Institutional aggression in prisons

 - One theory is that, because prisons are full of dangerous people, these violent characteristics must be 'imported into the prison' when they are sentenced - dispositional explanation. 

 - A second theory fosuses on the stressful nature of the prison itself and how that influences the inmates that are subject to this form of stress - situational explanation. 

Dispositional explanation - The Importation model. 

Irwin and Cressey claim that inmates bring with them to prison their violent pasts and draw on their experiences in an environment where toughness and physical exploitation are important survival skills.  

- Code of the streets - a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behaviour, such as violence. This code lacks respect and defines how some individuals behave once in prison, especially if the code relates with gang membership. 

Gang Membership

This is strongly related to violence and other forms of anti-social behaviour. Pre-prision gang membership appears to be an important factor of prison misconduct. Allender and Marcell found that gang members disproportionally engage in acts of prison violence. Members of street gangs offend at higher levels while in prison compafred to those who are non-gang members. 

- study of over 1000 inmates (Drury and DeLisi) found that individuals who had been members of gangs prior to imprisonment were significantly more liekly to commit various types of misconduct in prison, including murder, hostage taking and assault with a deadly weapon. 

The role of dispostional characteristics

- anger, anti-social personality style and impulsivity - Wang and Diamond found that these three individual characteristics were stronger predictors of institutional aggression than type of offence committed. - anger was the best of the three. 

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