Outline Research Into Institutional Aggression Essay

Institutional intrusion is aggressive behaviour displayed within an institutional stance such as a school or prison house. Most enquiry into institutional aggression has been conducted in prisons. One explanation of institutionalised aggression is the importation model- dispositional factors. This model suggests that prisoners beat (import) their own social histories and traits with them to the prison milieu and these influence their subsequent behavious (Irwin and Cressey, 1962). Most of the aggressive behaviour studied in the prison situation is non specific to that situation- the same behaviour was carried stunned in wider society by the same individuals. Such people bring with them into a prison a ready-made way of behaving which they just implement in their new institutional setting (Cheeseman, 2003).Irwin and Cressey realised the importance of opposite prisoner subcultures and identified three. Firstly the criminal or forager subculture, the prisoner follow the norms a nd values that are present in the professional thief or criminal careers, such as not betraying one different and being trustworthy. Secondly the convict subculture, the subject has been raised in the prison system. They seek positions of power and influence and are therefore most potential to turn to aggression or another maladaptive form of coping. and the formal or straight subculture tend to be one-time offenders and were not part of a criminal or thief subculture before entering prison. They reject the other two subcultures and identify more with the prison staff. This group is least believably to be aggressive. The three subcultures are better at explaining offenders who do not reoffend then some other explanations of institutional aggression. It suggests we have some distributor point of free will and explains that some offenders will not re-offend.