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.     

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.     

Examining the Use of Disciplinary Segregation within and across Prisons

Prison officials have historically been afforded considerable discretion to administer sanctions designed to maintain order and security within a prison. Such discretion can generate disparate treatment of offender groups, but few studies have investigated whether sanction disparities exist within prisons, despite considerable research on sanctioning decisions made by other criminal justice actors. We use data collected from a nationally representative sample of inmates housed in state operated confinement facilities to examine potential influences of prison officials’ decisions to impose one type of sanction—disciplinary segregation. Multi-level analyses reveal that both legally relevant criteria such as prior misconduct history and extralegal factors such as age and holding a prison job affected whether an inmate was placed in disciplinary segregation for a rule violation. Also, prisons in which a greater proportion of the inmate population is involved in prison work and prisons with a higher density of inmates classified minimum-security use disciplinary segregation less frequently.     

PRISONIZATION IN FIVE COUNTRIES Type of Prison and Inmate Characteristics

Interorganizational and cross-cultural comparisons are made among different types of prisons located in five countries-the United States, Mexico, England, West Germany, and Spain-as a test of the relative importance of functional and importation variables in prisonization. A normative orientation among inmates which is in opposition to staff expectations is found in all prisons in all countries. Adherence to this orientation by individual inmates is most prevalent among American inmates and last among Mexican inmates. The functional theory of the inmate system receives more support than the importation theory with regard to the general orientation to the institution and its programs and to attitudes toward and interaction with staff; but the two models do about equally well in accounting for the extent to which prisoners adopt the inmate code. Theoretical and policy implications of the study are discussed.     

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.     

Race,ethnicity, and prison disciplinary misconduct

It is well known that racial and ethnic minorities (both male and female) have felt the effect of increased incarceration more than Whites, and a large amount of prior research has investigated the factors that influence higher levels of inmate misconduct, including the influence of race/ethnicity. This body of research has produced mixed results. Using recent data from one of the largest state prison systems, this study sought to determine the level of racial and ethnic disparity in the commission of inmate misconduct. Results indicate that Black inmates were significantly more likely than other inmates to commit general rule violations, serious rule violations, and assaultive rule violations. Correlates of inmate misconduct and policy implications stemming from the findings are discussed.     

The ties that bind or the ties that break: Examining the relationship between visitation and prisoner misconduct

Purpose

Prior theory and research suggest that inmate visitation can reduce misconduct in prison. However, prior studies have not accounted for the longitudinal and heterogeneous nature of these experiences. This paper addresses this research gap by examining variation in visitation experiences and the relationship between patterns of visitation and misconduct.

Methods

Using a cohort of offenders incarcerated in Florida between 2000 and 2002, group-based trajectory model analyses were used to identify groups of inmates based on their visitation and misconduct patterns. Dual trajectory analysis was used to then assess the extent to which the development of visitation and misconduct patterns are interrelated.

Results

Visitation, and more consistent visitation in particular, is associated with less prison misconduct.

Conclusions

Visitation may reduce inmate misconduct. Implications for future research, theory, and policy are discussed.     

Comparing Self-Report to Official Measures of Inmate Misconduct

Studies have revealed systematic measurement errors in self-report data on crime and deviance resulting from poor recall and/or underreporting by certain groups of respondents. Official crime data have also been criticized, but for different reasons (e.g. gross underestimations of less serious offenses). Very similar observations have been made in studies of inmate crime (misconduct committed by prison inmates). Despite these criticisms, official data on inmate misconduct continue to be the most frequently used data in related studies. This study compared self-report and official data on inmate assaults, property thefts, and drug offenses for samples of inmates from 46 correctional institutions for adults in Ohio and Kentucky. Findings revealed that officially recorded misconduct underestimates the total volume of inmate crime. Analyses designed to uncover sources of the divergence between self-reported misconduct and officially recorded misconduct revealed far more consistencies than differences in the magnitude of inmate and facility effects on the different types of offenses. A few important differences did emerge in the magnitude of effects such as amount of time served (at the individual level) and facility population size (at the aggregate level).     

The impact of determinate sentencing on prisoner misconduct

Purpose

The shift from indeterminate to determinate punishment policies over the past three decades may have the unintended consequence of increasing prisoner misconduct due to the elimination or reduction of parole and earned gain-time to provide incentives for inmates to comply with institutional rules. This paper advances the existing scholarship addressing this issue.

