Institutional Corrections - Exam 2

Prisonization

The process by which an inmate absorbs prison customs, norms, and behaviors and adapts to prison life.

Total Institution

A closed institution in which people live under a single authority, follow rigid schedules, experience forced cohabitation, and have limited autonomy.

Pains of Imprisonment

The hardships of incarceration, including loss of freedom, autonomy, control, privacy, and access to outside relationships.

Prison Society

A community within a prison that develops its own values, roles, languages, customs, and behavioral expectations.

Inmate Subculture

The shared norms, values, roles, and behaviors that develop among incarcerated people.

Argot

Specialized prison slang used by inmates, sometimes to communicate secretly or conceal information from correctional officers.

Screw

Prison slang for a correctional officer.

Rat

Prison slang for a snitch or informant.

Kite

A note used by inmates to communicate with one another.

Merchant

Prison slang for a capitalist or someone who participates in trading goods.

Bug Doctor

Prison slang for a psychiatrist.

Real Men

Inmates who are perceived as enduring prison with dignity and toughness.

Wolves

A masculine role associated with dominance and toughness in prison culture.

Ball Buster

Prison slang for a troublemaker.

Hypermasculinity

An exaggerated emphasis on toughness, virility, autonomy, and leadership in men's prison culture.

Inmate Code

The informal rules, norms, and values that guide inmate behavior, particularly in public prison settings.

Prisonization and Criminalization

Prisonization can contribute to criminalization when inmates reject conventional social norms and adopt criminal attitudes or behaviors.

Importation Model

The theory that prison culture and behavior are influenced by characteristics and experiences inmates bring into prison, including age, gender, race, mental health, and prior criminal or gang involvement.

Deprivation Model

The theory that prison behavior is shaped by the conditions and hardships of incarceration, including loss of autonomy, crowding, intimidation, and fear.

Importation vs. Deprivation

Importation emphasizes characteristics brought into prison, while deprivation emphasizes the effects of the prison environment; both contribute to prison violence and adaptation.

Importation: Age

Younger inmates are generally more likely to disrupt prison routines, seek status, take risks, and challenge officers, while older inmates may be more tired of prison conflict and have more to lose.

Age and Violence

Younger inmates may have fewer coping skills, greater preferences for risk and chaos, and stronger desires for status, increasing the potential for violence.

Importation: Gender

Violence rates are generally higher in men's prisons. Younger male inmates may present greater management challenges, while women's prisons often experience less violence and are frequently lower security.

Importation: Race

Inmates may form racial groups for safety and support. These groupings can contribute to the development of racially segregated prison gangs.

Importation: Mental Illness

Mental illness can make inmates more vulnerable to victimization and may contribute to increased violence in some circumstances.

Deprivation: Loss of Autonomy

The loss of personal freedom, decision-making power, and control over daily life caused by incarceration.

Deprivation: Crowding

Overcrowding increases contact among inmates, contributes to illness and emotional distress, and may increase opportunities for conflict.

Deprivation: Correctional Officers

Inexperienced or younger officers may be more aggressive, and inconsistent rule enforcement can increase inmate insecurity and make prison management more difficult.

Deprivation: Victimization

Actual, witnessed, or anticipated victimization can cause fear, anxiety, anger, and hypervigilance among inmates.

Hypervigilance

A heightened state of alertness caused by the perceived threat of danger or victimization.

Deprivation: Sentence Length

Short sentences can make prison populations shift frequently, while long sentences often involve stages of initial fear, middle-stage boredom, and eventual optimism or anxiety about release.

Early Stage of a Long Sentence

Inmates may experience fear and attempt to join groups for protection.

Middle Stage of a Long Sentence

Inmates may experience boredom and focus on counting the time remaining in their sentence.

Concluding Stage of a Long Sentence

Inmates may feel optimism and fear about release and may become less likely to break prison rules.

Zimbardo's Perspective on Prison Behavior

The prison environment and social roles can create negative behavior, rather than behavior being determined entirely by individual characteristics.

Prison Gangs

Organized groups of inmates with a hierarchy and established code of conduct; they tend to be smaller and more racially segregated than community gangs.

History of Prison Gangs

The lecture identifies the Gypsy Jokers as an early gang dating to the 1950s and describes the development of several prominent prison gangs in California and Texas during the 1960s.

Estimated Gang-Related Prison Violence

The lecture estimates that approximately 50% of prison violence is attributable to gang violence.

