By John Wooldredge

Academic attention to violence and other forms of in-prison misconduct is on the rise, although most research continues to be framed within now stale perspectives. A broader framework is needed that builds on the more contemporary aspects of these perspectives and incorporates other elements of prison culture and management that potentially influence violent offending and victimization in prison. This article begins with an overview of cumulative knowledge on prison culture to highlight relevant ideas on inmate adaptation to confinement and how violence might manifest from (mal)adaptation. How prison management shapes and reflects culture is also discussed with an emphasis on how prison officers affect inmate safety. A bi-level framework is presented that brings together the piecemeal contributions of research to date to provide a more comprehensive understanding of offending and victimization that should facilitate crime prevention in prison while improving the humanity of the prison experience

Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 3 (2020), pp. 165–188

By Selma Djokovic and Ryan Shanahan

Findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in prisons in South Carolina show that Restoring Promise’s approach to culture change significantly reduces prison violence and the use of restrictive housing (commonly referred to as solitary confinement).1 Restoring Promise Restoring Promise, an initiative of the MILPA Collective and the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera), works with departments of corrections to transform housing units so that they are grounded in dignity for young adults (ages 18 to 25) in prison. Launched in 2017, Restoring Promise is now operating in six prisons and one jail across five states. The housing units are led by trained corrections professionals and mentors— incarcerated people over the age of 25 who are serving long, often life, sentences who live on the unit with and guide the young adults. Participation for young adults includes living in a designated housing unit, having a structured and meaningful daily schedule, being connected to mentors, developing leadership skills, enhancing connections to family and community, and designing and participating in specialized programs and activities. The program strives to transform the prison culture into one of accountability, healing, and learning.2 The findings Restoring Promise housing units had less violence and fewer restrictive housing unit stays. Findings from an RCT conducted in South Carolina show that Restoring Promise’s approach to culture change in prisons significantly reduces violence. Young adults living in a Restoring Promise unit experienced a 73 percent reduction in the odds of a conviction for a violent infraction and an 83 percent reduction in the odds of a restrictive housing stay during their first year of participation, compared to the control group in general population. These numbers account for a range of factors that may have implications for the outcomes (including custody level, education level, pre-treatment outcomes, length of time in the study, race, and age). Researchers looked at other outcomes and did not find significant treatment effects (disciplinary misconduct, grievances, injuries, staff use of force, and medical/mental health interventions).

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 8p.

By Daniela Ronco, Alvise Sbraccia, Giovanni Torrente

This project’s goal is to assess strategies and programmes which prevent, deter and counter radicalization in prison and identify and analyse good practices regarding new or existing deradicalization, disengagement and rehabilitation programmes and risk assessment tools. The analysis has been carried out having in mind the international and European standards for the the protection of detainees' rights. Research incorporates qualitative and quantitative data analysis on official government documents and interviews with stakeholders from prison administration and management, prison staff, Imams, chaplains and other religious representatives. The relevance of results is to develop practices across Europe to effectively manage individuals considered radicalized, at risk of being or to prevent others. Ensuring common knowledge by disseminating to national and European networks will improve de-radicalization measures across prisons.

European Prison Observatory 2019. 47p.

By Sandra M. Bucerius, William Schultz and Kevin D. Haggerty

Many observers describe prison subcultures as inherently and irredeemably antisocial. Research directly ties prison subcultures to violence, gang membership, and poor reintegration. In extreme cases, research has also suggested that prison subcultures contribute to incarcerated people joining radical groups or embracing violent extremist beliefs. These claims, however, ignore key differences in the larger cultural and social context of prisons. We examine the relationship between prison subcultures and prison radicalization based on semi- structured qualitative interviews with 148 incarcerated men and 131 correctional officers from four western Canadian prisons. We outline several imported features of the prison subculture that make incarcerated people resilient to radicalized and extremist messaging. These features include 1) national cultural imaginaries; 2) the racial profile of a prison, including racial sorting or a lack thereof; and 3) how radicalization allowed incarcerated men and correctional officers to act outside the otherwise agreed-to subcultural rules. Our research findings stress the importance of contemplating broader sociocultural influences when trying to understand the relationship between radicalization and prison dynamics and politics

Criminology, 2023.

By Emily D. Buehler

This report describes substantiated incidents of inmate sexual victimization by another inmate or by staff. It presents data on the incidents of sexual victimization, such as location and time of day. It also provides characteristics of the victims and perpetrators of the victimization. The report details services provided to the victim and consequences for the perpetrator. In part, it fulfills BJS’s mandates under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA; P.L. 108–79).

Highlights

• During 2016–18:

• Half of both inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate sexual victimization incidents occurred in an area not under video surveillance.

