Prison Violence

If a man in prison says that he was made " to feel like a woman, " this is commonly understood to mean that he was degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized. This association of femininity with punishment has significant implications for the way our society understands not only the sexual abuse of men in prison but also sexual abuse generally. These important implications are usually overlooked, however, because law and society typically regard prison feminization as a problem of gender transposition: that is, as a problem of men being treated like women. In contrast, this Article argues that feminization is punitive for both men and women. It is as unnatural and wrong for women to be degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized under coercive circumstances as it is for men to be. This Article suggests that examining the sexual abuse of men in prisons can help disrupt the persistent and uncritical linking of feminization and women. By reading the sexualized abuse of men in prison as a form of forced feminized performance—a coerced drag—this Article hopes to expose the artificiality and violence of compelled feminization. The proper approach to assessing forced feminization is to focus on its oppressive structure, not on the gender of its victims. When we do so, we can see what all victims along the spectrum of sexual and domestic abuse have in common, and we can form social and legal responses accordingly. The phenomenon of male sexual abuse in prison thus provides a potentially illuminating opportunity to think about the structure and consequences of sexual abuse in general. This is significant not least because social and legal responses to sexual abuse outside of the prison setting— where sexual abuse is generally perpetrated by men against women—are constrained by pernicious gender stereotypes and a massive failure of empathy. Understanding the phenomenon of male prison sexual abuse is thus essential not only for addressing a specific problem in carceral institutions, but also for forcing law and society to consider sexual abuse in a productively counterintuitive way.

If a man in prison claims he was made “to feel like a woman,” this is commonly understood to mean that was degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized. This association of femininity with punishment has significant implications for the way our society understands not only the sexual abuse of men in prison, but sexual abuse generally. These important implications are usually overlooked, however, because law and society typically regard prison feminization as a problem of gender transposition: that is, as a problem of men being treated like women. This Article argues that feminization is punitive for both men and women: it is as unnatural and as wrong for women to be degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized under coercive circumstances as it is for men to be. This Article suggests that examining the sexual abuse of men in prisons can help disrupt the persistent and uncritical linking of feminization and women. By reading the sexualized abuse of men in prison as a form of forced drag, this Arti...

Die grausame Ermordung eines jungen Mannes durch Mitgefangene in einem mit vier Personen belegten Haftraum der JVA Siegburg im November 2006 („Siegburger Foltermord “) hat die Öffentlichkeit aufgerüttelt und teils gravierende Mängel in der Vollzugsgestaltung ...

In recent years, Correctional Centre violence has been much debated. Although the literature on violence is well developed, little is known about the nature and extent of violence in South African Correctional Centres, despite widespread concern and speculation. Furthermore, it is unclear whether this particular context of violence is due to the often hostile environment of Correctional Centres, or due to violent nature of inmates held in custody. This research study aims to investigate Correctional Centre violence in a South African Correctional Centre, looking specifically at offender-on-offender assaults that occurred in Pollsmoor Medium B Correctional Centre, by looking at assault incident reports and investigations. Discourse and thematic analysis was applied to single out the nature and contexts of the assaults reported. It was found that the assaults usually took place in certain spaces and times, but also that perpetrators and victims of violence often shared various commonalities. Additionally, certain units seemed more prone to violence than others, related to the finding that there were definite indications of spaces controlled by inmates and spaces controlled by Correctional Officers. The study concludes that violence in South African Correctional Centres cannot be seen isolated from the offender, the outside world and their backgrounds

Prisons and Collective Violence: Reasons to be Concerned In the past thirty years the number of prisons in the United States has grown from approximately 400 in 1965 (Task Force Report 1967) to over 1,300 in 1996 (American Correctional Association 1996). The number of prisoners has increased over 500 percent, from about 200,000 in 1976 to over 1,000,000 in 1996. By all accounts, prisons have become increasingly populated by racial and ethnic minorities, individuals involved in the violent drug trade, and persons serving longer and longer sentences (Irwin and Austin 1994). The penetration of gangs into prison has increased the level of violence between inmate groups, and changed the nature of prisons noncollective violence from an expression of individual coping to group exploitation (Crouch and Marquart 1989; Lombardo 1989). Courts continue to be involved in the management of individual prisons and entire state prison systems (Strum 1993), while at the same time legislatures and cou...

Shaffer, C. S., McCuish, E. C., Corrado, R. R., Behnken, M. P., & DeLisi, M. (2015). Psychopathy and violent misconduct in a sample of violent young offenders [Special Issue]. Journal of Criminal Justice, 43, 321-326.

Purpose: Most prior research on psychopathy and institutional misconduct/violence occurs with adult samples and comparatively less is known about the nature of this relationship among serious, violent juvenile offenders. 
Methods: A subsample of 159 male serious and violent offenders interviewed in custody facilities in British Columbia, Canada as part of the Vancouver Longitudinal Study of Incarcerated Young Offenders were used. Bivariate, AUC-ROC, and Poisson regression models examined the association between psychopathy and violent misconduct and exposure to violence with different specifications and separately for Caucasian and Aboriginal youth.
Results: Overall, psychopathic youth evince more misconduct, are more violent, and break more institutional rules than their less psychopathic peers; however, the effects are relatively small, and ROC-AUC models reveal generally unimpressive classification accuracy.
Conclusions: Although psychopathy is a risk factor for violent misconduct, its effects are measurement-variant (e.g., total scores, factor scores, and item scores) and differ for Caucasian and Aboriginal serious offenders.

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit Bedingungsfaktoren für Gewalt im Jugendstrafvollzug. Untersucht wird, inwiefern Dominanzverhalten in der Sozialhierarchie, Akzeptanz von Bullying, Zugehörigkeit zu einer Gruppe und Drogenkonsum sowie vorangegangenes Gewaltverhalten mit Gewalt in Form von physischer Gewalt bzw. Zwang zusammenhängen. Die Daten stammen aus dem Kölner Projekt zu Gewalt im Jugendstrafvollzug.