Adjusting to Prison Life

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Adjusting to Prison LifeAuthor(s): Kenneth AdamsSource: Crime and Justice, Vol. 16 (1992), pp. 275-359Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1147565.

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Kenneth damsdjusting t r i s o n i f e

ABSTRACTWhilemostinmates, ncluding ong-termprisoners,adjust uccessfullyto prison ife, manydo notcopewell with the painsof imprisonment.Maladaptiveesponses uch as emotionaldisorders, elf-mutilation,uicideattempts,andprisonmisbehavior re most commonduring he earlyphasesof incarceration.Most studiesshow that white inmatesmoreoftenexhibitpsychological istress han do blacksor Hispanics.Black nmates,younginmates,andrecentlyarrived nmatesare morelikelyto violateprisonrulesthantheir inmatecounterparts.Offenderswho havethegreatestdifficultyadaptingo prison end to havedifficulty unctioningin other environments.Attributesof individuals ndof environmentscombine o influence nmateadjustment.

Although incarceration is a punishment, and punishment is meant tobe unpleasant, the fact that prisons will always be unattractiveplacesdoes not mean that all inmate difficulties can be ignored. While societyno longer demands that inmates leave prisons changed for the better,it is both counterproductive and inhumane for inmates to leave prisonsin much worse shape than when they entered. Indeed, this principlehas been acknowledged by the courts, which have declared that in-mates have a constitutional right to treatment for serious emotionaldisorders, including disorders that are instigated or aggravated byprison experiences. Inmate adjustmentproblems are importanton sev-eral counts to people who believe that prisons should perform correc-tional or rehabilitative functions. When inmates experience continued

Kenneth Adams is associate professorand assistantdean for graduatestudies, Collegeof CriminalJustice, Sam Houston State University.? 1992 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0192-3234/92/0016-0006$01 00

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276 KennethAdamsstates of emotional crisis, it is difficult to work toward long-range be-havioralchange. Less dramatic reactionsto confinementprovide oppor-tunities for inmates and therapists to focus on current experiences,emotions, and behavior, with an eye toward personal growth and de-velopment.Issues of prison adjustment are linked to the inmate classificationprocess, including administrative concerns for security (Toch 1981).Classification procedures evaluate an inmate's need for various typesof correctional programming and assess the degree of risk that an in-mate poses to security, with the goal of matching inmates to institu-tional settings. These classification concerns are affected by how in-mates adjust to prison. Inmates with serious adjustmentproblems arepoorly situated to participate in correctional programs and can draininstitutional resources by consuming an inordinate amount of staffattention. When an inmate's difficulties are manifested as disruptivebehavior, adjustmentproblems necessarily implicate security concerns.

Very often, different institutions have had to deal with the sameoffender at different times. Inmates typically arrive at prison with along history of institutional experiences, which means that they arelikely to have been in settings where their adjustment was at issue.Nearly all prison inmates have been in school, many have been incar-cerated previously in either juvenile or adult facilities, and some havebeen in specialized therapeutic settings such as psychiatric hospitals.By tracing an individual's behavior across settings and across time, wecan discern individual patterns and sequences of adjustment that arerelevant to both theory and policy. Some individuals show chronicadjustment difficulties, others adjust poorly to one setting but not toanother, while still others encounter difficulties at a particular pointin life. By studying such continuities and discontinuities, it becomespossible to identify critical features of individuals, environments, andstages of development that influence behavior.

This essay examines research on inmate adaptation to prison life.Section I provides a backdropfor what follows by introducingsociolog-ical research on inmate subcultures, including the importation andadaptation models of inmate behavior, and introduces contemporaryperspectives that derive from stress-coping research and from environ-mental psychology. Observational and descriptive studies of thestresses of prison life and coping strategies are examined, as are themajor research strategies and important methodological issues. Sec-tions II-IV, the majorpart of the essay, review the researchon prison



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 277noncoping and maladaptation, chiefly as demonstrated by disruptivebehaviors, including disciplinary violations, and by emotional disor-ders, including suicide and self-injury. The assessment of researchfindings is organized into three sections that center on the influences ofindividual characteristics, environmental characteristics, and sentencecharacteristics.

In Section II, which deals with inmate attributes, the relation ofrace, gender, age, criminalhistory, and mental health history to inmateadjustment problems is evaluated. The researchconfirmsthat sociocul-tural factors are at work in the adjustment process and that specifichistorical continuities in antisocial behaviorsand in emotionalproblemsare observed from community to prison. Multiproblem inmates, oroffenders with complex adjustment difficulties that combine differenttypes of problem behaviors, constitute a significant segment of theinmate population.Section III covers aspects of prison settings that contribute to adjust-ment difficulties. The discussion begins with studies that use adminis-trativeschemes, such as security levels, to classify prisons. Next, stud-ies using survey-based measures of prison environments, such asMoos's Correctional Institution Environment Scale and Toch's PrisonPreference Inventory, are reviewed. Subsequently, issues of prisonovercrowding as well as inmate programming and contact with theoutside world are considered. Finally, attention is given to environ-mental aspects of prison violence. This research confirms that inmatebehavior is influenced by contextual or situational factors and high-lights the importance of congruence between individual needs and en-vironmental settings in facilitating adjustment.Section IV discusses research on relations between characteristicsofan inmate's sentence and adjustment. In particular, attention is givento how the length and type of prison sentence influence adjustment.The findings of this research are especially timely given the growingnumber of long-term inmates and the popularity of fixed or determi-nate sentencing schemes. This section also reviews studies that bearon issues of how adjustmentvaries over the course of the incarcerationexperience and that report on patterns and trends in adjustment. Fi-nally, research that relates inmate adjustment to the offender's subse-quent behavior in the community is discussed. The early portion ofincarceration s a critical period in that adjustmentdifficulties are mostlikely to surface at this time, and the evidence suggests that patternsof institutional adjustment are related to postrelease behavior. How-



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278 KennethAdamsever, little support is found for the notion that long-term imprisonmentis harmful psychologically.Lastly, in Section V, the implications of research in terms of atheoretical understanding of prison adjustment are discussed and anagenda for future work is outlined. In this section, the problems ofinmate adjustment are viewed from a perspective that emphasizeschanges over the prison experience and across the life span. Prisonadjustment cannot be viewed as an isolated phenomenon. In order tounderstandfully the reactionsof inmates to confinement, it is necessaryto place inmate adjustment problems in the largercontext of multiple-problem behaviors across time. Adjustment is not a static event. Im-portant changes in inmate attitudes and behavior occur throughoutincarceration. Prison adjustment not only is influenced by antecedentlife experiences but also has an effect on the offender's subsequentadjustment in other settings. Thus, an inmate's ability to deal withincarceration is contingent on the history of experiences that inmatebrings to prison and holds significance for how successful the inmatewill be in facing impending extramuralchallenges.