• There were 2,886 victims of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization and 2,496 victims of staff-on-inmate sexual victimization in adult correctional facilities.

• About 25% of victims of inmate-on-inmate nonconsensual sexual acts and 43% of victims of abusive sexual contact were female.

• The victim was given a medical examination in 61% of inmate-on-inmate nonconsensual sexual act incidents and in 36% of abusive sexual contact incidents

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2023. 36p.

By Jacinto AzevedoI, Maria Vieira-Coelho, Miguel Castelo-Branco, Rui Coelho, Margarida Figueiredo-Braga

Introduction: Aggression is a clinical symptom of various psychiatric disorders that can be conceptualised as a physical act towards another person with the intent to cause harm. In antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), aggression is a frequent manifestation that differently compromise therapeutic and prognostic goals according to its impulsive or premeditated categorisation. ASPD is characterised by high levels of impulsivity, psychopathic traits, and a high prevalence of co-morbid substance use disorders (SUDs). Aggression in ASPD patients may determine long and recurrent imprisonment thus representing a challenge clinicians and legal experts face. Objectives: Our aims were to characterise impulsive and premeditated aggression in male ASPD offenders as well as to determine the potential role of SUDs, impulsivity, and psychopathic traits as predictors. Materials and methods In this cross-sectional study we evaluated a sample of ASPD offenders with a battery of clinical and psychometric, standardised instruments: the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), the European Version of the Addiction Severity Index (EuropASI), the Barratt Impulsivity Scale Version 11 (BIS-11), and the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale (IPAS). Results: We used a total sample of 134 offenders, all of whom were male. ASPD patients (n = 96) had a 71.9% prevalence of impulsive aggression and a 28.1% prevalence of premeditated aggression. ASPD patients with impulsive aggression had significantly lower scores of total PCL-R (p<0.01) factor 1 and interpersonal facet 1 (p<0.05), compared with ASPD patients with premeditated aggression. ASPD patients with impulsive aggression and ASPD patients with premeditated aggression had comparable BIS-11 mean scores, and exhibited an equal prevalence of SUDs. The interpersonal facet 1of the PCL-R predicted the aggression type (p<0.05) in ASPD patients, and the exponential beta value for facet 1 was 1.42 (CI = 1.03; 1.95). Conclusions The aggression type that is associated withASPD is mainly impulsive in nature. ASPD patients who have higher scores of psychopathic traits have a lower probability of exhibiting impulsive aggression and a higher probability of exhibiting premeditated aggression.Although ASPD patients have high levels of impulsivity and a high frequency ofSUDs, these two variables were not predictors of the aggression type.

PLoS ONE 15(3): 2020. e0229876.

By Ivan G. Goldman

In America, 2.3 million people—a population about the size of Houston’s, the country’s fourth-largest city—live behind bars. Sick Justice explores the economic, social, and political forces that hijacked the criminal justice system to create this bizarre situation. Presenting frightening true stories of (sometimes wrongfully) incarcerated individuals, Ivan G. Goldman exposes the inept bureaucracies of America’s prisons and shows the real reasons that disproportionate numbers of minorities, the poor, and the mentally ill end up there. Goldman dissects the widespread phenomenon of jailing for profit, the outsized power of prison guards’ unions, California’s exceptionally rigid three-strikes law, the ineffective and never-ending war on drugs, the closing of mental health institutions across the country, and other blunders and avaricious practices that have brought us to this point. Sick Justice tells a big, gripping story that’s long overdue. By illuminating the system’s brutality and greed and the prisoners’ gratuitous suffering, the book aims to be a catalyst for reform, complementing the work of the Innocence Project and mirroring the effects of Michael Harrington’s The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), which became the driving force behind the war on poverty.

Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013. 256p.

By Bruce A. Arrigo and Dragan Milovanovic

Revolution in Penology is a thoroughly original and thought-provoking critique of penal harm, the recursive pains of imprisonment cycle, and the normalization of violence. Relying on selected insights derived from continental philosophy, cultural studies, and chaos theory, internationally renowned social theorists, Bruce A. Arrigo and Dragan Milovanovic, deconstruct the human agency/social structure duality that sustains the prison form, its parts and segments understood as correctional principles/practices, and the prison industrial complex that is informed by and stands above them all.

Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. 237p.

