Interpersonal relationships among inmates and prison violence

Abstract

The present study explored the benefits of having a friend (i.e., an inmate who helped make another inmate a better person) in prison for males and females. Additional qualitative and quantitative analyses explored gender differences in terms of the frequency with which male and female inmates reported having violent physical encounters in prison, gender differences in inmates’ reasons for fighting physically, and gender differences between inmates who reported having a close friend and their likelihood of engaging in prison violence. Incarcerated men and women provided similar descriptions of quality friendship; however, men fought more frequently and for different reasons than women did.

Keywords:

• prison violence
• interpersonal relationships
• inmate friendships

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Rebecca Trammell, Dr. Pauline Brennan and the late Dr. Robbin Ogle for their advice and support on this project. In addition, this project would not have been possible without the hard work Abby Vandenberg, Mackenzie Patrick, Jessica Turner and Mike Johnson who spent many hours conducting and transcribing interviews.

Notes

^1. Specifically, Prison One held minimum and medium security male inmates. Prison Two held medium and maximum security male inmates. Prison Three held minimum, medium, and maximum security male inmates. Prison Four held medium and maximum security male inmates as well as death row inmates. Finally, the women's prison held minimum, medium and maximum security inmates. Data were not available on individual inmates’ specific custody status at the time of the study.

^2. Some of the selected inmates had been released or transferred, could not be found, were at court, had been moved to administrative segregation or simply refused staff requests to meet with researchers.

^3. While women in the sample were not significantly different from the general population in terms of age, there was a slight difference among the men. However, when three outliers (men over 68-years-old) were removed from the analysis, sampled men were not significantly older or younger than the general prison population.

^4. Inmates were told that physical violence could be considered anything from a minor shove or slap to a serious fight or attack. Those who experienced violence were asked a series of follow-up questions about the severity of, and circumstances surrounding, the violent incident.

^5. Because of the small number of men reporting these causes of fights, the gender difference was non-significant.

^6. As with the male sample, a logistic regression analysis was performed to confirm these results. However, the regression model as a whole was not significant, possibly because of the relatively small number of female respondents. As a result, regression results are not shown here, but are available on request.