Understanding and Intervening in Prison Bullying

Towards an Integrative Theory of Bullying in Residential Care for Youth

“…The proposed MMB-RS suggests that bullying in residential care is the result of dynamic and complex interactions between bullies and victims in the context of the special nature of the relatively closed physical and social residential care environment. In this way it also extends more recent applications of ecosystem frameworks to understanding bullying in secure settings [48], highlighting the contemporary nature of the model. The MMB-RS demonstrates its value to residential settings by (a) considering the social interactional components of bullying and victimisation in more detail, thus providing possible explanations of the large overlap between bullying and victimisation, as well as the ways that residential peer cultures, group dynamics and hierarchies may contribute to bullying; (b) including more specific individual variables, making a clear distinction between the psychological make-up of bullies and victims; and (c) adding some new environmental variables, which also map onto the more recent ecosystem approaches.…”

“…However, this was a basic conceptual model that specified the pathways through which bullying could develop. The MMBSS progressed from this, taking advantage of increased research into prison bullying, and it has been applied to management and intervention [38] and underpinned evaluations [39]. According to the MMBSS, prison bullying is a product of an interaction between the prison environment and prisoners' personal characteristics (for the full MMBSS [15]; for a shorter review [7]).…”

“…If new residents fail to resist adequately, they are automatically labelled as weak and placed at the bottom of the hierarchy. As in prisons, the avoidance of the vulnerable victim status may be an important part of a comfortable survival in the residential world [46] in which bullying is an adaptive behaviour or a 'survival tool' [3,44,[47][48][49].…”

“…This also captures more recent conceptual considerations of bullying in secure settings, where an ecosystem framework has been applied. In the recently proposed Prison Bullying Ecosystem Framework [48], for example, there is emphasis on the dynamic interplay between the physical environment and the individuals who are housed. It captures the external factors known to be important in ecosystems-such as climate (social climate), changes to this climate, residual structures (e.g., social hierarchies), imported structures (e.g., imported characteristics and attitudes), materials and their movement (e.g., currency and access to goods) and the physical and cultural subculture of the environment.…”

“…While the MMB-RS may seem intuitively plausible, only empirically tested, refined versions of such a model could serve as the foundation for evidence-based interventions [48,52]. To test the proposed MMB-RS, an experimental programme of research could prove particularly useful, one that also incorporates an ecosystem processing approach.…”