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.     

Race and the apprehension of inmate misconduct

Race differences in the apprehension of inmate misconduct were examined within a medium security Federal Correctional Institution. Significant race differences were found such that disproportionately more conduct reports (shots) were written on black than white inmates. Explanations of these differences are given. Considering three sets of findings, it was concluded that the probability of racial bias affecting criminal justice decision making will vary according to the status of that decision point on two dimensions: (1) the amount of discretion afforded the decision maker, and (2) the extent to which the decision maker is held accountable for this decision. Therefore, racial bias would be expected to exert its greatest impact upon decision points which allow considerable discretion and which prossess minimal accountability.     

Child maltreatment histories among female inmates reporting inmate on inmate sexual victimization in prison: the mediating role of emotion dysregulation

Despite data indicating that child maltreatment (CM) in various forms is associated with adult sexual victimization among community women, few studies have explicitly explored how types of CM might relate to prison sexual victimization. Because little is known about how CM might give rise to prison sexual victimization, the present study also examined emotion dysregulation emanating from early abuse experiences as a potential mediator in the link between early CM and inmate-on-inmate prison sexual victimization. Approximately 168 incarcerated women completed self-report inventories assessing various types of childhood maltreatment, emotion dysregulation, and coerced or forced sexual experiences in prison. Nearly 77% of the sample endorsed experiencing at least one form of CM, with 64% of inmates reporting that they experienced two or more forms of CM. Approximately 9% of inmates reported sexual coercion and 22% reported a forced sexual experience in prison. Each form of CM was associated with prison sexual coercion; however, fewer associations emerged between CM and forced prison sexual experiences. Emotion dysregulation was found to mediate links between CM, particularly co-occurring CM, and sexual coercion in prison, but it was unrelated to forced prison sexual experiences. Implications are discussed.     

Comparing inmate perceptions of two residential substance abuse treatment programs

Drug and alcohol abuse by criminal offenders remains at an all time high. Residential substance abuse and treatment (RSAT) programs were developed to address the drug and alcohol treatment needs of inmates in prisons. Typically, such programs range in length from 6 to 12 months, have an Alcoholics Anonymous and/or Narcotics Anonymous component, and occur in a therapeutic community environment. Some programs also include a cognitive self-change component. Inmate participation in their programming is crucial to the success of a therapeutic community treatment environment, yet there is little research on the perceptions of RSAT inmates regarding their programming. In this research, the authors describe, compare, and contrast the perceptions of inmate clients of two RSAT programs in a rural mountain state.     

Impact of drug use on inmate misconduct: A multilevel analysis

Despite the importance of drug use problems among offenders, relatively little was known about whether drug use history affected inmate behavior in prison. Using data from the 1997 survey of inmates in state facilities in the U.S., this study examined the following relationships: the effect of drug use prior to incarceration on substance rule violations per month during incarceration and the effect of drug use prior to incarceration on non-substance rule violations per month in prison. This study revealed that the variable drug use history was a significant predictor of substance rule violations per month and of non-substance rule violations per month in prison. The implications of the findings are also discussed.     

Use of the psychological inventory of criminal thinking styles to predict disciplinary adjustment in male inmate program participants

The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) was administered to program participants in two different federal prisons-a medium-security federal correctional institution and a maximum-security penitentiary-who were subsequently followed for a period of 24 months for evidence of disciplinary adjustment problems. Disciplinary outcome was measured by the total number of incident reports, the number of nonaggressive incident reports, and the number of aggressive incident reports received during the 24-month follow-up. Negative binomial regression was used to test the relationship between the eight PICTS thinking style scales and three disciplinary outcome measures because the total and nonaggressive disciplinary report distributions showed signs of overdispersion. The only PICTS thinking style scale to achieve statistical significance in this study was the Cutoff scale that successfully predicted total, nonaggressive, and aggressive incident reports in both samples.     

