At the outset of the era of increasing incarceration, Albert Bandura noted that prevailing individualistic theories of moral action typically assume an internalization of behavioral standards that, in turn, create a permanent control mechanism within the person that governs their future behavior. The contextual revolution in psychology, on the other hand, demonstrates the power of social setting to elicit extreme behavior, which suggests that it is not so much the characteristics of a person that determine how he/she acts, but the characteristics of the situation toward which behavior is directed in the process of coping with and meeting one's needs under a given set of circumstances. Virtually every area of empirical psychology now recognizes the importance of social context and situation in making sense of how human behavior develops. This has implications for crime control and corrections. Exclusively individual-centered crime-control policies will fail unless they simultaneously address criminogenic situational and contextual factors. Also, prison environments are powerful molders of maladaptive behavior in normative social contexts outside of prison. Corrections policymakers must carefully examine their maintenance of punitive prison environments that nurture aggressive survival behaviors and further diminish self-esteem. Further, programs that intend to achieve positive inmate change cannot ignore the social conditions that form the contexts in which ex-inmates will live after their release. 4 notes and 91 references