Examining the Use of Disciplinary Segregation within and across Prisons

Abstract

Prison officials have historically been afforded considerable discretion to administer sanctions designed to maintain order and security within a prison. Such discretion can generate disparate treatment of offender groups, but few studies have investigated whether sanction disparities exist within prisons, despite considerable research on sanctioning decisions made by other criminal justice actors. We use data collected from a nationally representative sample of inmates housed in state operated confinement facilities to examine potential influences of prison officials’ decisions to impose one type of sanction—disciplinary segregation. Multi-level analyses reveal that both legally relevant criteria such as prior misconduct history and extralegal factors such as age and holding a prison job affected whether an inmate was placed in disciplinary segregation for a rule violation. Also, prisons in which a greater proportion of the inmate population is involved in prison work and prisons with a higher density of inmates classified minimum-security use disciplinary segregation less frequently.

Keywords:

• disciplinary segregation
• focal concerns
• prisons
• decision making

Notes

¹ Disciplinary segregation typically refers to a type of confinement that entails separation from the general population of prison, as a result being found guilty of violations of institutional rules and regulations. Prison officials use disciplinary segregation and other sanctions to regulate inmate behavior and promote order and safety within their institutions. Inmates placed in disciplinary segregation are typically housed alone in a cell for 23 hours a day with limited access to programing, recreation, or other inmates. Inmates are typically placed in disciplinary segregation for short periods of time, such as 5 or 10 days (Browne et al., 2011).

² It is important to be clear that the data concerning disciplinary outcomes used here were taken from a nationally representative sample of inmates and may not reflect the population of rule violations (and inmates who committed those rule violations) that were processed by prison officials in the facilities included here.

³ Inmates charged with rule violations enjoy fewer rights during the prison disciplinary process than defendants facing criminal charges, but the punishment process within prisons is similar in many respects to the criminal sentencing process. Much like criminal court judges, prison disciplinary committees may impose a range of sanctions once an inmate has been found guilty of misconduct, though the range of sanctioning options is typically dictated by the severity level of the misconduct (Metcalf et al., 2013). Inmates who commit some types of misconduct (e.g. assault with a weapon), however, can also be prosecuted criminally. The data analyzed here did not permit us to account for the effect of criminal prosecution on prison officials’ disciplinary decisions. However, Eichenthal and Jacobs (1991) found that prison officials in most states refer very few cases for prosecution, and most of those cases are subsequently declined for prosecution (see also Thompson, 2009).

⁴ In order to remain consistent with the broader research on criminal justice decision-making, we use the terms legal and extralegal to categorize factors that may affect prison officials’ decision-making throughout the manuscript. However, administrative rules rather than laws typically govern prison disciplinary proceedings.

⁵ Prison officials may also be constrained by the realities of working in a prison bureaucracy that is functionally connected to a large justice system (Steiner, 2009), but such processes (e.g. available resources) might be better captured at the prison or state level(s) of analysis. We describe and assess the relevance of some prison-level processes below, but future researchers may wish to investigate the relevance of other organizational factors that may affect disciplinary segregation use.

⁶ It is also possible that inmates with mental health problems would be at greater risk for placement in disciplinary segregation. Few quantitative studies have examined the link between mental health problems and disciplinary sanctions in prisons (Adams, 1986), but scholars have raised concerns that these inmates are at risk for placement in segregation (e.g. Haney, 2009; Kupers, 2008; Smith, 2006).

⁷ The census data were collected in 2000, followed by the survey data in 2003. The difference in the two time periods raises the possibility that the environments of the prisons included in the study may have changed significantly between the two time periods. However, Steiner’s (2009) analysis of data from the 1995 and 2000 censuses revealed considerably more stability than change in prison environments.

⁸ Property crime was also examined as a potential predictor variable, but only 2% of the sample were written up or found guilty of property offenses that led to a sanctioning decision, and so it was subsequently included in the measure of nonviolent misconduct.

⁹ We also estimated the level-1 models after group mean centering the predictor variables. No substantive differences were observed, and so we report the grand mean centered results.

¹⁰ The analyses that involved determining the proportion of inmates in these prisons who engaged in misconduct were based on the full sample of inmates (rule violators and non-rule violators), whereas the analyses of the median number of misconducts committed by inmates housed in these prisons were based on the sample used in this study (rule violators). The median number of misconducts was reported instead of the mean because the distributions of the number of misconducts were skewed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

H. Daniel Butler

H. Daniel Butler is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University. His research and publications examine the use of prison sanctions and whether exposure to different prison environments influences post-release behaviors.

Benjamin Steiner

Benjamin Steiner is an associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. He holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati.