Dispositional & Situational Explanations of Aggression in Prisons (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Dispositional explanations

• A dispositional explanation of aggression is one which assumes that people are individuals with specific

  • personality traits

  • likes/dislikes

  • skills

  • personal history

  • attitudes

  • beliefs, etc.

• People do not neatly compartmentalise their behaviours to fit each specific situation; rather, they influence and act on social contexts according to their disposition

• Offenders who are imprisoned enter prison with a distinct set of personality traits, just as they would any situation

  • This is explained by the importation model (Irwin & Cressey, 1962)

• The importation model argues that prisons are not completely insulated from the happenings of everyday life outside, as it is the real world from which inmates come and they bring with them a subculture typical of criminality

  • This includes beliefs, values, norms, attitudes, and a history of learning experiences as well as other personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and class

• Inmates import the willingness to use violence as a means of negotiating their way through the unfamiliar and frightening prison environment, in which existing inmates use aggression to establish power, status, influence and access to resources; the 'convict subculture'

  • Aggression is therefore the product of individual characteristics of inmates rather than of the prison environment, so inmates predisposed to using violence would be likely to do so in any setting, whether or not they were experienced in prison

Situational explanations

• A situational explanation of aggression in prisons uses the deprivation model (Clemmer, 1958), which places the causes of institutional aggression within the prison environment itself

• Situational explanations draw from a person’s

  • experience

  • culture

  • upbringing

  • education

  • lifestyle.

• Harsh prison conditions are stressful for inmates, who cope by resorting to aggressive and often violent behaviour, with deprivation of freedom, independence, goods and services, safety and heterosexual intimacy all contributing

  • Deprivation of material goods is especially important because it increases competition amongst inmates to acquire them, accompanied by a corresponding increase in aggression

• Situational explanations have some relevance to the frustration-aggression hypothesis

• Aggression is also influenced by the nature of the prison regime, as an unpredictable regime that regularly uses 'lock ups' to control behaviour creates frustration, reduces stimulation by barring more interesting activities, and reduces access to 'goods' such as television

  • This is a recipe for violence, which becomes an adaptive solution to the problem of deprivation

• A key situational factor which contributes to aggressive behaviour in prisons is that of overcrowding, as this exacerbates the negative effects of prison life and may be linked to the idea of de-individuation as a factor in aggression (e.g. loss of self-awareness and identity in a crowd)

Research which investigates institutional aggression in the context of prisons

• DeLisi et al. (2011) – studied 813 juvenile delinquents confined in institutions in California who had brought into confinement several negative dispositional features, including childhood trauma, a history of substance abuse, and a history of anger and irritability

  • These inmates were more likely to engage in suicidal activity and sexual misconduct, and committed more acts of physical violence that were brought to the attention of the parole board, compared with a control group of inmates with fewer negative dispositional features

• Camp & Gaes (2005) – studied 561 male inmates with similar criminal histories and predispositions to aggression, half placed in low-security Californian prisons and half in the next-highest security category

  • 33% of prisoners in the low security prisons and 36% in the higher category prisons were involved in aggressive misconduct within two years, suggesting that features of the prison environment are significantly less important predictors of aggressive behaviour than characteristics of inmates

• Cunningham et al. (2010) – analysed 35 inmate homicides in Texas prisons and found that the motivations for the behaviours were linked to some of the deprivations identified by Clemmer, particularly arguments over drugs, homosexual relationships and personal possessions

• Steiner (2009) – investigated the factors that predicted inmate aggression in 512 prisons in the United States, and found that inmate-on-inmate violence was more common in prisons where there was a higher proportion of female staff, overcrowding, and more inmates in protective custody for their own safety

  • These are all prison-level factors, independent of the individual characteristics of prisoners, and they reliably predicted aggressive behaviour in line with the deprivation model

Evaluation of institutional aggression in the context of prisons

Strengths

• Camp & Gaes's study provides strong evidence for the importation model because it was a field experiment with random allocation of inmates to prisons of different security levels, allowing more valid conclusions than correlational studies or natural experiments

• Both models have good application to possible interventions and therapies which could be used to make life less difficult for both prisoners and prison staff e.g. social skills training, anger management, more space per prisoner

Limitations

• DiIulio (1991) claims the importation model is inadequate because it ignores the role of prison officials and how prisons are run, proposing instead an administrative control model (ACM)

  • Poorly managed prisons, characterised by weak leadership, unofficial rules, distant staff and few educational opportunities, are more likely to experience serious inmate violence such as homicides and rioting

• Hensley et al. (2002) studied 256 male and female inmates of two prisons in Mississippi, a state which allows conjugal visits from partners specifically to have sex, and found no link between involvement in these visits and reduced aggressive behaviour

  • The deprivation model predicts that a lack of freedom and heterosexual contact should lead to high levels of aggressive behaviour, so this shows that situational factors do not affect prison violence in the way the model predicts

Issues & Debates

• Most research into institutional aggression is gender biased, as it focuses on male prisoners

  • This may lead to beta bias — assuming findings apply equally to female inmates, despite potential differences in how aggression is expressed or experienced

  • For example, female prisoners may show less physical aggression and more relational or emotional responses, which these models often overlook

  • This lack of representation limits the universality and validity of both the importation and deprivation models