Institutional Aggression

Institutional Aggression

1. PRISONS

   • The importation model
     • Interpersonal factors: prisoners bring in their own personality traits and social histories with them into prison, they are not blank slates when they enter prison (Irwin and Cressey).
     • Gang membership: Allender and Mitchell found that gang members disproportionately engage in acts of prison violence. Huff: found gang members were 10 times more likely to commit murder and 3 times more likely to assault someone in public than non-gang members.
       • DeLisi et al.: found inmates with prior street gang involvement were no more likely than other inmates to engage in prison violence. May be because gang members tend to be isolated from the general population, therefore restricting their opportunities for violence.
     • Situational factors (deprivation model): states prisoner aggression is due to stressful conditions of prison (Paterline and Peterson), eg crowding and staff experience. Hodgkinson et al found that trainee nurses were more likely to suffer violent assault than experienced nurses.
       • McCorkle et al.: found overcrowding and lack of privacy influence peer violence, which is used to relieve the deprivation imposed by institutional cultures. Yet research in this area is not consistent in its findings. Nijman et al. found increased personal space failed to decrease the violence.
     • The 'pains of imprisonment': Sykes believed the loss of liberty, autonomy and security increased aggression - found that potential threat to security increased prisoners' anxiety levels. Cope with pains of imprisonment by seclusion in their cell or rebel in forms of violence against other inmates or staff.
     • Harer and Steffensmeier: found black inmates more violent, but lower rates of drug and alcohol related misconduct than white males. Parallel racial differences in US, therefore support the importation model.

2. GENOCIDE

   • Institution: refers to whole section of society, defined by ethnicity, religion, or some other significant feature
     • Dehumanisation: Humans moral inhibitions about killing other humans are changed if the target group are dehumanised, and are not worthy of moral consideration. Rwandan genocide: influential Hutu radio stations encouraged Hutu listeners to murder their Tutsi neighbours by calling them "cockroaches."
       • The importance of bystanders:
     • Obedience to authority: Milgram believed the Holocaust was a result of pressures, forced Nazi soldiers to obey leaders. Told to do something by a figure of authority explanation for the ease of the Nazi regime to make soldiers kill innocent, unarmed people.
       • Mandel rejects this - argues that Milgram's account is monocausual (ignores other possible causes). Goldhagen suggests that it was anti-Semitism that condoned the Holocaust.
   • Staub: stages in the process of genocide: 1) difficult social conditions, 2) scapegoating of weaker group, 3) negative evaluation of target group, 4) moral values and rules becoming inapplicable, killing begins, 5) Passivity of bystanders enhances the process