I. Perspectives on Prison AdjustmentEarly researcherswere fascinated with the social organizationand cul-ture of the inmate community and with the unique and salient featuresof prisons as organizations. Many of these scholars emphasized theprison's status as a total institution, meaning an isolated, artificiallycreated, social enclave in which people are subjected to a depersonaliz-ing and totalitarian regimen. Researchers also were concerned withhow the organizationalcharacteristicsof prisons shapedthe socialorga-nization of inmates and with how the inmate society in turn influencedthe adaptation and functioning of individuals. Early theoretical per-spectives emphasized that inmates find solidarity in the inmate codethat holds among its central tenets norms of noncooperationand hostil-ity toward staff. The oppositional inmate code, which governs inmate-staff interactions, was seen as a functional response to confinement,allowing inmates to rejecttheir rejectors (McCorkleand Korn 1954)and to salvage a sense of self-worth in the face of intense pressures tothe contrary. The process of assimilation into the inmate communitywas termed prisonization Clemmer 1958), an adjustmentprocess inwhich inmates adopt the normativeproscriptionsof the prison culture.In addition, there was an interest in studying the social roles of theinmate community (Garabedian 1963, 1964). In many of the early



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 279studies of inmate adjustment, the central focus was on the attitudesand values of the prison culture, particularly with regard to the waysin which antiauthoritarianvalues might impede rehabilitation.An implicit assumptionof most early research s that the institutionalfeaturesof prisons are so influential and pervasive that they operate asthe primary determinant of inmate adjustment. Within this frame-work, there was, of course, some latitude for accommodating othertypes of influences. An interest in the variety of inmate roles showsrecognition that inmate behavior is not uniform, and attention also wasgiven to the ways in which transitions between prison and communitylife influence prisoners. However, most of the scholarly emphasis wasplaced on organizational goals and structures, both formal and infor-mal, that forced the hand of inmates in terms of how they mightrespond to prison life.Several developments helped to bring about a shift in perspective.One was that as scholarsbegan to scrutinize the concepts and processesthat were postulated to explain inmate adjustment, they found thetheories to be lacking in substance as well as in scientific rigor. Theprisonization hypothesis has been criticized for not paying sufficientattention to key individual attributes, such as race, and to salient formsof inmate social organization, such as gangs (Jacobs 1977). Othershave criticized the concept of prisonization as excessively vague andimprecise and have found fault with the ways in which the concepthas been measured (Zamble and Porporino 1988; Goodstein andWright 1989).The importation model of adjustmentchallenged previously well-established theoretical views. Proponents of the importationmodel ar-gued that characteristics of individuals that predate confinement (thus,attributes that are imported into prison settings), such as criminalhistory and ethnic culture, are critical factors in determining modes ofinmate adjustment. This contrastswith earlierperspectives, subsumedunder the heading of the deprivation model, which emphasized therestrictive nature of prisons as the dominant factor in inmate adjust-ment. Initially, the two models were cast as competing explanationsof inmate behavior, and an extensive line of research followed in aneffort to assess the relative validity of the two perspectives. After manystudies reported evidence in support of both perspectives, researchersconcluded that attributes of both the inmate and the prison settingwere at work in the adjustmentprocess (Wellford 1967;Thomas 1977).The state of knowledge produced by this line of investigation is per-



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280 KennethAdamshaps best captured by a review of research that concluded that eachindividual who experiences prolonged confinement reacts to this situa-tion in an idiosyncratic manner: Some individuals show deteriorationin response to confinement, others show improved functioning,whereas others show no appreciable change (Bukstel and Kilmann1980, p. 487). Scholars came to recognize that inmates react to prisonin a variety of ways, individual variations that could only be describedas idiosyncratic by the then-prevailing theories. Thus, a stalematein theory development had been reached, and this led researchers tosearch for more expansive and integrative models of inmate ad-justment.Two perspectives currently dominate the research on inmate adjust-ment. The first is the stress-coping paradigm, while the second stemsfrom environmental psychology and emphasizes the transactionalna-ture of behavior, or the processes by which attributes of persons andof settings combine to determine adjustmentoutcomes. Although thesetwo perspectives are complementary, and in many respects each canaccommodate the other, they differ in the emphases they place onvarious factors.A. TheStress-copingaradigmStress research originated with the study of physiological reactionsto potentially threatening situations. The stress reaction was seen as apsychological trigger for the body's defense mechanisms, and attemptswere made to identify stressful conditions that could be linked tochanges in blood pressure, galvanic skin response, and heart rate. Re-cently, the perspective has broadenedto include a cognitive dimension,and the current thinking is that inmate adjustment is best conceptual-ized as a process in which cognition, behaviors, and environmentsinteract to ameliorate or to exacerbate stressful situations (Porporinoand Zamble 1984). In this regard, the stress-coping paradigmincludesa focus on transactional relations between persons and environmentsthat is compatible with the view of environmental psychologists whoadvocate an interactionist perspective on behavior.The stress-coping paradigm(Lazarus 1966;McGrath 1970; Lazarusand Folkman 1983) describes a multistage process that can be used tounderstand adaptive and maladaptive responses to difficult situations.The coping process is theoretically complex, in that it allows for itera-tions and feedback between hypothesized stages. The following sum-mary represents a simplified version of the theory. In the first stage,



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 281demands are made on the individual in the form of stressors, whichcan be defined as threats to a person's physical or psychological well-being. The second stage involves an appraisal process with two ele-ments. To begin with, the stressors are recognized and then evaluatedin terms of the natureand degree of threat being posed. Subsequently,appropriate reactions to the situation are inventoried and reviewed.Given the same external stimulus, persons may vary in their percep-tions and assessments of the situation, and they may vary in theirpreferredresponses. These differences are importantfor explaining anindividual's reaction to stress. The final stage involves the carryingout of the individual's response to his or her situation. Within thisframework, unsuccessful coping can result from overwhelming levelsof stress, from skewed or counterproductive appraisalsof situations,or from deficits in coping skills.The stress-coping paradigm focuses on a number of considerationsin the prison adjustment process: first, the external features of theenvironment that act as stressors; second, the individual's perceptionof the situation, particularly with regard to the degree of threat thatthe stressors pose; third, the influence of a variety of developmentalfactors such as culture, education, and experience on the coping pro-cess; and, last, the repertoire of coping strategies and behavioral re-sponses acquired by the individual over time. Researchinterests mightextend to the range of different coping responses, tendencies for domi-nant or primary adjustment patterns, deficits in coping repertoires,abilities to acquire new coping strategies, and the effectiveness of cop-ing strategies in terms of whether they diminish initial stress or engen-der new difficulties for the individual.B. TheInteractionistPerspectiveThe second perspective on inmate adjustmentderives from researchin environmental psychology and is grounded in an interactionistview in which aspects of the environment influencebehaviorby makingdemands that are either congruent or incongruent with an individual'spsychological orientation (Murray 1938). Although physical aspects ofa setting can be important, the environmentalcharacteristicsthat mostoften concern researchers who operate in this tradition involve social-psychological dimensions of the milieu. Some environments are or-derly and predictable, other environments feature safety and support,while still other environments highlight freedom, autonomy, and ex-pressiveness. These dimensions of settings, which are sometimes sub-



