NCJ Number
91659
Journal
Prison Journal Volume: 63 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring/Summer 1983) Pages: 24-31
Date Published
1983
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This essay discusses the nature of prison violence using a typological approach to categorize violent phenomena in correctional institutions according to their controls, participants, and goals.
Abstract
In free society, internal controls (internalized norms, values, and beliefs), reinforced by friends, relatives, and major social institutions, are more important than formal external controls on violence; whereas, in prison, the relative influence of internal and external social controls is reversed. Internal social controls are far weaker in prison because of the high percentage of inmates who have not internalized normative society's values and conditioning for nonviolence and the prison subculture's tendency to use violence to deal with frustration and various social problems. Overall, the factors tending to inhibit violent behavior in prison are physical control; antiviolence norms, values, and beliefs; fear of reprisals; legal and administrative sanctions; the profit motive; social acceptance; and housekeeping considerations. When violence does occur, it has both instrumental and expressive components. Instrumental prison violence is rational in that it aims at achieving some goal, while expressive violence is the nonrational, spontaneous release of tension through violent behavior. In the daily world of prison events, expressive and instrumental violence are often blended. Although the basic model of prisoner-prisoner violence also applies to prisoner-staff and staff-prisoner violence, differences exist in the distribution of types of violence because of the significant power imbalance between prisoners and staff.