewees to verbally construct the social reality of prison violence from their perspective to evaluate how they connect violence to gender roles.     

The erosion of authority and the perceived legitimacy of inmate social protest: A study of prison guards

The level of control exercised by guards over inmates, it has been argued, has decreased recently as a result of therapeutic, legal, and bureaucratic changes in American prisons. Feeling that inmates too often and too easily circumvent their authority, and that greater inmate rights pose a serious threat to their ability to maintain order, guards tend to discredit inmate complaints and to deny inmates the right to lawful social protest. Questionaire data are analyzed to examine (1) the extent and degree to which guards perceive as legitimate the various means by which inmates may protest unfair treatment by staff and (2) the relationship of this perceived legitimacy of inmate social protest to a variety of factors that prior research has isolated as important in understanding prison guards as an occupational group.     

Potential of Inmate Self-Government

Inmate self-government is one of the strategies for moving correctional institutions away from the crime control establishment model and toward the community subsystem model Authentic participation in government of these institutions, however, awaits resolution of basic questions. With the prison organization provide the prerequisite conditions?. Will the inmates be prepared for effective participation. since the suicide processes of criminal justice administration heavily from those segments of the American population king expunge and incentives for significant political participation? Penal dorm depends on sociocultural changes in the society of which formations is a creature. Whether or not inmate self-government is o via reform strategy pivots ultimately on the revision of social attitudes toward deviants generally and the capacity of the prison to reduce significantly its social psychological isolation from the larger community system.     

Challenges to inmate classification in a developing country setting: implications for context-based inmate classification schemes

Inmate classification is a key aspect of prison management and inmate programming. It guides inmate housing assignment, level of supervision and control, and inmate programme placement. The Philippines formally incorporated these principles to modernise its prisons. However, structural, organisational, and cultural challenges posed barriers to successful implementation. Utilising qualitative data gathered through interviews and focus group discussions with prison personnel, inmates, and volunteers in a major prison in the Philippines, this paper investigates the practices that impact on inmate classification and how these affect housing assignment, levels of supervision and control, and inmate programming. Implications towards developing an integrated correctional management in the Philippines, and other similarly situated countries, are discussed.     

Exploring cynicism toward prison administrations as a mediator of the association between quality of treatment and inmate misconduct

This study explores the ability of inmate cynicism to mediate the relationship between perceptions regarding quality of treatment and inmate misconduct in a prison setting. Using a sample of inmates from prisons in South Korea, the generalizability of the process-based model is tested. Also, the indirect effect of quality of treatment on inmate misconduct through cynicism is estimated using a bias-corrected bootstrapped mediation analysis. The findings show that quality of treatment was negatively and significantly associated with inmate misconduct in South Korean prisons. Additionally, results indicate that the quality of treatment and social support are significant predictors of inmate cynicism. Finally, a regression-based path analysis reveals that cynicism mediates the relationship between quality of treatment and inmate misconduct. While quality of treatment was found to predict inmate misconduct significantly, mediation analyses support the hypothesis that inmate cynicism partially mediates this association. The findings suggest that correctional policies should pay more attention to reducing inmates’ cynicism.

     

Considering hierarchical models for research on inmate behavior: Predicting misconduct with multilevel data

Penologists recognize that both inmate- and prison-level characteristics are relevant to an understanding of individual inmates' behaviors; yet extant studies have focused only on unilevel models with either individual- or aggregate-level predictors and outcomes. To explore the potential of multilevel modeling for related research, we examine empirical relationships predicting the likelihood of inmate misconduct with individual-level (inmate) variables and aggregate levels of prison population crowding. The framework for the model borrows from both individual- and aggregate-level theories of informal social control. We examine three secondary data sets, using information common to each set. We compare results from hierarchical logistic models with those from stepwise pooled logistic regression models to see whether results differ significantly by method of estimation. The pooled models reveal inconsistency in the significance of inmate predictors (social demographics and criminal histories) across the three samples, and non-significant relationships involving prison crowding and an interaction between crowding and an inmate's age for all samples. By contrast, the hierarchical models reveal much more consistency in prediction (or a lack thereof) at either level across all three models, as well as significant aggregate-level main and interaction effects. The theoretical and methodological implications of these results are discussed.     

The correctional melting pot: Race, ethnicity, citizenship, and prison violence

The United States prison population is becoming more diverse and comprised of increasingly more violent inmates. Although race has been cited as a risk factor for inmate violence, most prior research had narrowly investigated White/Black differences in inmate misconduct. Using a sample of 1,005 inmates from the southwestern U.S., the current study explored racial, ethnic, and citizenship correlates among male and female prisoners. Negative binomial regression models indicated that net of controls, Hispanics and Native Americans were the most violent male prisoners, while African Americans and Native Americans were the most violent female inmates. The current study was admittedly modest in scope; however, the findings were couched within a broader, imperative sociological framework that lamented the increasing interplay between communities and prison and the role of prison as a social institution.     

