The Influence of Prison Gang Affiliation on Violence and Other Prison Misconduct

Abstract

Most of the empirical research and practically all of the fieldwork conducted on gangs has been devoted to street gangs. In this article, Bureau of Prisons automated data were used to evaluate the contribution of prison gang affiliation to violence and other forms of misconduct within prisons. The authors also examined a measure of gang embeddedness to see if, similar to street gang research, it can be shown that core members of a prison gang were more likely to commit violent and other kinds of misconduct than were more peripheral members. Both specific and more generic gang indicators were related to violence and other forms of official prison misconduct. A composite measure of gang misconduct represents the threat that particular gangs pose to prison order. The “threat index” is model based and provides a graphical representation of the relative magnitude and heterogeneity of the threat posed by different gang affiliations.

L’évaluation de la validité prédictive du LS/CMI dans la prédiction des incidents disciplinaires en prison

“…Dans un deuxième temps, nous évaluons la contribution de certains facteurs incontournables dans la prédiction des incidents disciplinaires. Des facteurs tels que la surpopulation (Megargee, 1976 ;Gaes et McGuire, 1985 ;Rubback et Carr 1993 ;Gendreau et al, 1997 ;Wooldredge et al, 2001 ;Reisig, 2002 ;Tartaro, 2002), l'âge du détenu (Flanagan, 1983 ;Goetting et Howsen, 1986 ;Mackenzie, 1987 ;Cooper et Werner, 1990 ;Cao et al, 1997 ;Gendreau et al, 1997 ;Wooldredge et al, 2001 ;Cunningham et Sorensen, 2007) et son affi liation au crime organisé (Shelden, 1991 ;Gaes et al, 2002 ;DeLisi et al, 2004 ;Griffi n et Hepburn, 2006 ;Cunningham et Sorensen, 2007 ;Trulson, 2007) ont démontré dans les études passées une infl uence signifi cative sur la commission d'incidents disciplinaires en milieu carcéral.…”

“…La plupart des études constatent que cette affi liation en milieu carcéral augmente la probabilité de commettre des incidents disciplinaires violents (Ralph et Marquart, 1991 ;Shelden, 1991 ;Gaes et al, 2002 ;DeLisi et al, 2004 ;Griffi n et Hepburn, 2006 ;Trulson, 2007). Nos résultats semblent indiquer l'effet inverse.…”

Risk Markers for Sexual Predation and Victimization in Prison

“…This represented an ambitious and broad based study goal but one that we believed was timely given advances in the clinical assessment of violence risk over the past decade and the availability of structured clinical assessment paradigms that had proven increasingly accurate and useful for predicting and managing violence in the community (Monahan et al, 2001;Webster, Douglas, Eaves & Hart, 1997;Borum, Bartel & Forth, 2002). We also believed that the field of clinical risk assessment could inform the correctional risk literature which up until this time had focused almost exclusively on the use of demographic, criminal history, and institutional variables to classify offenders and predict physical violence in prison and jails among primarily male inmates (Wooldredge, 1994;Gaes, Wallace, Gilman, Klein-Saffran & Suppa, 2002;Hueber, 2003;Irwin, 2005).…”

Définition des gangs et identification des membres à des fins policières1

“…Une fois placés sous la responsabilité du système de justice pénale, les délinquants associés aux gangs risquent de faire l'objet d'une surveillance particulière de la part des intervenants. Ils seront fort possiblement jugés à plus haut risque de récidive (Guay, 2012) compte tenu de leur unique affiliation aux gangs de rue et pour-raient faire l'objet d'une prise en charge plus sécuritaire en raison de leur implication accrue dans les incidents disciplinaires et de violence (DeLisi, 2003 ;Gaes, Wallace, Gillman, Klein-Saffran et Suppa, 2002). Ultimement, ils se verront octroyer moins facilement des mesures d'élargissement de la peine, et briseront plus fréquemment les conditions de leur libération conditionnelle (McShane, Williams et Dolny, 2003).…”