Does Military Service Make the Experience of Prison Less Painful? Voices From Incarcerated Veterans

• Author: Kristen L. Stives,Makeela J. Wells,Peter B. Wood,David C. May
• DOI: 10.1177/0887403416628600
• Published date: 01 October 2017
• Date: 01 October 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles for Special Issue

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2017, Vol. 28(8) 770 –789

© The Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0887403416628600

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Articles for Special Issue

Does Military Service Make

the Experience of Prison

Less Painful? Voices From

Incarcerated Veterans

David C. May1, Kristen L. Stives1, Makeela J. Wells1,

and Peter B. Wood2

Abstract

There are more than 100,000 military veterans incarcerated in prisons throughout the

United States. Nevertheless, almost nothing is known about these veterans or their

incarceration experiences. In this article, we present results from a survey of more than

1,100 inmates in a large state correctional system to determine how inmates who are

military veterans compare with inmates who have not served in the military in terms of

their willingness to serve alternative sanctions to avoid imprisonment. The data reveal that,

with the exception of military service, inmates who are military veterans are significantly

less likely than their counterparts who have not served in the military to accept a variety

of community sanctions over prison. In addition, Black inmates who have not served in

the military are somewhat different than White inmates who have served in the military

in those choices. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.

Keywords

prison, criminal justice policy, crime control policy

For decades, military service has been viewed as a route through which individuals

could improve their life circumstances while serving their country. The military offers

stability, training, monetary incentives, and a number of other benefits to those indi-

viduals who choose to serve. Service in the military has provided a number of

1Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, USA

2Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, USA

Corresponding Author:

David C. May, Department of Sociology, Mississippi State University, P.O. Box C, Mississippi State,

MS 39762, USA.

Email: Dmay@soc.mstate.edu

628600CJPXXX10.1177/0887403416628600Criminal Justice Policy ReviewMay et al.

research-article2016

May et al. 771

educational and career opportunities for veterans that they might not have achieved

otherwise. For some Americans, military service is a way of life and some criminolo-

gists suggest that military service is a key turning point that leads to criminal desis-

tance (Sampson & Laub, 1993).

Despite the aforementioned benefits of military service, in general, military service

has been declining over previous decades, with large decreases in the number of

enlisted males and slight increases in the number of enlisted females (Mumola, 2000).

As of 2015, there were 1.3 million active duty military personnel and 800,000 people

in the reserves (Department of Defense, 2015). The number of active duty personnel

is about 9% smaller than it was in 1995, when there were 1.5 million active duty ser-

vice members (Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, 2014). The mili-

tary is typically viewed as a male institution, with women representing close to 15%

of military personnel. In terms of race and ethnicity, more than 30% of military per-

sonnel identify as a minority, with African Americans and Hispanics comprising

16.5% and 11.6% of the total military population, respectively (Office of the Deputy

Assistant Secretary of Defense, 2014).

Military service has profound impacts on those individuals who serve and a large

body of research exists around those impacts. Nevertheless, one area of research that

is much smaller is veteran involvement in the criminal justice system. In this article,

we hope to expand that area of research by using data from more than 1,100 inmates

incarcerated in a Midwestern state to compare the perceptions of the punitiveness of

prison among incarcerated veterans with those of their incarcerated counterparts who

have not served in the military. We determine that military service does affect those

perceptions and the impact differs substantially between Blacks and Whites.

Predictors of Military Enlistment

Individuals join the military for a variety of reasons. Previous research has examined

many factors that affect an individual’s motivation to enlist in the military, including

gender, socioeconomic status, geographic location, family composition, and the pres-

ence of a military family member (Elder, Wang, Spence, Adkins, & Brown, 2010).

Each of these factors is discussed briefly below.

Although women have begun to enlist in the military in greater numbers, and recent

congressional decisions now allow females to serve in combat jobs where they had

previously been excluded (Losey, 2015), their presence in the armed forces still

remains relatively small. In fact, women remain about half as likely as men to join the

military (Bachman, Segal, Freedman-Doan, & O’Malley, 2000; Kleykamp, 2006;

Segal, Segal, Bachman, Freedman-Doan, & O’Malley, 1998). Segal and colleagues

(1998) found that women’s military enlistment is only slightly greater in areas where

there is a greater military visibility.

In addition, individuals from lower socioeconomic status and from states located in

the southern region of the United States are more likely to enlist in the military com-

pared with other states (Bachman et al., 2000). Enlistment likelihood appears to be

greatest among men living in single-parent families and lowest among individuals