An Exploratory Study of Institutional Change: Personal Control and Environmental Satisfaction in a Gang-Free Prison

Abstract

This study explores inmates' perceptions of institutional change when a Midwestern state converted a minimum-security prison to a gang-free facility. The discussion examines inmates' perspectives of the prison environment using H. Toch's 1992 eight prison environmental dimensions through focus-group interviews with three different subgroups. The first group consisted of inmates imprisoned at the facility pre- and postconversion. The second was composed of inmates transferred to the gang-free facility from other minimum-security facilities as part of the conversion. The third focus group consisted of newly admitted offenders sent directly to the facility from the correctional system's reception and classification centers. The findings suggest that two dimensions of personal control—choice and predictability—influenced inmates' acceptance of major institutional environment change. Implications for program design and institutional management are discussed.

The Effect of Gang Affiliation on Violent Misconduct Among Inmates During the Early Years of Confinement

“…Consistent with this control model of prison management, a number of strategies have been adopted in federal and state prisons to confront and control prison gangs, to identify and isolate gangaffiliated inmates, and to revise inmate classification procedures to give greater weight to the inmate's affiliation with street or prison gangs (Carlson, 2001). 6 Although a limited number of case studies suggest that organizational restructuring has been an effective means of reducing inmate misconducts (e.g., Farmer, 1988;Marquart & Crouch, 1985;Ralph & Marquart, 1991;Rivera, Cowles, & Dorman, 2003), further research is needed to assess management's ability to reduce and eliminate gang-affiliated violent misconduct effectively. NOTES 1.…”

The outside and inside in norwegian and english prisons

“…Markus 1993;Wacquant 2002aWacquant , 2002bWilson 2004), and have made contributions to the geographic literature on prisons (Hughes and 2000;Stoller 2003;Mendieta 2004;Myrick 2004). Among other examples by non-geographers about space or place in prison settings, there has been research into fear in different locations within the prison (O'Donnell and Edgar 1999), reactions to prison environments (Toch 1992;Rivera et al 2003), classifications in relation to prisoners' behaviour (Bench and Allen 2003), and constructions of confinement (Arrigo 2001). On the inside and outside, Markus (1993) examined the impacts of prison architecture on social relations (see also Johnston 2000).…”

Prisoners’ gang-related activity: the importance of bullying and moral disengagement

“…The first and largest survey of American prison gangs reported their presence in 60% of Federal and State prisons (Camp & Camp, 1985), with gang membership estimated at 2% (12 634 prisoners) of the total prison population. Gang activities have a negative effect on the running of the prison in which they are housed (Rivera, Cowles, & Dorman, 2003); they are reportedly responsible for more than 50% of prison management problems (Camp & Camp, 1985), leading in some cases to declarations of a state of emergency (Beaird, 1986;Fong, 1990). In some areas, gangs are thought to be responsible for as many as 80% of prison homicides (Gaes, Wallace, Gilman, Klein-Saffran, & Suppa, 2002).…”