By Maxim Ananyev and Michael Poyker

We investigate whether prisons contribute to homophobia in the general population given that inmates’ informal code often ascribes low status to persons perceived as ``passive’’ homosexuals. First, using Australian longitudinal survey data, we establish that prison experience prompts a higher level of anti-gay sentiments among males and their families, even though no discernible difference exists before incarceration. Second, to explore the transmission of anti-gay sentiments to the population, we use the Soviet amnesty of 1953, which released 1.2 million prisoners. We find that the municipalities in Russia more exposed to the influx of released individuals have more anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes, homophobic slurs on social media, and discriminatory attitudes in representative surveys. We offer suggestive evidence for the mechanisms by showing that in the aftermath of the amnesty more exposed locations had a larger increase in the number of thieves-in-law, career criminals upholding the inmate code, and descendants of Gulag prisoners have higher levels of anti-gay attitudes. Our results demonstrate a previously under-emphasized cost of mass incarceration: a higher level of homophobia.

Melbourne: University of Melbourne - Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research; Nottingham, UK: University of Nottingham, School of Economics, 2022. 110p.

By George M. Camp and Camille G. Camp

The study obtained data from a literature search; a survey of the 50 State prison systems, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons; structured onsite interviews in 9 jurisdictions; and document analysis. Data on the extent of prison gangs encompass the aggregate number of prison gangs in the Nation, the number of gangs in each State, and the number of gang members. A review of the history of prison gangs in the United States traces their beginning to Washington State in 1950 and then describes their development in other regions and States. A discussion of the nature of prison gangs focuses on their general structure and operation, including initiation requirements, leadership characteristics, gang member relationships with nongang inmates, and gang activities within prisons. Some prison gang problems identified are drug trafficking, intimidation of nongang inmates, strong-arm extortion, violence, conflicts between gangs, and contracted inmate murders. The study found that no prison system methodically identifies, tracks, and maintains ongoing intelligence on prison gangs. Data also indicate the frequency with which corrections systems use each of 13 identified strategies for countering prison gangs and their activities. Major recommendations include (1) the development of a policy position on prison gangs and procedures for detecting early signs of gang activity, (2) the construction of smaller prison facilities, (3) the establishment of prison gang task forces, and (4) a systematic debriefing of former gang members to obtain useful information. The report also recommends that prison systems share with one another models of gang control that have and have not worked in their jurisdictions. Appendixes contain extensive information and tabular data. A 48-item bibliography is included.

South Salem, NY: Criminal Justice Institute, 1985. 220p.

By James McGuire

The occurrence of violent assault in prison is a challenging problem. This Analytical Summary reports the findings of a rapid evidence assessment (REA) into the causes of physically violent assaults by male adult prisoners. The REA reviewed 97 research studies published since 1st January 2000. Key findings • Most of the published research is focused on imported characteristics – the personal characteristics of men who are violent in prison – and attempts to predict who they will be. Imported characteristics associated with prison violence include youth, history of earlier violence in prison or with violent convictions, membership of gangs, low self-control, anger, temper, mental health problems, and antisocial attitudes and personality. • The prison environment also plays a considerable role in how prisoners behave. Physically poor conditions, highly controlling regimes, or by contrast circumstances in which rules are unevenly applied or not adhered to or where prisoners do not experience staff decisions as fair or legitimate, can each heighten tensions and induce stresses potentially giving rise to conflict and assault. • Perhaps surprisingly, evidence that crowding in and of itself was a direct cause of violence was fairly weak. Research suggested that the effects of crowding are mediated through staff-prisoner interactions and that the crucial factor in maintaining order is the availability and the skills of unit staff. • Some features of prison activity make violence less likely. Places within a prison where prisoners are engaged in purposeful activities they consider valuable, such as workshops and education, are less prone to be sites of aggression. Violence is more likely to occur in places that offer less purpose, have fewer formal ground-rules, and lower staff oversight, such as cells. • A policy designed to reduce violence could be oriented towards situational control aspects of day-to-day prison management. That would require staff training in the use of styles and patterns of interaction that wield authority alongside instilling respect.

London: HM Prison and Probation Service, 2018. 9p.

By James Austin

This study examined the extent to which the Prisoner Classification Management (PMC) system improved prison operations and reduced violence between inmates. The PMC system classifies inmates into one of five categories: selective intervention -- situational (SI-S); selective intervention -- treatment (SI-T); casework control (CC); environmental structure (ES); and limit setting (LS). Data were collected from records kept by the Research and Planning Section of Washington's Department of Corrections. Data included inmate characteristics (JU67W.DAT), work assignment records (JU68W.DAT), disciplinary records (JU69W.DAT), assignment records (JU70W.DAT), and housing assignment records (JU71W.DAT). Data were also collected from a long (JUnW.DAT) and short (JU73W.DAT) PMC questionnaire. Checks for out-of-range values revealed that the data are free of detectable coding errors.

San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1990. 100p.

By Steven Dudley and Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson

El Salvador’s prison system is the headquarters of the country’s largest gangs. It is also where one of these gangs, the MS13, is fighting amongst itself for control of the organization.

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2017. 20p.