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282 KennethAdamssumed under the heading of climate, stand apartfrom characteristicsof individuals, although attributesof groups, such as the mix of personswith whom one must associate, can be critical features of the environ-ment. From this perspective, the probability of adjustment problemsis greater when there is a mismatch between persons and environ-ments, and, likewise, adjustmentproblems can be avoided or remediedby paying attention to issues of congruency (Wright and Goodstein1989).These contemporary views of prison adjustment can be seen asbuilding on the findings of prior studies and extending the insights ofearlier researchers in new directions. There still exists a concern foridentifying the difficulties or pains of incarceration hat challenge thecoping skills of inmates. Similarly, attention is given to organizationaland institutional aspects of prisons that influence inmate behavior.Also, there remains an interest in studying patterns of inmate changethroughout the incarcerationexperience. However, contemporary ap-proaches diverge from earlier views by emphasizing at the outset thatcharacteristics both of the individual and of the setting are importantdeterminants of behavior. As corollaries of this view, individualdiffer-ences in perceptions, needs, skills, and abilities are seen as criticalfactors in adjustment, and prisons are viewed not as uniform environ-ments, but as organizations that vary along critical dimensions withimportant differences in settings both across and within prisons. Inaddition, emphasis is given to the study of behaviors, as opposed tovalues and attitudes, and there is interest in a broad variety of adjust-ment problems. As part of this focus, there is an interest in studyingmultiproblem inmates and the relationshipsamong problem behaviors.Finally, in keeping with the view that adjustmentvariesacrossindivid-uals and settings, it is assumed that adjustment varies for the sameindividual across time. Although many recent investigations highlightthe early stage of confinement as a stressful transition period duringwhich a wide variety of adjustmentproblems are most likely to surface,contemporary researchersjoin with their predecessors in emphasizingthe importanceof studying individualpatternsof change using longitu-dinal designs.C. Stresses fPrisonConfinementDictionaries define stress as amentally or emotionally disruptive ordisquieting influence, and students of penology have identified manyattributes of prison life fitting this definition. In his classic study of a



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 283maximum-security prison, Sykes (1958) identified five categories ofstresses experienced by inmates. The pains of imprisonment, asSykes characterized them, refer to the deprivations that inmates rou-tinely experience with regardto goods and services, liberty, heterosex-ual relationships, autonomy, and security. In Sykes's view, these dep-rivations, which stand at the core of the prison experience, are criticalelements for understanding inmate reactionsto confinement. The real-ity of institutional violence threatens an inmate's basic concerns forsafety, and the resulting fear-induced stress may trigger fight-flightresponses in specific situationsor, more generally, may lead to adaptiverole behaviors (e.g., gorilla, weakling, punk )organized aroundthemes of dominance and submission in relationships. Similarly, asevere loss of autonomy, as brought about by institutional rules thatlimit choice in nearly every aspect of an inmate's life, including themost trivial matters, can generate feelings of helplessness and depen-dency that are inconsistent with the inmate's status of adult. At theextremes, this tension between being treated like a child while tryingto be seen as an adult may be resolved in two very different ways. Thecenterman (Sykes 1958)undergoes a process of conversion (Goffman1961) in which the inmate adopts the official view and aspires to be-come the model inmate. In contrast, the ball buster (Sykes 1958)cultivates a posture of intransigence (Goffman 1961)toward staff, tak-ing advantageof every opportunity to demonstrate an attitude of rebel-lious defiance.

Subsequent investigators have highlighted a variety of other attri-butes of prisons that can act as stressors for inmates. Environmentaloverstimulation or understimulation, which occurs when the pace ofactivities approaches extremes, can tax individual tolerance levels,thereby influencing modes of adjustment (Toch 1977). In prisons,problems of understimulation are likely to be more serious in over-crowded facilities where many inmates are idle. A boring, monoto-nous, prison routine not only deprives inmates of activities that candistract from personal concerns and difficulties but also often createsadditional stress by reinforcing negative feelings such as emptiness,despondency, and despair. Some scholars have pointed to sentencingdisparity, which inmates generally view as unfair, and discretionaryparole release decisions, which create uncertainty and which inmatesoften perceive as arbitrary, as stressors (Parisi 1982). A classic studyby Mathiesen showed that Norwegian inmates at a progressive, treat-ment-oriented prison were very uncomfortable with the high degree



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284 KennethAdamsof uncertainty surrounding staff decisions, such as parole release andthe granting of furloughs, that were seen as particularlyconsequentialby inmates (Mathiesen 1965). Finally, Waller (1974) points out that inmaking the transition from prison to community, inmates face chal-lenges, such as finding employment and reestablishingfamily relation-ships, that can be stressful.Over the years, researchershave both corroboratedSykes's observa-tions and provided information on the relative salience of inmate ad-justment difficulties. Zamble and Porporino (1988), in a study of 133inmates entering Canadian prisons, confirmed that the problems in-mates experience in prison differ significantly from those on the out-side. The problems of preprison civilian life most often mentioned byinmates are conflicts with a wife or girlfriend (59 percent of inmates),financial difficulties (49 percent), and conflicts with friends (39 per-cent). At the time of prison entry, the difficulty most frequently citedby inmates is that of being separatedfrom family members and friends(82 percent). Other reported problems include lack of freedom (44percent), missing specific activities (35 percent), conflicts with otherinmates (32 percent), regrets about the past (31 percent), concernsabout challenges they will face on release (31 percent), boredom (25percent), cell conditions (18 percent), medical services (15 percent),lackof staff support (14 percent), personalsafety (12 percent), and lackof desired programsor facilities (11 percent). When the same inmateswere reinterviewed at four months and againat sixteen months in theirsentence, the rankingof problems was relatively unchanged, the mostnotable exceptions being that concerns about life while on parole (44percent)were greaterin the second interview, as were complaintsaboutcell conditions (31 percent) in the third interview. Roughly half of thedifficulties mentioned by inmates in later interviews represented thecontinuation of an earlier problem. At both the group and individuallevels, the researchers found substantial consistency in the types ofproblems inmates experience during incarceration.In a study of the difficulties of extended incarceration, Richards(1978) asked two groups of British inmates, serving long and shortsentences, to rate the severity of twenty different problems. The re-sults showed considerable agreement in ratings across the two inmategroups, and a lack of contact with family and friends was rated as themost severe problem. Other problems considered serious by inmates,such as missing social life, worrying about how to deal with release,and feeling that life is being wasted, likewise centered on the inmate's



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 285relationship to the outside world. A subsequent study comparing theconcerns of American and British long-term inmates showed theirrankings of problem seriousness to be nearly identical (Flanagan1980a).