The influence of prisons on inmate misconduct: A multilevel investigation

This article presents the results of multilevel analyses of prisoners' misconduct for the population of over 120,000 federal prisoners incarcerated in June 2001. Prior research has focused on individual-level explanations of inmate misconduct, but this study explicitly examines whether prisons vary in their influence on such misconduct. The study demonstrates that model specification makes a difference in our understanding of which variables are related to misconduct, that the type of misconduct is important for understanding the effects of covariates of misconduct, and that results of multilevel models can easily be used to compare the performance of prisons.     

Effectiveness of citizen police academies in changing the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of citizen participants

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the citzen police academies (CPA) in two cities were effective in changing participants’ attitudes, beliefs, and behavior toward police. Pre-and post-test questionnaires were used to obtain participants’ ratings of their attitudes and beliefs concerning police officers and their willingness to cooperate with police. Participants were also asked to indicate what cooperative behaviors they had actually engaged in before and/or during the CPA. At the end of the CPA, participants in both cities rated themselves as having more positive attitudes toward police, and more willingness to engage in behaviors that would help police. There was also an increase in actual performance of some cooperative behaviors during the CPA. These changes did not seem to be overly dependent on the jurisdiction (large versus small city), the demographics of the CPA participants, or the specific characteristics of the CPA curriculum.     

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.     

Identifying possible sources of inmate crowding in U.S. jails

This note presents results from an aggregate-level study of several possible correlates of inmate crowding in county jails during 1983 (n=505) and 1988 (n=522). Findings revealed that jurisdiction variables (court caseload, degree of urbanism) and state variables (sentencing practices, degree of prison inmate crowding) are at least as significant as jail variables (type of standards, frequency of inspections, enforcement system for standards, inmate population composition) for predicting the degree of inmate crowding. This suggests that policies designed to reduce crowding should be sophisticated enough to account for the possible effects of all three groups of variables.     

Determinants of citizen support for community-oriented policing

The extent to which community members are willing to cooperate with the police and become involved with various community crime prevention programs depends on citizen perceptions of the police and of the community in which they reside. The purpose of the present study is to explore factors that affect support for community policing in a small rural city. Findings revealed that the majority of respondents supported community policing. Using community survey data collected from over 400 citizens in a small metropolitan area in the intermountain West, this study also explored the importance of demographic factors, community characteristics, and public perceptions and experiences with police in predicting citizens’ support for community policing. Citizen support for community-oriented policing varied somewhat by demographic factors (i.e., gender, education), and by community characteristics (i.e., disorder, social cohesion).     

Causes and correlates of prison inmate misconduct: A systematic review of the evidence

Purpose

Inmate rule violations or “misconducts” reflect offending within a prison, and this study involved a systematic review of studies of the causes/correlates of inmate misconduct published between 1980 and 2013.

Methods

An exhaustive search of relevant high impact journals yielded 98 studies of causes/correlates of inmates misconduct published between 1980 and 2013. The final models from these studies were examined to assess the impact of the predictor variables on misconduct.

Results

Findings revealed that predictor variables reflecting inmates’ background characteristics (e.g., age, prior record), their institutional routines and experiences (e.g., prior misconducts), and prison characteristics (e.g., security level) all impact misconduct.

Conclusions

Researchers should apply general theories of crime and deviance (e.g., control) that can incorporate all of the empirically relevant inmate and prison characteristics to the study of offending in prison (misconduct). Researchers should also examine the sources of variability in the effects of predictor variables across studies.     

A methodology for assessing citizen perceptions of police

This study was initiated to determine perceptions that Wichita community residents hold toward their police. A scale, Citizen's Perception of the Police, was developed. Race and dogmatism were examined as variables influencing perceptions. Non-white residents evaluated police less favorably than did whites. No significant difference was found on level of dogmatism in evaluating the police. The methodology for developing the scale is described. Applications of these methods to other communities was suggested as well as the importance of assessing citizen perceptions of the police to obtain data which will optimize the setting of goals for police-community relations programming.     

