Why People in Prison Disobey the Rules: The Influence of Legitimacy on Misconduct in South Korean Prisons

ABSTRACT

Research has demonstrated that individuals with higher levels of perceived legitimacy toward police or legal institutions are less likely to engage in antisocial behavior. However, a limited number of empirical studies have directly examined the relationship between the perceived legitimacy of prison officers and misconduct in prisons. The goal of this study is to examine the role of legitimacy in misconduct among people incarcerated in South Korean prisons. Using a nationwide sample of adults in correctional facilities in South Korea, logistic regression models are used to examine whether the perceived legitimacy of prison officers is associated with verbal and physical aggression against officers and other incarcerated persons. The equality of regression coefficients test is employed to examine whether the independent variable has varying impacts on each measure of interpersonal aggression. The study found that perceived legitimacy was negatively related and varied with the target of misconduct, with a larger influence on interpersonal aggression toward prison officers than those toward other incarcerated individuals. The findings are consistent with the normative perspective and suggest the need for policies encouraging just and fair management of prison populations by prison officers to sustain order in prisons. Policy implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Legitimacy
• normative influence
• misconduct
• procedural fairness
• prison order maintenance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15564886.2024.2367446

Notes

1. For the purposes of brevity, “misconduct” refers to verbal and physical aggression committed by persons who were incarcerated.

2. The high response rate was possible because of the cooperation of the Korea Correctional Service (KCS) and the correctional facilities with the research team. To discuss the survey date and time, the research team frequently got in touch with the person in charge. The researcher had previously given the KCS the sample size for each prison. To communicate the number of participants and request collaboration, the KCS distributed an official paper to each prison. Two weeks prior to the survey administration, the research team contacted the KCS to request that the researcher would visit and conduct the survey with an official document outlining their cooperation. After the sampled prisons received the official document, prison officers informed incarcerated individuals of the purpose of the survey and asked them whether they were willing to participate in the survey. This procedure may lead to the high response rate (Woo et al., 2016).

3. The study tested the validity of the use of a multiple imputation method by comparing multiple imputation models with complete case analysis models. Overall, the magnitude and direction of the coefficients were similar in both multiple imputation and complete case analysis models. However, in the complete case analysis models, standard errors in all variables were larger than those in the multiple imputation models. Also, in the model of interpersonal aggression toward incarcerated persons, perceived officer legitimacy, a variable of interest, was found to be statistically significant at the p < .05 level when the multiple imputation method was used, but not in the complete case analysis model. The findings suggest that complete case analysis should be avoided because this approach can bias estimates and reduce statistical power. In other words, applying a multiple imputation method is recommended when analyzing data in the presence of missing values. The comparison of the multiple imputation model to the complete case analysis model is available in supplemental tables.

4. For clarification, fighting is mutual combat, and an assault is an act where an individual strikes another individual, i.e., there is a clear attacker and victim.

5. The target sample size varied across facilities due to practical constraints.