By David Riley, Director of Corrections’ Psychological Service
Despite the fundamental relevance to policy makers and criminal justice administrators, the relationship between population density in prisons and inmate behaviour is still a matter of debate. While some studies have attempted to address this important question, they have yielded equivocal results; some showing that as the population density increases misconduct and violent incidents increase, while other investigations have found exactly the opposite - that increased inmate density actually leads to a reduction in rule violations including inmate on inmate and inmate on staff assaults.
From a theoretical standpoint, two different perspectives are used to account for the apparent differences in research results. Those investigations which have found increases in inmate misconduct as crowding increases are consistent with a deprivation model of imprisonment. This model holds that as a response to incarceration, a distinct prisoner social structure develops in direct opposition to existing authority, including a value system which promotes and condones various forms of prisoner misbehaviour. This model asserts that various prisoner context variables, including prison crowding, will lead to increased levels of inmate misconduct.
While the above model has a degree of intuitive appeal, it is not supported by a small number of studies which have actually found that as population density increases, various forms of inmate misconduct decrease. Additionally, a number of other investigations have found no relationship between increasing crowding levels and institutional misbehaviour. Such findings have been explained by reference to an administrative-control model which argues that conditions of the prison environment have little impact on inmate behaviour, this being rather determined by prison management variables, including the level of training of institutional staff.
In a recently published review 1 utilising the technique of meta-analysis, which statistically aggregates and analyses the results of a number of pieces of research, the authors were able to examine more closely the relationship between population density in the prison and prisoner misbehaviour. Somewhat surprisingly, although a small number of statistically significant relationships were found, these were typically very small. This indicates that, generally speaking, prison crowding did not substantially lead to increases in various forms of misconduct. A more detailed analysis of the data in the studies revealed that this result held true across all types of misconduct, and also the way in which population density within the prison was measured did not have any impact on the relationship between misconduct and crowding.
The one area where overcrowding showed a strong relationship to prison misconduct was for younger inmates, with those aged 18-25 being significantly more likely to misbehave in crowded prison environments, with increased levels of both violent and non-violent misconduct.
Corrections staff can request a copy of this paper from the Head Office Information Centre - email: infocentre@corrections.govt.nz
1 Franklin T.W., Franklin C.A., and Pratt T.C. (2006), Examining the empirical relationship between prison crowding and inmate misconduct: A meta-analysis of conflicting research results, Journal of Criminal Justice, (34, pp 401-412).
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