Although research suggests that inmates experience many of thesame difficulties regardless of sentence length, the element of timecan exacerbate common inmate problems into issues of psychologicalsurvival for those serving long prison terms. Long-term inmates oftenfear that relationships will be lost irrevocably, a concern that is notshared to the same degree by short-termers. In addition, long-terminmates typically are older than other inmates, which makes it harderfor them to find companions with similar interests, and the fact thatmost other inmates are serving shorter terms means that many friend-ships end prematurely (Flanagan 1982). Also, long-term inmates tendto view casualrelationshipswith other inmates along with involvementin the prison social network as increasing the chances of disciplinaryproblems (Zamble 1992). These observationshelp to explain why olderinmates are less likely to seek out friends in prison (Glaser 1964).Finally, long-term inmates become increasingly concerned over thecourse of incarcerationwith difficulties in their relationshipswith staffand with problems of negotiating the prison bureaucracy (Zamble1992).

Separation from family and friends is one of the more burdensomeproblems for inmates, and prisoners sometimes respond to the experi-ence in extreme ways. Inmates who attempt suicide often do so inreaction to the perceived threats that incarcerationposes to significantrelationships (Rieger 1971; Wool and Dooley 1987). However, the sa-liency of concern for being separated from family members variesacross racial groups, and Hispanic inmates stand out in this regard, afact that largely is attributable to the importancethat Hispanic culturesplace on family relationships. Thus, Johnson (1976) reports that psy-chological breakdownsamong Hispanic inmates occur more frequentlyin reaction to separationfrom their family. In addition, female inmatestend to suffer more than males from the disruption of important andmeaningful familial relationships (Toch 1986), mostly in connectionwith their roles as mother and wife. Inmates who give birth whileincarcerated or who are separated from young children are especiallylikely to experience feelings of anxiety and guilt (Fox 1982).

Jail inmates likewise demonstrate a strong concern for maintainingrelationshipswith persons on the outside. A comparisonof self-injuries



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286 KennethAdamsbetween jails and prisons finds that emotional breakdownsamong jailinmates more often reflect a need for support from significant others,whereas breakdowns in prison typically reflect a concern for personalsafety (Gibbs 1978). Jails present a somewhat different set of adjust-ment challenges than do prisons. In particular, jail inmates must findways to occupy large amounts of idle time and must learnto deal withconsiderable unpredictability and instability in their environment, es-pecially with regard to legal issues (Gibbs 1982a, 1982b). Finally, in-mates on death row confront a special set of concerns. When a groupof inmates facing execution, many of whom had been on death rowfor years, were surveyed about their difficulties, feelings of power-lessness were universally expressed, as were feelings of emotional emp-tiness (Johnson 1981, 1982).In general, researchconfirmsthat separationfrom and loss of contactwith family, relatives, and friends is one of the more difficult featuresof prison life to endure. In addition, challenges of adjusting to moreimmediate features of confinement, such as living conditions and ad-ministrative procedures, stand out in the scheme of perceived inmatedifficulties. The major stresses of prison life are widely experienced,although long-term inmates and jail inmates bring unique concerns toincarcerationexperiences. Finally, while longitudinalfollow-up studiesreveal a degree of consistency in the types of stresses experienced overthe prison term, the concerns of inmates shift with time, being mostnotably different toward the beginning and end of incarceration.D. CopingStylesandStrategies mong nmatesWhen confronted with stressful and challenging situations, inmatescan respond in a variety of ways. In addition to charting this diversityof inmate responses, the task of research also includes studying theefficacy of coping strategies, identifying ways of mitigating adjustmentdifficulties, showing how preferences for coping strategies are shapedby individual characteristics and experiences, and placing the copingstrategies of incarcerated offenders who are in prison in the largercontext of the person's behavioral repertoire across different settingsand across time. Many studies indicate that prison inmates hold astrong preference for coping strategies that emphasize self-reliance andpersonal strength. When inmates are asked how they would handlevarious difficulties, the preferred strategy for nearly every type ofproblem situation is to deal with the problem by oneself (Flanagan1980a).This finding has been documented in both American and Brit-



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 287ish prisons, and it is consistent with the realman image that manyresearchers have found the inmate society to hold in high esteem.Although coping strategiesof self-reliancemay be rooted in the inmateculture, several inmate groups have developed other strategies to dealwith distinctive attributes of their situation or with their distinctivepsychological needs. Long-term inmates often cultivate a posture ofminimum expectation, which involves not hoping for too much in thefuture, in order to deal with extended confinement (Unkovic and Al-bini 1969). A related strategy of long-term inmates is to restrict theirfuture time perspective by concentratingon the immediate present andby not planning too far ahead (Sapsford 1978).Female inmates are especially upset by their separationfrom familymembers and have evolved a distinct way of dealing with this stress.Whereas the preference for males is to be tough, self-reliant, and inde-pendent, the real woman inmate places a strong emphasis on theexpression of emotions (Fox 1975). Female inmates are more inclinedto look to their fellow inmates for support, and efforts at creating andsustaining personal relationships have a positive influence on adjust-ment for female inmates but not for males (Zingraff 1980). Femaleoffenders sometimes organize play families with relationships pat-terned afterconventional family roles (Giallombardo1966).These rela-tionships typically offer emotional and economic support to counter-balance the deprivations of prison life, and sexual relations may beinvolved if conjugal roles are established (Heffernan 1972). One studyfinds that newly arrived female inmates are more inclined to join playfamilies, suggesting that these relationshipsoperate as a mechanism fordealing with the transition from community to prison (MacKenzie,Robinson, and Campbell 1989). However, Morris (1987, p. 126) re-ports that several British studies of penal institutions for females havefailed to observe the existence of play families, a finding that maybe attributable to shorter prison terms in England discouraging thedevelopment of an inmate culture. Finally, Hispanic inmates, whoalso are disproportionately affected by a loss of contact with familymembers, sometimes become members of prison gangs, which canserve as family surrogates (Carroll 1974, 1982).Sexual harassmentand assaultrepresentextremely threateningsitua-tions that pose difficult adjustmentchallenges, and inmates often culti-vate a violent or excessively masculine posture as a way of dealing withthese situations. At least one study has observed that fight responses,including violence, are common reactions to sexual harassment(Lock-



