The Effect of Inmates' Accounts on Disciplinary Penalties

Abstract

This study examined, by use of regression analyses, the relationship between prison inmates' accounts of infraction behaviors given at disciplinary hearings and penalties assigned for the disruptive behaviors. The accounts, as recorded on prison infraction reports, were content analyzed for the type of account given and the attribution of causality named in the account. The inmates' pleas, the judged seriousness of the infractions as originally assessed by the reporting officer, and the penalties assigned by the hearing officers were also obtained from the report. Past research has demonstrated the mitigating effect of accounts on others' negative judgments of undesirable behavior. The results in this study, however, suggest that in the prison, some accounts given with the intention to mitigate observers' judgments of blame actually increase those judgments.