24/24 Outline and Evaluate Research into Institutional Aggression

Outline and Evaluate Research into Institutional Aggression (24 marks)

Institutions are ‘structures and mechanisms of social order and co-operation governing the behaviour of a body of individuals’. Examples of these mechanism are prisons, hospitals, schools and psychiatric hospitals where large numbers are brought together and their behaviour is governed by a set of rules. Some psychologists believe that aggression within institutions occur as a result of the social context influencing their behaviour and willingness to inflict harm rather than the individual themselves. Zimbardo suggested that we should consider the factors in the situation that cause acts of evil rather than suggest people are ‘good’ or ‘bad’. This was evident in his famous prison study (1971) where ‘normal’ people such as the guard, Hellman, became extremely violent towards the prisoners because of the situation. In this experiment a sample of 24 male participants was used and each participant was given a full physical and mental evaluation to ensure full health. Participants were then randomly allocated into roles as guards or prisoners. As the participants started to get into their roles the guards became more and more controlling. Guard Hellman was found to be one of the most aggressive officers. Before Hellman had entered the experiment he had described himself as someone who loves all people. Zimbardo concluded that it was the 'situation' that had made Hellman behave the way he did. This research supports the situational explanation of aggression because it emphasises how people will act aggressively when they are in a certain situation. Paterline and Peterson put forward that the stressful conditions of the institution (overcrowding, unexperienced staff) leads to the institutional aggression that Zimbardo found in his experiment. This overcrowding, loss of rights, and powerlessness causes aggression (Steffensmeier) and is due to the patient/prisoner becoming deprived. The deprivation model suggests that this factor is the main cause of institutional aggression, with a focus lack of the needs and basic materials of the people in these establishments being severely deprived (i.e. outside contact in prisons, rights, freedom) and reacting with hostility to cope/regain these things.

Sykes investigated prison aggression in particular and found that innate behaviour is a response to the problems of adjustment posed by deprivations or ‘pains’ of imprisonment. The five deprivations were liberty, autonomy, goods/services, heterosexual relationships and security. These deprivations cause stress and frustration in prisoners and aggression is a response to release this stress. Moreover, this aggression also enables a prisoner to gain control over the oppressive social order imposed upon them. McCorkle et al (1995) conducted a large-scale study of more than 371 US state prisons to investigate the effects of environmental influences of inmate violence rates. The variables they measured were crowding, security level, officer-to-inmate ratio, program involvement, size of institution and unemployment rate of the local area around the establishment. McCorkle found that the white-black guard ratio were positively correlated to assault rates, suggesting that institutional violence is partly a racial issue and not deprivation. However, it may be that the prisoners are deprived of ‘respected’ prison guards, with white, racist prisoners being controlled by black guards of whom they don’t respect and vice versa. The study also found that poor prison management led to individual acts of violence, proving the deprivation model- with aggression being implemented when the prisoners are denied a stress-free experience- and that the removing of privileges triggered outbursts of individual violence. The more prisoners were involved with education and skills programmes, the more the decrease in institutional violence suggesting that the more prisoners were given things the less they were deprived and prone to violence. Interestingly though, overcrowding did not influence inmate-on-inmate assault rates disproving the deprivation model and showing the study to lack internal validity. Nijman also found that increasing personal space didn’t reduce the levels of violence among patients in psychiatric institutions, suggesting that this factor isn’t specific enough in its objectivity. In McCorkle’s study, the very large sample is a significant positive of this experiment, and the real-life quality and nationalism is another- the realism making it easier to generalise. Apart from the study’s findings half disproving the study, the array of variables that were measured create a rounded and comprehensive study that has accounted for the many major factors that may influence institutional aggression. However, despite its nationalism, it’s still culturally biased to the U.S.A and may not reflect prison environments from around the rest of the world. It is also supposedly androcentric, with female prisons not being mentioned and again, making it hard to generalise.

The deprivation model has much research support. Wilson studied Prison Woodhill in the early 90s and changed the environment, making it less claustrophobic, played radio sound to mask the prison sounds and reduced the too-hot temperature. These changes virtually eradicated assaults on prison staff and inmates, proving that small considerations and amendments on basic deprivations can improve violence rates. This study was conducted in a period where the situational factors in prisons would be much different to todays and therefore can’t be relied upon completely. Gaes and Macuire’s research also found that the deprivation of space, or overcrowding, led to prison violence.

There is also research on unexperienced staff. Davies and Burgess found that the length of service by prison staff affected assaults, where more experienced officers were less likely to suffer assault. In a hospital setting, Hodgkinson found a similar result. With trainee nurses more likely to suffer violent assaults than experienced nurses. These studies demonstrate that the person’s deprivation of experienced staff which, in turn, reduce the stress of the experience and make the adjustment easier, led to prison violence. However, it could be said that the inexperienced staff were easier to target their pent-up derivational aggression onto. In this case, inexperienced staff are not a deprivation for prisoners but are the easiest recipient of institutional aggression due to deprivation.

Individual differences contend with the deprivation model and pose a weakness. Kane and Janus suggest that people with serious criminal convictions are more likely to be aggressive. This suggests that the reason why individuals have been incarcerated may be the determining factor for institutional aggression. Crimes such as fraud are non-aggressive, and those who are in prison because of these crimes are less likely to become aggressive rather than those who have been convicted of assault under derivational circumstances. Poole and Regoli found that pre-institutional violence was the best indicator of violence in a juvenile detention centre regardless of situational factors. It could be said that these prisoners prone to institutional violence have initially been deprived of things (parental love, role models, attachments, basic rights and education) in early childhood or life which has led them to be imprisoned. With this in mind, it is only logical that these people will continue to be violent in a prison environment, which further deprives them of basic rights and materials to be happy. It is therefore only logical to reduce deprivation in prison to reduce violence in institutions and outside. Bastoy Island Ecological Prison in Norway is evidential. Run like a society, fostering respect and focusing on reintegrating inmates into society, with staff with social work qualifications and decent housing arrangements. The executive of this prison looks at “this place as a place of healing, not just of your social wounds but of the wounds inflicted on you by the state in your four or five years in eight square metres of high security”- or in other words deprivation in early life; and deprivation in strict institutions. This seems to have worked, with a 16% reoffending rate compared with 70% across the rest of Europe. This does have some ethical issues, with victims of the crime unhappy with a punishment that doesn’t sound too unpleasant and may find it unjust but in the long term, it is positively looked at as helping society in the long-term.

Another weakness with the studies on the deprivation model is that it is gender-biased. Male aggression is predominantly measured rather than female violence in institutions. Further research would need to be conducted to see if there is a biological factor which influences aggression. For example, males could be more prone to violence in prisons due to biological differences to females. The research also tends to originate in US prisons, and therefore the findings cannot be generalised to other institutional settings around the world.

This model is deterministic as it suggests that all people will be aggressive if they feel deprived. However, research has shown that not every person will choose to be aggressive within an institutional setting, suggesting that we do have free will. People respond to deprivation in different ways. It is also reductionist as it reduces aggressive behaviour down to feeling of deprivation- it could be said Deindividuation is the reason for institutional violence. This reductionism therefore suggests that people are blank-slates when they enter the institutional setting as it ignores the role of people’s life experiences and traits as well as their biology- some people are more chemically prone to violence than others. However, the research into deprivation can be used to reduce aggression levels in institutions. By improving the conditions of the situation, the levels of aggression should reduce. This promotes wellbeing for the staff and the patients/prisoners. The research is also adaptable to a variety of institutional settings such as schools. This model could explain why some children in schools are more aggressive than others in the playground.