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Administrative Control and Inmate Homicide

NCJ Number
193223
Journal
Homicide Studies Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2002 Pages: 84-103
Author(s)
Michael D. Reisig
Date Published
February 2002
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article assesses the relationship between prison administration and inmate violence.
Abstract
The relationship between prison administration and inmate violence has been of interest to social scientists for several decades. Previous research has found that formal coercive actions disrupted the informal social controls that regulated behavior among the inmate community thus increasing the likelihood of violence. Advocates of the “administrative-control” model hypothesize that inmate violence is more common in facilities where officials fail to effectively exercise their authority. The hypothesis was the question of whether inmate homicides were more common in prisons experiencing administrative breakdown or not. The data were collected from adult, higher custody State prisons in 1986. There was an 80 percent response rate of a survey distributed to a sample of maximum- and medium-security facilities. The findings offered empirical support for the administrative control model. Facilities where prison administrators failed to resolve conflicts between the administration and frontline staff or had a more visible gang presence also reported higher rates of inmate homicide. These results support the notion that the quality of prison life is attributable to the ability of prison administrators to exercise official authority effectively. These findings strongly suggest that calls to give greater weight to administrative action in prisons should not be dismissed. Earlier specifications of the role of formal reward mechanisms are incomplete when applied to the contemporary prison setting. 4 tables, 13 notes, 48 references