A profile of the citizen crime prevention activist

By comparing a sample of Neighborhood Watch leaders with a sample of nonparticipants from the same small town/rural areas in the United States, this study developed a profile of the crime prevention activist. Activists were found more likely than nonactivists to be older, white, married, and higher in socioeconomic status, but there were no differences between the groups in terms of sex ratio and employment status. Activists also tended to have more voluntary association memberships, which bind them to their communities. While they were found not to differ significantly from nonactivists in regard to their experience with, fear of, and individual reaction to crime, they were found more likely to perceive crime as increasing, the source of the crime threat as outside their neighborhoods, and police performance as good. Based on these differences, it was concluded that activists perceived crime more as an abstract potential threat by outsiders than as a reality, and that their deterrence activities did not involve any special motivation that differed from other neighborhood efforts to preserve neighborhood stability and solidarity.     

Nineteenth century newspaper accounts of a murder committed by an inmate of a Scottish asylum

This study explores an incident from the late nineteenth century in which an inmate at the Royal Dundee Lunatic Asylum murdered a fellow patient while working in the hospital grounds. The incident was reported extensively in the local press in the days following the event. Analysis of these reports reveals a picture, which while recognisable to the twenty-first century newspaper reader, does however depart from contemporary media reporting in some important ways. We argue that while the image of the unpredictable dangerousness of the lunatic has a long history and is deeply embedded in popular conceptions of mental disorder, shaping public perceptions of those with mental illnesses, it is the manner in which this is presented by the media that has bearing upon how the case is understood by wider society.     

Using citizen notification to interrupt near-repeat residential burglary patterns: the micro-level near-repeat experiment

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Test the efficacy of swift resident notification for preventing subsequent burglaries within near-repeat high-risk zones (NR-HRZ). The experiment was conducted...     

When crime reporting goes high-tech: An experimental test of computerized citizen response to crime

This study investigates the importance of the reporting mode as a factor contributing to citizen crime reporting decisions in the United States. A randomized experimental design involving 140 subjects was used to compare the treatment effects of two crime reporting modes: one which was telephonic and the other computer interactive. The findings of this exploratory study of citizen crime reporting within a controlled laboratory setting revealed significant increases in reporting rates for subjects assigned to the computer reporting mode condition relative to those assigned to the telephonic reporting mode condition. This relationship persisted for reporting behavior examined at both low and moderate levels of crime seriousness. The implications of these findings for predicting future changes in the incidence and distribution of reported criminal behavior or illegal incidents are presented and discussed.     

公民行政受益权初探

公民行政受益权集中体现了现代行政的价值。本文重点探讨与揭示公民行政受益权的基本内涵与现实价值 ,并进一步澄清其与相关四个范畴的关系 ,即 :该权利与私权有不同的价值取向和救济手段 ;其实现并不仅限于行政给付 ;承认其为一项公民个人权利 ,与公共利益不会发生冲突 ;应以赔偿责任抑制目前过剩的行政规制 ,以真正落实公民行政受益权     

Pedagogy of individual choice and female inmate reentry in the U.S. Southwest

Much of the mental health, substance use, and educational programming within a particular women's prison in the southwestern United States promotes individual choice and agency. Incarcerated women from rural areas are told that their ability to succeed outside of prison is primarily dependent upon their personal choices. Comparably little attention is given to preparing women for their upcoming release or to overcoming structural barriers that could undermine successful reentry within rural communities. As a result, these returning citizens, many of whom grapple with mental illness and alcohol or drug dependence, blame themselves for their inability to surmount these barriers. In this qualitative research, we draw upon the perspectives of 99 incarcerated women to clarify how ideologies of individual choice promulgated in reentry pedagogy clash with contextual factors within rural communities to derail the reentry process. We also consider community reentry from Amartya Sen's capabilities framework and discuss how this model could inform needed interventions.     

A theoretical model of multiple stigma: ostracized for being an inmate with intellectual disabilities

Even though some people are associated with a single stigmatized group, others are associated with several. In order to shed light on such multiple stigma processes, we propose a theoretical model of ‘multiple stigma’ by describing how two stigma-related categories (having intellectual disabilities and being an inmate) merge into a third stigmatized category (being an inmate with intellectual disabilities) that makes it possible to be ostracized for each of these three. We describe how this extensive ostracism is associated with negative psychological problems and antisocial responses. Consequently, we discuss some possible implications for the criminal justice system and future research.