NCJ Number
234536
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 39 Issue: 2 Dated: 04/2011 Pages: 151-158
Date Published
April 2011
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This study determined whether and to what degree inmates who committed specific types of violent crimes in the community were prone to commit acts of violence while incarcerated.
Abstract
The study found that the broad category of violent criminals was related to prison misconduct, and it also found that the particular crime of conviction was associated with the propensity to commit dangerous actions while incarcerated. Consistent with prior studies, the current study found that inmates convicted of homicide were no more likely to engage in dangerous rule violations than inmates convicted of property crimes. Inmates whose crimes involved the violent contemporaneous offenses of robbery, assault, car-jacking, or kidnapping were more likely to commit dangerous acts of misconduct in prison. The finding of a lower probability of prison misconduct by sex offenders is consistent with findings from a prior study of long-term inmates (Cunningham and Sorensen, 2006), but inconsistent with findings from a study of incarcerated youthful offenders (Trulson et al., 2010). An optimal combination of predictors and associated weightings required to clearly identify inmates prone to violence on the basis of their prior criminality could not be determined from the current study. For this study, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice provided computerized files on inmates who were incarcerated on September 1, 2007, and served the entire 2008 fiscal year (September 1, 2007, through August 31, 2008). The files contained information on inmates' personal characteristics, prior criminal history, crime, sentence, confinement, and disciplinary violations. Data were also collected on serious staff assaults through a search of incident reports kept by the Emergency Action Center. 4 tables and 69 references