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288 KennethAdamswood 1982a). As a less outwardly aggressive coping strategy, inmatesmay strengthen their position by forging an association with a cliqueor gang. Inmates who are sexually assaulted or harassedalso may at-tempt to withdraw from threatening situations, such as by spendingmore time in their cell, by askingto be transferredto anothercell blockor prison, or by enlisting in protective custody. The selection of spe-cific coping strategies is influenced by a variety of factors includingrace, subculturalnorms and values, aspects of prison confinement, andpersonality traits (Lockwood 1982a). Race, in particular,appearsto bean especially significant factor in that white inmates are most inclinedto seek protective custody. In the young adult institution studied byLockwood (1982a), nearly all the inmates (90 percent) in protectivecustody were whites seeking protection from sexual harassment, eventhough white inmates comprised a minority (25 percent) of the prisonpopulation.

Adjustment problems that lead to acts of self-injury have also beenstudied in relation to coping strategies. In interviews with severalhun-dred inmates who had injured themselves, Toch (1975) vividly por-trayed the attempts of inmates to alleviate themselves of severe emo-tional distress. He noted that in order to deal with feelings ofhelplessness and resentment, inmates might search for a quiet settingin which they can escape from their preoccupations. Inmates mightalso classify themselves as victims and make clearto staff their inabilityto deal with this status. When faced with social isolation, some inmateswill panic and make forceful demands to be released from their situa-tion. Inmates also may enlist the assistance of staff in trying to dealwith their difficulties. One strategy, described as self-classification,involves attempts by the inmate to convince staff that he or she mustbe placed in a specific prison environment or setting. As a more directapproach, inmates will make demands on staff for services, often forphysical problems, which the inmate feels can not be ignored.

Zamble and Porporino(1988), building directly on the work of Laza-rus (Lazarus 1966; Lazarus and Folkman 1983), have investigated thecoping strategies of inmates in considerable detail. They found thatthe most common inmate coping strategy, one that is used almostuniversally, is a reactive approach to problem solving. The distinctiveattributes of this strategy include a failure to show persistence, organi-zation, planning, or anticipation of future results. Over the courseof three interviews, 98-99 percent of the inmates reported that theyapproached difficult prison situations in this manner. Other ways in



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 289which inmates frequently tried to deal with problems included effortsat physical escape from problem situations (54-60 percent of inmatesacross three interviews) and avoiding problem situations (47-53 per-cent). Consistent with observations that inmates are inclined to culti-vate a real man image, searching out others for social support wasnot among the preferred coping strategies (25-29 percent of inmates).

Among the significant findings of this researchis that inmate prefer-ences for specific coping strategies are consistent across the prisonterm. Changes in the proportion of inmates reporting that they used agiven coping strategy were not dramatic, the most substantial shiftbeing an increase in the use of palliative strategies, or strategiesinvolv-ing a search for contrasting pleasurable experiences (62-84 percent).Less substantial changes also were noted in the use of strategies thatinvolve reinterpretativeappraisalsof situations that reduce perceptionsof threat (22-35 percent), and the use of self-control techniques tomanageemotional responses (19-31 percent). Additionally, the authorsobserved a striking continuity from community to prison in demon-strated preferences for coping strategies. In both settings, offenderstended to approach problem situations in the same ways. The onlysignificant difference was in the use of alcohol and drugs, a copingresponse unavailable in prisons but adopted by nearly two-thirds ofthe inmates while in the community. There was no indication that thechoice of coping strategies was affected by prior incarcerationexperi-ences, although the rated efficacy of coping strategies for inmates withprior prison terms was lower than that of other inmates (Zamble andPorporino 1988).Another significant finding relates to the coping strategies that in-mates used only rarely. In very few instances did inmates report thatthey approachdifficult situations in prisons in a way that reflects sys-tematic planning or organization (8-14 percent of inmates). The re-searchersevaluated the majority of inmate coping strategiesas entirelyineffective, observing that in many instances the reactions of inmatesoften made situations worse. Surprisingly, the rated efficacy of copingstrategies was greater in prison than in the community, and Zambleand Porporino speculate that this finding can be traced to the fact thatprisons structure and constrain behavior in ways that make it moredifficult for inmates to create problems for themselves.Inmates who demonstrated the worst coping skills on the streetsprior to incarcerationtended to be single, have an unstable residence,show a lack of planning, have histories of alcohol and drug abuse and



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290 KennethAdamsof psychological problems, and have more extensive criminal records.Given that types of coping strategies and levels of coping effectivenesswere found to be consistent from community to prison, we can inferthat the same characteristics are typical of inmates who show poorcoping abilities in prison.There remain several important issues to be addressed in futureresearch. In particular,the availableresearchprovides little insight intothe generalizibility of inmate coping strategies beyond prison settings,acrossgroups of inmates, offenders, and nonoffenders, and in responseto a variety of situational problems. The realman theme, which isprominently featured in descriptions of the inmate society, may largelybe a product of lower-social-class subcultures insofar as it reflects afocal concern for toughness (Miller 1958).The realman theme alsomay be a function of settings that aremanagedalong authoritarian inesand that bring together males exclusively. In supportof this argument,several investigations suggest that inmate norms and social relation-ships are influenced by the administrative and management practicesof the institution (Grusky 1959;Berk 1966; Street, Vinter, and Perrow1966).We also know that long-term inmateshavedeveloped specializedcoping strategies, but we do not know much about how the copingstrategiesof this group compare with those of shorter-terminmates orwith older inmates. We also know something about the coping strate-gies of inmates who engage in self-destructive behavior, but how dothese strategies compare to those used by inmates whose adjustmentdifficulties are manifested in other ways?Zamble and Porporino (1988) categorized individual coping strate-gies in a way that allowed for comparisonsbetween the community andprison. The findings suggest that offenders show consistent patternsofmaladaptive behavior across settings and over time. However, thisresearch leaves important questions unanswered. We need to knowmore about how specific coping strategies are tied to specific problemsituations. We also need to know more abouthow demonstratedprefer-ences for coping strategies vary by important inmate characteristicssuch as race, gender, and criminal history. Given that 88 percent ofZamble and Porporino'ssample was comprised of white males, a situa-tion reflecting the lack of racialdiversity in the Canadian prison sys-tem, it was impossible for the investigators to study this issue.E. ResearchingnmateAdjustmentProblemsIn studying issues of prison adjustment, there is a tendency to focuson the problems of inmates. There are several reasons for this empha-



