Physical Violence Inside Prisons

• Author: Ronet Bachman,Jane Siegel,Jing Shi,Nancy Wolff,Cynthia L. Blitz
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854806296830
• Published date: 01 May 2007
• Date: 01 May 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

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PHYSICAL VIOLENCE INSIDE PRISONS

Rates of Victimization

NANCY WOLFF

CYNTHIA L. BLITZ

JING SHI

JANE SIEGEL

Rutgers University

RONET BACHMAN

University of Delaware

This study estimates prevalence rates of inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate physical victimization. Inmate participants

were drawn from 13 adult male prisons and 1 female prison operated by a single mid-Atlantic state. A total of 7,221 men and

564 women participated. Rates of physical victimization varied significantly by gender, perpetrator, question wording, and

facility. Prevalence rates of inmate-on-inmate physical violence in the previous 6 months were equal for males and females.

Men had significantly higher rates of physical violence perpetrated by staff than by other inmates. By facility, inmate-on-

inmate prevalence rates ranged from 129 to 346 per 1,000, whereas the range for staff-on-inmate was 83 to 321 per 1,000

(but the difference was not statistically significant).

Keywords: prison violence; physical victimization; prevalence rates

Violence is a pervasive feature of prison life (Bowker, 1980; Irwin, 1980; Johnson, 1987).

It is not surprising that violence is the leading by-product of prisons because hundreds

or thousands of people with antisocial tendencies or behavior are aggregated and confined in

close and frequently overcrowded quarters characterized by material and social deprivation

(Bowker, 1980; Toch, 1985; Wolfgang & Ferracuti, 1976). Even without assuming a

Hobbesian-like character, one would reasonably predict that environments such as these

would bring out the worst in human nature. Survival instincts are notoriously primitive and

the behavior code of prison life (Clemmer, 1958; Gilligan, 1997; Sykes, 1958), much like the

code of the streets in impoverished communities (Anderson, 1999), reflects such instincts.

Recent research on prison violence has focused on explaining variation in prison envi-

ronments regarding safety, misconduct, and physical assaults by using models of depriva-

tion, importation, and institutional management (Keller & Wang, 2005; Wooldredge, Griffin,

& Pratt, 2001), but research that examines the epidemiology and context of physical vio-

lence inside prisons is almost nonexistent. Indeed, more attention, although limited, has been

focused on measuring and documenting sexual violence (Gaes & Goldberg, 2004) than

physical violence in prisons. The limited attention given prison violence is testimony to the

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This study was supported by the Office of Justice Programs (Grant OJP-2004-RP-

BX-0012) and the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant P20 MH66170). Correspondence concerning this

article should be addressed to Nancy Wolff, Center for Mental Health Services & Criminal Justice Research,

Rutgers University, 30 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901; e-mail: nwolff@ifh.rutgers.edu.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 34, No. 5, May 2007 588-599

DOI: 10.1177/0093854806296830

© 2007 American Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology