Exploring the Effect of Exposure to Short-Term Solitary Confinement Among Violent Prison Inmates

Objectives This study tracked the behavior of male inmates housed in the general inmate populations of 70 different prison units from a large southern state. Each of the inmates studied engaged in violent misconduct at least once during the first 2 years of incarceration (n = 3,808). The goal of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of quantitative criminology Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 1 - 22
Main Author Morris, Robert G.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer Science + Business Media 01.03.2016
Springer US
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Behavior
Criminal justice
Criminology and Criminal Justice
Imprisonment
Law and Criminology
Methodology of the Social Sciences
Misconduct
ORIGINAL PAPER
Prisoners
Punishment
Short term
Sociology
Solitary confinement
Statistics
Timing
Validity
Violence
Violent crime
Punitive segregation
Solitary confinement
Corrections
Inmate misconduct
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Summary:Objectives This study tracked the behavior of male inmates housed in the general inmate populations of 70 different prison units from a large southern state. Each of the inmates studied engaged in violent misconduct at least once during the first 2 years of incarceration (n = 3,808). The goal of the study was to isolate the effect of exposure to short-term solitary confinement (SC) as a punishment for their initial act of violent behavior on the occurrence and timing of subsequent misconduct. Methods This study relied upon archival longitudinal data and employed a multilevel counterfactual research design (propensity score matching) that involved tests for group differences, event history analyses, and trajectory analyses. Results The results suggest that exposure to short-term solitary confinement as a punishment for an initial violence does not appear to play a role in increasing or decreasing the probability, timing, or development future misconduct for this particular group on inmates. Conclusions Upon validation, these findings call for continued research and perhaps a dialog regarding the utility of solitary confinement policies under certain contexts. This unique study sets the stage for further research to more fully understand how solitary impacts post-exposure behavior.
ISSN:0748-4518
1573-7799
DOI:10.1007/s10940-015-9250-0