Maintaining Prison Order: Understanding Causes of Inmate Misconduct within and Across Ohio Correctional Institutions

The priority that prison administrators place on promoting orderly and safe institutions has generated numerous studies of the correlates to inmate deviance (disorder).These studies have revealed that inmate characteristics, features of facility environments, and management practices are all potentially relevant to an explanation of inmate deviance, suggesting that properly specified models should include measures of concepts from each of these three predictor domains.Determination of the relative effects of both inmate and facility characteristics which depict characteristics of inmates, facility environments, and managerial practices is important for improving the safety of both inmates and staff, not to mention informing theories of prison disorder.Related specifically to management practices could be how inmates perceive the rules designed to maintain facility order and the correctional staff who enforce them.That is, whether inmates perceive the rules of a correctional facility and its staff as legitimate.Whether inmates perceive the rules of a facility and its staff as legitimate could be linked to the odds of misconduct via inmate (dis)respect toward authority.Despite the theoretical and policy relevance, however, this particular issue has received little empirical attention.This study involved an examination of the relative effects of measures of inmate characteristics, features of facility environments, and managerial practices, including the perceived legitimacy of the correctional staff, on both the prevalence and incidence of violent, drug, and other nonviolent misconduct.These processes were examined within and across all the correctional facilities for adults in Ohio.Findings revealed that predictor variables depicting characteristics of inmates, facility environments, and management, as well as the perceived legitimacy of the correctional staff were all relevant to an explanation of prison disorder.In light of the findings, a theoretical model is outlined which can incorporate concepts depicting characteristics of inmates, facility environments, and managerial practices. Empirical Studies of Prison Disorder 1990-2007In order to update the findings from the reviews discussed above, I conducted a systematic review of studies of indicators of prison disorder (e.g., self harm, misconduct, victimization) published between 1990 and 2007.The journals that were reviewed for relevant studies included