Aryan Nation

A white supremacist, neo-Nazi prison gang founded in California during the 1960s, according to the lecture.

Black Guerrilla Family

A prison gang developed in California during the 1960s, associated with the Black Panther movement and an anti-government Marxist orientation.

Barrio Azteca

A highly organized prison gang that developed in Texas and also operates in New Mexico.

La Nuestra Familia

A prison gang developed to protect Hispanic inmates, particularly in Northern California, and associated with the Norteno identity.

Mexican Mafia

A prison gang associated with Southern California and the Sureno identity; it developed separately from La Nuestra Familia.

Norteno

A gang identity associated with La Nuestra Familia in Northern California.

Sureno

A gang identity associated with the Mexican Mafia in Southern California.

Behavioral Theory of Learning

The theory that behavior is learned through interactions with the environment and can change through experience and consequences.

Reinforcement

A consequence that increases the likelihood that a behavior will be repeated, such as attention, praise, or success.

Extinction

The reduction or disappearance of a behavior when it no longer receives a rewarding consequence or is followed by a non-rewarding consequence.

Social Learning in Prison Gangs

Inmates learn behaviors, attitudes, and norms through interactions with gang members, observation, reinforcement, and pressure to conform to group expectations.

Gang Solidarity

Loyalty and unity among gang members, often reinforced through shared rules and opposition to correctional staff.

Gang Behavior: Importation or Deprivation?

Both models help explain gang behavior. Prior gang involvement and personal characteristics reflect importation, while fear, unsafe conditions, and limited resources reflect deprivation.

Factors Contributing to Prison Violence

Prior gang involvement, younger age, perceived lack of safety and control, inadequate supervision, poor facility design, weapon availability, correctional officer attitudes, and shortages of goods and services.

Segregation as Gang Control

Separating gang members or rival groups to reduce opportunities for conflict and violence.

Isolation as Gang Control

Separating individual gang members from the general prison population to limit their influence or interactions.

Bus Therapy

The practice of transferring gang members to other facilities in an attempt to disrupt gang activity; the lecture notes that it is not effective at reducing gang membership.

Jacketing

Placing a label or notation identifying an inmate's gang affiliation in the inmate's institutional file.

Reducing Prison Gang Violence

Strategies include segregation, isolation, jacketing, reducing the underground economy, improving classification and treatment, cognitive behavioral treatment, better surveillance, improved management, and enhanced staff training.

Prison Economy

The exchange and acquisition of goods and services within prison, including authorized purchases and informal bartering.

Prison Commissary

A prison store where inmates can purchase a limited selection of approved items, such as toiletries, snacks, and writing supplies.

Bartering in Prison

Exchanging goods rather than using money, often involving items such as ramen noodles, canned fish, and postage stamps.

Underground Prison Economy

An informal, unauthorized system of trading goods and services, potentially involving food, homemade alcohol, and drugs.

Factors Driving the Underground Economy

Limited access to goods and services, shortages of desired items, and inmates' efforts to obtain resources, status, and power.

Prison Economy and Power

Inmates who control valuable goods can gain influence and entrepreneurial opportunities within the prison social system.

Underground Economy and Violence

Violence may occur when goods are stolen, debts are not repaid, disputes arise during bartering, or weapons are available.

Reducing Prison Violence Through Management

Improve inmate classification, provide treatment and cognitive behavioral programs, improve facility surveillance, strengthen management, and address fear and unsafe conditions.

Women in Prison: Population

Women make up approximately 7% of the prison population, or about 91,100 people, according to the lecture's statistics.

Women's Incarceration Trends

The number of incarcerated women tripled from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, remained relatively steady from 2010 to 2018, declined sharply during 2019–2020, and has since increased while remaining below pre-2010 levels.

Women's Drug Offenses

Approximately 25% of incarcerated women in the lecture's statistics were imprisoned for drug-law violations; cocaine was identified as a common drug involved.

Women's Violent Offenses

Approximately 35% of incarcerated women in the lecture's statistics were imprisoned for violent offenses. Intimate violence was especially relevant, and about half of the women in the cited group reportedly had committed their first and only offense.

Women's Incarceration Compared with Men's

Women are more likely than men to serve sentences for drug or other nonviolent offenses.

Racial Disparities Among Incarcerated Women

The lecture reports that in 2021, Black women were imprisoned at 1.6 times the rate of white women and Latina women at 1.3 times the rate of white women.