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Adjustingo PrisonLife 291sis. Problem behaviors capture attention and can be hard to ignore,especially when they representdramaticinstances of coping failure. Inprisons, where concerns for security are paramount, serious inmateadjustment problems threaten to underminethe stability of the organi-zation. Consequently, prison administratorskeep detailed records oninmate problem behaviors, a situation that facilitates research on thetopic. However, an absence of adjustment problems does not implypositive adjustment;we cannot assume that personalgrowth and devel-opment has taken place because adjustmentdifficulties are not evident.From the standpoint of studying the reactions of offenders to confine-ment, one of the most significant limitations of current research is thelack of attention to issues of successful adjustment. This shortcomingis especially critical in view of recent metaevaluations of the effective-ness of correctional programs (Gendreau and Ross 1987; Andrews etal. 1990). These evaluations indicate that therapy, education, and workprogramscan foster prosocial behaviors and attitudes in inmates, andthese positive changes may facilitate inmate adjustmentwithin the cor-rectional environment. Issues of successful coping and of positivechange represent an important direction for future research if we areto develop a full and complete picture of the ways in which inmatesrespond to incarcerationexperiences.Given that various methodologies have been used in quantitativestudies of inmate adjustment, it may be useful to review the approachestakenby severalresearchers, the first by Zamble and Porporino(1988),and the second by Toch and Adams (1989a). Both studies representlarge-scaleresearch efforts that generated significantfindings discussedthroughout this essay. The former study used structured interviewsand survey instruments to measure adjustment, while the latter reliedheavily on prison records to study patterns of maladaptivebehaviors.The study by Zamble and Porporino (1988) involved a sample of133 inmates entering the Canadian prison system randomly selectedfrom categories of short (two to five years), medium (five to ten years),and long (ten years to life) sentences in roughly equal numbers acrosscategories. In addition to collecting backgroundinformation and psy-chological test data, the researchers interviewed the inmates on threeoccasions-at entry and at points about four and sixteen months intothe prison sentence. At each interview, inmates were asked to list theproblems they experienced in prison. From each inmate's list, threeproblems were chosen, usually the highest ranked, and inmates thenwere askedabout how they handled the problem situation. The investi-gators also asked inmates about difficulties they experienced prior to



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292 KennethAdamsincarceration. The answers to these inquiries were classified in termsof the nature and effectiveness of the inmate's coping responses.Toch and Adams (1989a) studied inmate adjustment problems intermsof mental disorderand disciplinary violations. They had a specialinterest in disturbed-disruptive inmates or prisoners who showedconjoint patterns of symptomatic and antisocial behaviors. The studyinvolved a release cohort of over 10,000 inmates on whom informationregarding disciplinary and mental health status was collected fromprison files. More detailed analyses were carried out on a stratifiedsubsample of about 2,500 inmates that overrepresentedoffenders withchronic discipline and serious mental health problems. For this smallergroup, the investigatorsdocumented the date anddescription of behav-iors for all instances of symptomatology and prison rules violationsrecorded in the inmate's files. These data allowed specific behavior tobe located in time and patterns of behavior change to be studied overthe prison term. Finally, 239 inmates were selected, representing themost extreme instances of maladaptation,and a set of case studies wereproducedusing clinical and administrative recordsto describe inmates'prison experiences.Zamble and Porporino(1988)relied heavily on interviews and surveyinstruments for their data collection, and this strategy has a numberof advantages. Most important, it provides for an independent assess-ment of an inmate'sadjustmentuncontaminatedby the views of prisonstaff. The strategy also allows for the use of standardized measuresof known reliability and validity, some of which may be useful incomparisonswith research on nonincarceratedpopulations. Also, sincethe data are collected with the researcher'sgoals specifically in mind,the substantive fit between the types of data collected and the theoryor question being investigated can be maximized.

Among the disadvantages, however, is the amount of effort andresources required by this strategy. Research staff need to be trainedin interview and survey techniques, and the process of data collectionis labor intensive and time consuming. As a consequence, sample sizestend to be modest. Small samples can be problematicnot only becausethey may affect the results of statistical analyses but also because theymake it difficult to disaggregateresults and to study importantsubpop-ulations such as inmates who engage in extreme or chronic behaviors.Furthermore, when survey and interview methods are used prospec-tively in a longitudinal design, data collection efforts typically span along period and lead to practical difficulties, such as obstacles in



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 293tracking subjects and sustaining their cooperation, problems of main-taining funding, and liabilities of having to defer data analysis wellinto the future. Finally, concerns can be raised over the validity ofinmate responses to interview and survey questions. Inmates may re-spond in ways that mirrorthe perceived expectations of the researcher,that reflect the norms of the inmate society, or that inappropriatelycapitalize on the presence of a sympathetic listener.

Compared to interview and survey techniques, the use of officialrecords provides for relatively quick, convenient, and economical datacollection. Researchers who use official records often are in a positionto assemble more observationson agreaternumber of subjectscoveringa longer period of time. Larger samples combined with more expansivedata sets allow for more statistically reliable and more finely detailedanalyses. Expeditious data collection means that the analysis stage isreached more quickly, and, consequently, the findings of the researchtend to be more pertinent to contemporary issues and situations. Also,since the information contained in official records often documentsthe operation of the agency, the data are conducive to the study ofpolicy-relevant issues. Finally, by using some types of prison records,researchersmay capitalize on the fact that inmates are under continu-ous surveillance while in custody.The use of official records in prison research, however, is not with-out disadvantages. The front-line staff of the prison system exercisegreat control over which events and what types of informationget puton record. These gatekeeping activities, if not carried out with refer-ence to a known, common set of criteria, can introduceunknown biasesinto the data that can jeopardizethe validity of researchfindings. Also,since the researcherwho uses officialrecords has relatively little controlover the data collection process, he or she simply must accommodatesituations where information is missing or is not logged in the mostdesirable format. For these reasons, it is important to use reliable rec-ord-keeping systems in which missing data and reporting biases arekept to a minimum. Such systems are typically well-established andreflect circumstances in which staff are motivated to provide accurateinformation.F. IssuesSurroundinghe UseofDisciplinaryRecordsGiven that the overwhelming majorityof studies on inmateantisocialbehavior rely on official misconduct reports as a source of data, issuessurrounding this research strategy transcend the use of disciplinary