Methods

Data on a cohort of 305,228 inmates admitted to prison in Florida over a twelve year period before and after the enactment of a “truth-in-sentencing” law in 1995 requiring all felons sentenced to prison to serve a minimum 85% of their sentence are examined to assess the impact of determinate punishment on whether inmates commit disciplinary infractions and the frequency of misconduct.

Findings

The data show that determinate punishment has had the unintended consequence of significantly increasing the level of inmate misconduct in general and across different types of misconduct; violent, property, and disorderly.

Conclusion

The findings indicate that states which currently have or are considering the implementation of determinate sentencing should examine potential changes in policies and practices to alleviate the impact of reductions in inmate incentives to abide by institutional rules.     

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.     

Deprivation, importation, and prison suicide: Combined effects of institutional conditions and inmate composition

Previous research on suicide in United States prisons focused on the characteristics of inmates who commit suicide while largely ignoring the prison context surrounding these suicides. The following analyses used national data on 1,082 state prisons in the United States to examine how prison conditions (deprivation) and inmate composition (importation) predict prison suicide. Results of a negative binomial regression model showed that the number of suicides was significantly increased in supermaximum and maximum security prisons (relative to minimum), under conditions of overcrowding and violence, and in prisons where a greater proportion of inmates received mental health services. Although deprivation variables were overwhelmingly predictive of suicide, the results pointed to the combined effects of institutional conditions and inmate composition on prison suicide.     

Unintended consequences: experimental evidence for the criminogenic effect of prison security level placement on post-release recidivism

Most prison systems use quantitative instruments to classify and assign inmates to prison security levels commensurate to their level of risk. Bench and Allen (The Prison Journal 83(4):367-382, 2003) offer evidence that the assignment to higher security prisons produces elevated levels of misconduct independent of the individual’s propensity to commit misconduct. Chen and Shapiro (American Law and Economics Review, 2007) demonstrate that assignment to higher security level among inmates with the same classification scores increases post-release recidivism. Underlying both of these claims is the idea that the prison social environment is criminogenic. In this paper we examine the theoretical premises for this claim and present data from the only experiment that has been conducted that randomly assigns inmates to prison security levels and evaluates both prison misconduct and post-release recidivism. The experiment’s results show that inmates with a level III security classification who were randomly assigned to a security level III prison in the California prison system had a hazard rate of returning to prison that was 31% higher than that of their randomly selected counterparts who were assigned to a level I prison. Thus, the offenders’ classification assignments at admission determined their likelihood of returning to prison. There were no differences in the institutional serious misconduct rates of these same prisoners. These results are contradictory to a specific deterrence prediction and more consistent with peer influence and environmental strain theories. These results also raise important policy implications that challenge the way correctional administrators will have to think about the costs and benefits of separating inmates into homogeneous pools based on classification scores.

Correlates of prisoner misconduct

Using a nationwide sample of 5586 state-prison inmates, relationships between the frequency of officially reported institutional misconduct (as reported by the inmates) and certain preinstitutional and institution-related inmate traits were examined. Findings indicate that rule-breaking behavior is associated with being young, black, and male, having a relatively high number of prior convictions, having been unemployed prior to incarceration, and having been imprisoned for a relatively long period of time. Furthermore, such misconduct shows no relationship to domestic status, educational achievement, alcohol and drug problems, military service, income level, current offense, interaction with family and friends outside of prison, hours spent outside of cell, and daily activity. Policy implications are addressed. Misconduct is considered within the broad context of interaction among inmate traits, prison-level characteristics, and extrainstitutional factors.Earlier version presented at the 1984 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Antonio.     

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.     

Religion and Misconduct in “Angola” Prison: Conversion,Congregational Participation,Religiosity, and Self-Identities*

Prior research tends to find an inverse relationship between inmates’ religion and misconduct in prison, but this relationship has lacked empirical explanation. We therefore propose the religion-misconduct relationship is mediated by inmates’ identity transformation on existential, cognitive, and emotional dimensions. To test the mediation, we conducted a survey of inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (a.k.a. “Angola”). Controlling for inmates’ sociodemographic and criminal backgrounds, we estimated a latent-variable structural equation model of disciplinary convictions. Results showed that inmates’ religious conversion and, to a lesser extent, religiosity itself were positively related to existential and cognitive transformations as well as a “crystallization of discontent,” which were in turn associated with two types of emotional transformation in the expected direction. The crystallization of discontent and transformation in negative affect were related to disciplinary convictions as hypothesized, and their mediation of the effects of conversion and religiosity on misconduct were found to be significant.     