Abuse Histories Among Incarcerated Women

Approximately 48–80% of incarcerated women in the lecture's statistics had experienced previous sexual or physical abuse.

Girls in Juvenile Residential Placement

Girls account for approximately 15% of youth in residential placement, according to the lecture.

History of Women's Prisons

Early prisons housed men and women together. The first federal women's prison opened in West Virginia, and early reform efforts emphasized skills and independence from men before shifting toward a custodial model by the 1940s.

Custodial Model of Women's Prisons

A prison philosophy emphasizing custody and control rather than rehabilitation and personal development.

Feminine Occupational Programming

Historically, women's prison programs often emphasized traditionally feminine occupations and domestic skills rather than a broad range of vocational opportunities.

Pseudo-Families

Family-like groups formed by women in prison that provide emotional support, relationships, and a means of adapting to incarceration.

Pseudo-Families and Prison Adaptation

Pseudo-families can make adjustment to prison easier by providing support, although the effects of family-like relationships and adopted family roles on adaptation are not always clear.

Women's Prison Subculture

Women's prisons often emphasize pseudo-families and interpersonal relationships, while men's prison culture more strongly emphasizes hypermasculinity and toughness; women's prisons generally experience less violence.

Why Women's Prisons May Have Less Violence

Women may be more responsive to prison programs, serve time with a more mixed population, and be less likely to segregate by race than men.

War on Drugs

The policies and enforcement efforts targeting illegal drugs that contributed to increased incarceration, particularly among women and minority women.

War on Drugs and Women's Incarceration

Drug enforcement contributed to the growth of women's incarceration and disproportionately affected minority women.

Children of Incarcerated Mothers

Nearly 60% of women in prison have children under age 18. Children may be particularly affected when an incarcerated mother was their primary caretaker.

Pregnancy in Prison

Approximately 1 in 25 women are pregnant when admitted to prison, according to the lecture. Pregnancy raises questions about maternal healthcare, child welfare, and whether a child should live with the incarcerated mother.

Prison Nurseries

Programs in some prisons that allow eligible incarcerated mothers to live with their young children. The lecture notes that 11 states allow prison nurseries.

Potential Benefits of Prison Nurseries

They can support mother-child bonding, improve parenting opportunities, and allow a child to remain with the mother during early development.

Potential Disadvantages of Prison Nurseries

They may expose children to the prison environment, raise concerns about child development and safety, and require decisions about what arrangement best serves both mother and child.

Adoptions and Safe Families Act (ASFA)

A federal law stating that when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months, child welfare generally must evaluate the child's permanency needs, subject to applicable exceptions.

Co-Parenting from Prison

Maintaining a parental relationship while incarcerated, often through letters and phone calls, despite having little control over contact and being absent from everyday child-rearing.

Barriers to Prison Visitation

Unclear procedures, security requirements, long travel distances, child-unfriendly visitation spaces, and caregivers who are unwilling or unable to bring children to visit.

Contact Between Incarcerated Parents and Children

The lecture cites a study finding contact with children among 55% of parents in state correctional facilities and 45% of parents in federal correctional facilities.

Institutionalized Sexism

Systemic disadvantages faced by women in correctional institutions, including rural prison locations, limited visitation, fewer programs, broad classification categories, and programming that emphasizes domestic roles.

Women's Prison Location and Visitation

Women's prisons are often located in rural areas, and many states operate few women's facilities, making family visits more difficult and expensive.

Women's Prison Programming Inequality

The smaller population of incarcerated women is sometimes used to justify fewer programs, less specialized treatment, and programming focused on traditional domestic roles.

Healthcare Issues for Incarcerated Women

Women may have serious healthcare needs, including gynecological care and mental health services, that prisons must address.

Management of Prisons

Prisons resemble business organizations because staff members must work together, build working relationships, and remain committed to organizational goals despite challenges from prison culture and daily operations.

Challenges of Prison Management

Administrators and staff have limited control over who enters prison, little influence over release decisions, few resources for incentives, crowding, staff turnover, and burnout.

Correctional Officer

A staff member responsible for supervising incarcerated people, maintaining institutional security, enforcing rules, and helping maintain order.

Correctional Officer Stressors

Danger, mental strain, limited input and communication, difficulty maintaining surface order, and the challenges of working in a demanding and unpredictable environment.

Surface Order

The outward appearance of order and control in a prison, which officers must maintain even when underlying tensions remain.