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294 KennethAdamsrecords in any one study. Prison disciplinary files can be an attractivedata source for several reasons. Inmate disciplinary records constituteone of the oldest record-keeping systems in prisons. All inmates areissued a copy of the prison rule book, which means that ignorance ofthe rules is not a complicating factor, and the identification and re-porting of serious inmate misconduct is accorded high priority by theinstitution. Also, the quasi-legal nature of the disciplinary processhelps to insure that records are maintained in a complete and uniformmanner. However, prison disciplinary records clearly are imperfectmeasures of inmate behavior, being subject to detection and reportingbiases. The staff component of official data becomes especially impor-tant when considering issues such as race and gender differences inmisbehaviorsince it can be argued that these inmate characteristicsareimplicatedin the differentialhandlingof disciplinary incidents by staff.The few studies that have been carried out on detection and re-porting biases in the prison disciplinary system have yielded incon-clusive results. Some researchers find evidence of significant un-derreporting in official records when comparisons are made withself-reported infractions (Poole and Regoli 1980). They also find evi-dence of racial bias in that blacks are more often referred to the prisondisciplinary system, even though levels of self-reportedrules violationsarecomparableacross racialgroups (Poole and Regoli 1980). However,the conclusion of racial bias is complicated by the findings that aninmate's record of past misbehavior is a majordeterminant of disciplin-ary referral decisions and that blacks have more extensive infractionhistories than whites. Thus, to the extent that more extensive priordisciplinary histories are not themselves a product of racial bias andinstead reflect a greater propensity for antisocial behavior, the conclu-sion that corrections officers discriminate against black inmates is notsupported.Other researchers also report mixed findings with regard to issuesof racial bias. Carroll (1974) notes that black inmates have lower ratesof minor infractions but higher rates of major infractionsas comparedto white inmates. In explainingthese divergent tendencies, he observedthat black inmates can intimidate white prison staff into overlookingminor infractions, resulting in greater leniency for black inmates, andthat the use of confrontational tactics by black inmates can escalateminor violations into major incidents that can not be ignored, leadingto more serious disciplinary records centered aroundrefusals to followorders(Carroll 1974). In this study, issues of racialbias arecomplicated



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 295by the finding that black inmates behave differently toward correctionsofficers than do white inmates.

Davies (1982), using a particularly inventive strategy, compared of-ficial disciplinary reports for assaults with hospital injury records fora prison in Great Britain. The comparison indicates that many violentincidents among inmates are not reflected in disciplinary records, withthe rate of underreporting being greater for long-term inmates andyoung inmates. The author explains these findings by arguingthat theattitudes that corrections officers have toward different inmate groupsinfluence the reporting threshold for disciplinary incidents. He specu-lates that corrections officers afford greater latitude to long-term in-mates because they are seen as being under stressand to young inmatesbecause they are seen as naturally rambunctious and troublesome.However, no empirical evidence is presented to support these specula-tions.

In trying to resolve issues surrounding the research uses of prisondisciplinary records, we could examine the considerable body of re-search on biases in other types of criminal justice records, but manyof these studies also have produced conflicting findings and divergentinterpretationsof results. Furthermore, the conclusions of this researchmay have limited applicability to prisons because the considerationsthat enter into the decisions of criminal justice officials may differ bysetting. Although it can be argued convincingly that the degree ofseriousness or harmfulness of behavior constrains discretionary deci-sionmaking (Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1980), the specific factorsthat enter into assessments of seriousness may differ for prison guardsas compared to police, prosecutors, and judges. Additionally, prisonguards depend to a large extent on the cooperative attitudes of inmatesfor carrying out their work, and officers have an interest in beingperceived as fair and impartial by inmates (Sykes 1958). Otherwise,inmates may become resentful and hostile, making the officer's jobmore difficult. Furthermore, overzealous recourse to the formal disci-plinary process may be interpreted by supervisors as a sign that anofficer lacks the skills and abilities to handle problem situations effec-tively.These observations suggest that in attempting to understand theoperation of the prison disciplinary system in a broader context, wemight look beyond obvious similarities between the work of prisonguardsand police officers and instead look toward the prosecutor'sroleas a point for comparison. Both prosecutors and corrections officers



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296 KennethAdamsdepend heavily on the cooperation of offenders for carrying out dailywork tasks. A prosecutor'sdecision to press forward with a case nearlyalways results in a conviction, and almost all disciplinary write-ups bycorrections officers lead to the finding that the inmate is guilty. Weknow that in making charging and dismissal decisions the prosecutoroften encroaches on the fact-finding and guilt-adjudging functions ofthe judiciary. Do corrections officers also selectively process disciplin-ary cases where the evidence is strong and the probabilityof convictionis high? Or do members of disciplinary committees take the correc-tion's officers report at face value, failing to act as independent arbitra-torsof facts, and dismiss an inmate'scontradictoryreportof an incidentas self-serving? Or do disciplinary committees fear that the deterrenteffects of the punishment system will be compromised unduly if in-mates are found innocent and cases are dismissed?In sum, research confirmsthat disciplinary recordsfail to capture allinmate transgressions against prison rules. However, issues of whetherdifferences in rates of disciplinary violations acrossinmate groups rep-resent the detection and reporting biases of correctionalofficers or truedifferences in rates of misbehavior have yet to be resolved. Furtherresearch directed at this issue would be very useful in interpretingthefindings of a large number of studies on the characteristics of inmateswho violate prison rules.

Notwithstanding their limitations, records of inmate misbehaviorare an attractive source of data for researchersstudying inmate copingand adjustment(Wolf, Freinek, and Shaffer 1966).While an occasionalmisbehaviorreport cannot be accordedmuch significanceas an adjust-ment problem, frequent or systematic violations of prison rules aremuch less ambiguous signs of adjustment difficulties, especially whenthe focus is on extreme or chronic offenders. In many situations, useof the prison disciplinary system indicates that informal mechanismsfor dealing with the inmate'sdifficulties either have failed or have beenpreempted by the gravity of the inmate's acts. An official record ofchronic misbehavior suggests coping difficulties in the sense that theinmate cannot establish workablerelationshipswith staff at some mini-mal level or that the inmate has a conspicuous disregardfor the normsthat govern prison life and for the safety and security of others. Theinterpretationof frequent violations of prison rules as a sign of copingdifficulty is reinforced further by the implausibility of describing in-mate misbehavior as constructive problem-solving efforts to deal withone's situation given that the formaldisciplinary processcarriesserious



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 297adverseconsequences for the inmate. Finally, by concentratingon pat-terns of misbehavior and, in particular, on chronic misbehavior, theresearcher insures that disciplinary records reflect the judgments ofmany staff who have observed the inmate in a variety of settings,thereby reducing the chances of significant reporting biases.