Exporting and importing criminality: Incarceration of the Foreign Born

Since previous studies have found that crime rates vary by immigrant group there is a need to dis‐aggregate immigrants by country of birth in order to obtain a more accurate representation of the relationship between migrants and crime. This study examines data from six countries (Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A.) on the country of birth of their inmate populations. The following observations are reasonable conclusions from the data available. First, the percentages of each home country's inmate population that is foreign‐born varies remarkably. Second, in general foreign‐born inmates tend to come from regions outside the region within which the host country was located, though in most cases from regions that were proximate. Third, given the small number of countries reporting, it is intriguing that just a small number of countries and regions can account for such a high proportion of a home country's inmate population if one includes the numbers of a country's citizens who are housed in foreign prisons as part of that original country's inmate population. The paper concludes with a discussion of a number of policy implications that flow from these findings.     

“Half In, Half Out:” Gang Families, Gang Affiliation, and Gang Misconduct

Recently developed inmate behavior frameworks have expanded the discussion from deprivation/importation models to a life-course perspective. DeLisi and associates (International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 55;1186–1207, 2011) presented the life-course importation model of inmate behavior based on a sample of state incarcerated offenders; however, their analyses were unable to distinguish indirect and direct effects of delinquent career and distal family background factors. The current study builds on the life-course importation model of inmate behavior by using path analysis to understand the direct and indirect effects of distal pre-incarceration indictors on gang-related inmate misconduct for 2,520 incarcerated youthful offenders. The findings lend support to the life-course importation model as the familial gang indicator was associated directly with individual gang affiliation, gang affiliation was associated directly with gang-related misconduct, and familial gang associations was associated indirectly with gang-related misconduct.     

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 Bi-level Framework for Understanding Prisoner Victimization

Objectives

To present and test an opportunity perspective on prison inmate victimization.

Methods

Stratified random samples of inmates (n ₁ = 5,640) were selected from Ohio and Kentucky prisons (n ₂ = 46). Bi-level models of the prevalence of assaults and thefts were estimated. Predictors included indicators of inmate routines/guardianship, target antagonism, and target vulnerability at the individual level, and several indicators of guardianship at the facility level.

Results

Assaults were more common among inmates with certain routines and characteristics that might have increased their odds of being victimized (e.g., less time spent in recreation; committed violence themselves during incarceration), and higher levels of assaults characterized environments with lower levels of guardianship (e.g., architectural designs with more “blind spots”, larger populations, and less rigorous rule enforcement as perceived by correctional officers). Similar findings emerged for thefts in addition to stronger individual level effects in prisons with weaker guardianship (e.g., ethnic group differences in the risk of theft were greater in facilities with larger populations and less rigorous rule enforcement).

Conclusions

The study produced evidence favoring a bi-level opportunity perspective of inmate victimization, with some unique differences in the relevance of particular concepts between prison and non-prison contexts.     

Neighborhood climates of legal cynicism and complaints about abuse of police power†

Research findings show that legal cynicism—a cultural frame in which skepticism about laws, the legal system, and police is expressed—is important in understanding neighborhood variation in engagement with the police, particularly in racially isolated African American communities. We argue that legal cynicism is also useful for understanding neighborhood variation in complaints about police misconduct. Using data on complaints filed in Chicago between 2012 and 2014, we show that grievances disproportionately came from racially segregated neighborhoods and that a measure of legal cynicism from the mid-1990s predicts complaints about abuse of police power two decades later. The association between legal cynicism and complaints is net of prior complaints, reported crime, imprisonment, and other structural factors that contribute to the frequency and nature of interactions involving police and residents. Legal cynicism also mediates the influence of racially isolated neighborhoods on complaints. The mid-1990s is the approximate midpoint of a half-century of police scandals in Chicago. Our research findings suggest that contemporary complaints about police misconduct in highly segregated Chicago neighborhoods are grounded in collectively shared historical memories of police malfeasance. They also suggest that persistent complaints about police misconduct may represent officially memorialized expressions of enduring racial protest against police abuse of power.