Exploring the Association between Procedural Justice in Jails and Incarcerated People’s Commitment to Institutional Rules

ABSTRACT

The process-based model of self-regulation has been evaluated throughout various agencies of the criminal justice system. However, the model has yet to be tested within jails. The goal of the current study is to fill this gap in the literature. Using a sample of 290 men and women incarcerated in a county jail, this study examines the association between inmates’ procedural justice perceptions of detention officers and their commitment to institutional rules. Results suggest that net of demographic factors, prior misconduct, and a set release date, procedural justice is the strongest predictor of self-regulation in jails. Policy implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Jails

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We also have a self-reported measure of offense type currently incarcerated for, however, including it would result in the dropping of an additional 33 respondents. Models were run with the reduced sample including offense type. Offense type had no effect on commitment to institutional rules and none of the variables in the model changed in direction or significance. As such, we chose to omit offense type and retain a larger analytic sample.