NCJ Number
96787
Journal
Criminal Justice Review Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Dated: (Fall 1984) Pages: 69-77
Date Published
1984
Length
9 pages
Annotation
During the 1970s the prison populations grew at an alarming rate and researchers became interested in the effects of crowding on inmate behavior. Paulus, McCain, and Cos (1975;1978) and D'Atri and Ostfeld (1975) found empirical evidence of physiological changes occurring in crowded prison populations. Other researchers have also uncovered deleterious effects due to crowded prison conditions.
Abstract
Unfortunately, the work in crowding has lagged behind other areas in corrections and there are few accepted paradigms. This research attempts to expand the current studies and, in doing so, examine the effects of crowding upon several groups of criminal offenders. The research is based upon a sample of 21,500 inmates, plus a subsample of 1,300 teenage prisoners. An analysis of variance and covariance found no crowding effects for the prison population as a whole. However, strong crowding effects were found among young black violent offenders. For this group, crowding was a stronger predictor of infraction rates than any of our control variables (age, time served, home county population density, race, or type of crime). We interpret these results as artifacts placing high-risk inmates in the largest, most crowded prisons. (Author abstract)