Discuss Research into Institutional Aggression (8 and 16 marks)

Lots of research into institutional aggression was conducted in prisons as it is a good opportunity sample of both aggressive and non-aggressive individuals in an institution. One model that was proposed by Irwin and Ceressey (1962) is the Importation Model which says that prisoners bring their own social histories and traits with them into prisons and this has an influence on how they adapt to a prison environment. They argued that prisoners are not blank slates when they enter prison but import in all normative systems with them.

Harer and Steffensmeier (2006) conducted a study to support the Importation Model where they collected data from 58 US prisons and found that black inmates has a significantly higher violence rate but a lower alcohol and drug misconduct rate than white inmates, which is the same pattern as in US society. This would support the importation model as the same traits found in US society were found in the prisons suggesting that the inmates already possessed them and brought them into prison with them.

This study however cannot be generalised to the whole population as it was only done in the US which may not be a representative sample of the rest of the world and therefore it lacks population validity. Therefore Harer and Steffensmeir might not be as supporting of the Importation models as other studies which have been carried out and should be looked at along with these before any conclusions are drawn.

Gang Memberships in prison has also been linked to Institutional Aggression. Pre Prison gang membership seems to be a determining factor of violence in prison. However DeLisi (2004) conducted some research which undermines this idea and found that those with pre prison gang memberships were no more likely to act violently when in prison than anyone else. He said that the lack of correlation between the two may be down to the fact that in prison violent gang members are isolated form the other members meaning less opportunities for violence. This study can be criticised though by the fact that it is only a correlational study and therefore can never show the causation for the correlation.   

Another model suggested to impact on institutional aggression is the deprivation model which argues that prisoner aggression is the product of stressful and oppressive conditions in the institution itself. This includes crowding and staff experience.

This model was supported by Magaree (1976) who found that aggressive incidents in prisons were negatively correlated to the amount of living space each prisoner had. Also when little space was available for each prisoner strategies were put in place to compensate for this which often results in less inmate interaction which can lead to deprivation also. This supports the deprivation model as it shows that when there is little space and therefore overcrowding prison inmates become more violent.

McCorkle et al (1995) also supported by the deprivation model when he found that overcrowding, lack of privacy and lack of meaningful activity increased peer violence significantly. This would support the deprivation model as it would show that prisoner conditions do in fact influence violence, however this was undermined by Nijman (1999) who found that increased personal space does not in fact decrease violent incidents amongst prisoners. This would undermine the deprivation as if making the conditions better does not decrease violence it would suggest that these were not the cause of it in the first place.

Research into Institutional Aggression has also been done by looking at genocide in which case the institution would be a whole section of society. Dehumanisation was found to be something which fuelled institutional aggression as dehumanising the person you are aggressive towards takes away your moral inhibitions about killing another human as they are not seen to be human at that time.

There are many real world applications for this such as the Jews Holocaust and the Tutsis Rwandan genocide, both of which were dehumanised which meant that normal people off the streets lost all their inhibitions about killing other humans and killed these people with less hesitation.  This would suggest that the aggression was institutional rather than personal as these people would usually not act against social norms in this way.

There is a lot of Gender bias in research into institutional aggression as it is often carried out on prison communities or armed forces which are a predominantly male environment, therefore this research cannot be generalized to communities where it is more mixed or predominantly female. This decreases the validity of the study and is results which needs to be taken into account when drawing any conclusions form these results.

               
Studies into Institutional aggression ignore the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate as behaviours that are carried out in a community, especially in prisons and armed forces, are down to things which have been learned and are not innate, therefore being nurture rather than nature which could also have an impact on why institutional aggression takes place.