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Prisons and jails are institutions that are rehabilitative and secure; however, even the most secure correctional facilities experience disorder and violence on a daily basis. Both individual and institutional factors, such as gangs, architectural design, management philosophy, and expressive/ instrumental violence, are cited as problems that corrections experience. In this article, the most important causal features of institutional violence are discussed and explained as elucidated in the literature. Also, a brief discussion of classical theory of crirninology is followed by individual causative factors of prison/jail violence and disorder.
Classical Theory
The classical school of criminology proposed three tenets of human nature: people have free will, are hedonistic, and rational (Miller, Schreck, & Tewksbury, 2006). According to these basic principles, people make choices based on the pleasure/pain principle and calculate the beneficial outcomes including the consequences of criminal action. The theory of social contract within the classical school assumed that ". . .people come together and form a society because the social stability and protection such an arrangement affords is worth more to them than the piece of personal freedom they must lose in exchange" (Curran & Renzetti, 2001, p. 6). Inherent in nature are the principles of right and wrong where crime is an immoral behavior that denigrates the quality of the bond formed with society (Schmalleger, 2006). Prisons and jails are law-based institutions with rules specific to the intended population for utilitarian purposes and based on the social contract. The discussion of security threat groups (STGs) is based on basic principles of the criminological school, which is inclusive in the discussion. STGs and the violence that they generate are individual factors and prerogatives that follow offenders from the street to correctional facilities and are a major cause of institutional violence.
Prison and Jail Disorder
There are three theories of institutional violence that correctional organizations face on a daily basis:
1. The importation model posits that small groups of inmates come to institutions with a proclivity for gang behavior and subcultural values. The behavior increases with incarceration, and that disorder arises from the concentration approach (McCorkle, Miethe, & Drass, 1995; Mears & Reisig, 2006).
2. The deprivation theory assumes higher levels of disorder occur if inmates are dispossessed of security, heterosexual relationships, and good...