Powerlessness,isolation, and future expectations: A gender‐based analysis of Korean inmates

This study explored gender differences in perceptions of powerlessness, isolation, and postprison expectation among inmates in the Republic of Korea. Korean women and girls occupy a social location that is characterized by marginalization from the labor force, emphasis on a restrictive gender ideology through family and school socialization, and dependence on the position of their family of origin or, after marriage, their husband for social standing. Given their social location and the socialization that supports and reproduces the social structure, the researchers hypothesized that compared to men in prison, women inmates would express lower levels of control over their own lives, greater feelings of isolation, and be more cynical about their life chances upon release from prison. Each of these hypotheses were supported at both the aggregate‐ and inmate‐level of analysis. The findings suggest the need for gender specific programming within the prison for women.     

Sensemaking in prison: Inmate identity as a working understanding

This study examines some of the ways in which correctional officers construct, communicate, and defend a shared account of inmate identity in a maximum-security prison. Through sensemaking activities embodied in informal conversational routines, correctional officers produce a working understanding of the prisoner that is a central element in the reproduction of social control in the prison. The data suggest that challenges to the dominant assumptions embodied in key sensemaking categories may be met by a variety of defensive strategies. These strategies are embedded in the informal conversational routines of the group. Through the selective use of official records, by reframing tolerance as a social control strategy, and through participation in acts of ritual insubordination, correctional officers maintain a working understanding of the inmate that is demeaning, derogatory, and ultimately stereotypical. This research contributes to our understanding of occupational culture in the justice system, and to a fuller appreciation of sensemaking processes in formal organizations.     

Punishment within Prison: An Examination of the Influences of Prison Officials’ Decisions to Remove Sentencing Credits

Despite considerable research directed toward understanding the factors that affect punishment decision‐making leading to imprisonment, few studies have examined the influences of punishment decisions within prisons. Punishment decisions made within prisons can affect an individual's liberty during their imprisonment and/or the timing of their release from prison if the punishment results in the loss of sentencing credits or influences parole decision‐making. Moreover, if punishment disparities result from these decisions, then some offender groups may endure a greater loss of liberty relative to others. In this study, we examine the factors that influence prison officials’ decisions to remove sentencing credits in response to prison rule violations. Analysis of collected data from a Midwestern state prison system reveal that prison officials are primarily influenced by the seriousness and type of the rule violation, along with an inmate's violation history. Other relevant factors include those proximately connected to an inmate's risk of subsequent misbehavior such as gang membership and those that are linked to practical consequences and constraints associated with the organizational environment and particular inmates such as the proportion of their sentence an inmate has served and whether an inmate has mental health problems.     

Does Inmate Behavior Affect Post-Release Offending? Investigating the Misconduct-Recidivism Relationship among Youth and Adults

Recent scholarship has highlighted the potential implications of in-prison experiences for prisoner reentry and, in particular, recidivism. Few penological or reentry studies, however, have examined the relationship between one experience that may be especially consequential, inmate misconduct, and recidivism. The goal of this study is to address this gap in the literature by employing a matching design that estimates the effect of inmate misconduct on reoffending, using data on a release cohort of Florida prisoners. The results indicate that inmates who engage in misconduct, violent misconduct in particular, are more likely to recidivate. Consistent with prior scholarship, we find that this relationship holds only for adult inmates. These findings underscore the importance of prison experiences for understanding recidivism, examining youthful and adult inmate populations separately, and devising policies that reduce misconduct.     

Ruling on Prisoners' Grievances

In this article, the author describes his experience as an active participant on a central review board designed to hear appeals by prisoners front adverse decisions made by local prison grievance and disciplinary boards. The invitation to serve as "citizen member" on this appellate board came to the author as a result of his earlier work on inmate grievance procedures, reported in a previous Journal article. The present article gives a close-up account of the types of inmates and inmate problems encountered while serving on such a board and of the difficult role conflicts that the board members face in trying to make decisions that are both fair and realistic. The article also gives a first-hand impression of the flavor of prison life.     

Importation, deprivation, and varieties of serving time: An integrated-lifestyle-exposure model of prison offending

Using data on 208 male, former inmates in a midwestern state, the current study extended the importation/deprivation debate by developing an integrated model of prison offending. The model contained attitudinal measures, self-control, perceptions of prison conditions, prison lifestyles, objective measures of prison conditions, and controls. Structural equation modeling indicated that both the importation and deprivation theories of inmate behavior were salient, however, their effects were mediated by the inmate's lifestyle while imprisoned, specifically, his participation in the inmate economy.