The Social Context of Inmate Misbehavior: A Contextual Analysis of Infractions in North Carolina Prisons

Abstract

Inmate misbehavior is a relatively common phenomenon in correctional facilities throughout the United States. While many steps have been taken by correctional authorities to curb such behavior, their level of success is hampered by the lack of information on how social context affects inmate behavior. This research proposes to look at how context interacts with individual characteristics to affect rates of prison infractions in a variety of prison settings. Two major theories of inmate misbehavior, importation and prisonization, are tested and extended using hierarchical linear models on 1997 North Carolina prison population data.