II. Empirical Research Findings on Inmate AdjustmentThe review of research is organized into three sections: individual cor-relates, environmental factors, and sentence characteristics. In dis-cussing the relation of these three sets of factors to inmate adjustment,we will separately consider two broad categories of adjustment prob-lems-emotional disorders and disruptive behavior. Under the headingof emotional disorders, a range of mental illnesses-such as psychoses,anxiety, and depression-along with self-injury and suicide attemptsis included. These disorders and behaviors, which often are the focusof mental health treatment, are the types of problems that most readilycome to mind when thinking of inmate adjustment difficulties. Thecategoryof disruptive behaviorcovers a variety of antisocialacts, manyof which represent violations of prison rules, including violence andsexual assault.A. TheEffectsof IndividualCharacteristicsn InmateAdjustmentThe individual-level correlates of various adjustment problems arereviewed in this section, startingwith a discussion of sociodemographicitems, such as age, race, gender, marital status, and employment his-tory, variables that are included in most inmate studies. The focusthen shifts to relations between inmate adjustment and criminal andmental health history. These life history variables are important be-cause they illuminate issues of behavioralcontinuity and discontinuity.1. Demographic orrelates-EmotionalDisorder. A number of studieshave found that blackinmates areless susceptible to emotionaldisorderand breakdown than white inmates. Although the number of studies ismodest, the findings are very consistent. White inmatesare repeatedlyfound to be more likely to engage in self-injury, both in prisons andin jails (Johnson 1976; Gibbs 1982c). In some instances, the observeddifferences in ratesof self-injury between races aredramatic. In a studyof the Tennessee prison system, one-third of white inmates consideredcommitting suicide during confinement comparedto only three percentof black inmates (Jones 1976). White inmates demonstrate symptomsof psychological distress, such as confusion, anxiety, depression, and



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298 KennethAdamsother mood disturbances, more frequently than do inmates of otherraces (Jones 1976; Fagan and Lira 1978). The differing propensitiesbetween races even extends to death row, where it has been observedthat white inmates experience more death anxiety than black inmates(Johnson 1981, 1982).

Exceptions to the pattern that white inmates show more psychologi-cal distress than black inmates are few. Goodstein and MacKenzie(1984) found that blacks and whites had the same score on an anxietyscale and that blacks scored higher on a depression scale. The picturealso shows some inconsistency when the use of prison mental healthservices is considered. One study finds no racialdifference in the pro-portion of prison inmates who are hospitalized (Toch and Adams1989a), while jail studies report conflicting findings as to which racialgroups of inmates are more likely to be referred for mental healthservices (Petrich 1976; Swank and Winer 1976). The extent to whichinmate use of mental health services is influenced by processes of self-selection or staff selection is unknown.Few studies have looked at the psychological problems of Hispanicinmates, perhaps because they do not figure prominently as a groupin many prison systems. The availableresearchindicates that Hispan-ics show a greater concern for being separated from their families, aconcern that is especially likely to surface in crisis situations. Johnson(1976) finds that self-linking, or protests againstbeing separatedfromloved ones, is a common theme among Hispanic inmates who injurethemselves. In contrast, self-injuriesfor white inmatesmore commonlyreflect neurotic features suggesting that anger and resentment overconfinement is being directed inward.Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain the finding thatblacks experience less psychological distress during confinement thando whites. It has been observed that white inmates often are in theminority, a situation that can generate anxiety over personalsafety andsecurity (Fagan and Lira 1978). Explanations, however, more com-monly focus on differences in culture and socialization between races.In particular, it has been argued that because black inmates show lessculturaldiversity as a group, they experience a sense of ethnic solidar-ity that helps buffer the hardshipsof prison life. Observationalstudiessupport this argument insofar as they describe how prison gangs,which areoften organized along raciallines, create and sustain personalidentities and provide social support, economic benefits, and physicalprotection to inmates who are gang members. However, quantitative



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 299studies of the ways in which gang membership, as well as other inmategroup affiliations and social networks, facilitate prison adjustment arelacking.Other scholars have pointed out that black inmates also dispropor-tionately come from urban ghettos, where life experiences train peoplein street survivalskills that can be used to advantagein prison (Johnson1976). A variation of this argument applies to state-raised youth, orpersons who have spent the better part of their childhood and adoles-cence in institutions (Irwin and Cressey 1962;Irwin 1970, 1980;Bartol-las 1982). Presumably, these experiences of prior institutionalizationhelp prepare individuals for prison by familiarizingthem with institu-tional life. However, most of the evidence for this argument derivesfrom observational studies.

It has been found that women prisoners are more likely to havehistories of psychiatric treatment (Panton 1974)and are more disposedto self-injury than men (Fox 1975). Also, female inmates are moreinclined to use mental health services in prisons, a difference that canbe seen most clearly for outpatient services given the small number offemale inmates in prison systems and the low rates of hospitalizationfor inmate populations (Toch and Adams 1989a, p. 13). Similar obser-vations come from British prisons where it is reported that problemsof self-injury and psychiatric disturbance aregreater in female prisons(Heidensohn 1985) and that many women inmates who injure them-selves have a history of self-mutilation and previously have spent timein psychiatric institutions (Cookson 1977). Several factors are involvedin explaining the more extensive mental health involvements of femaleinmates. It has been observed that women feel the pains of separationfrom family and children more sharply than men and that women oftenuse self-injury as a form of emotional catharsis(Fox 1975, 1982). Also,the majority of women report being physically and sexually abused aschildren (Chesney-Lind and Rodriquez 1983), and research confirmsthat abusive childhood experiences are associatedwith violent behaviorand emotional difficulties in adulthood (Widom 1989).With regard to other individual characteristics, older inmates (overforty-five years of age) have been described as disproportionately in-volved in reports of psychological problems (Jones 1976). Similarly,inmates who are committed to psychiatric hospitals from prison tendto be older (Toch and Adams 1989a), as are jail inmates referred formental health services (Petrich 1976). Inmates who require mentalhealth assistanceare more likely to be unmarried(Petrich 1976;Swank



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300 KennethAdamsand Winer 1976;Toch and Adams 1989a)and to be living alone aroundthe time of the offense for which they were incarcerated(Toch andAdams 1989a).2. DemographicCharacteristics-Suicide nd Self-Injury. Inmate sui-cides and self-injuries are a major problem in correctional institutions.Davies (1982) reports that 12 percent of inmate injuries are self-inflicted. Acts of self-mutilation and self-injury amonginstitutionalizedpopulations appearto be motivated by a variety of concerns includingrage, frustration, retaliation, contagion, conformity, and secondarygain (Feldman 1988). There have been two comprehensive reviews ofthe researchon inmate suicide, one of which has been carried out veryrecently by the British Home Office (Burtch and Ericson 1979;Lloyd1990). The rate of suicide among inmates is greater than that amongdemographicallycomparable groups in the community, suggesting thattypical incarceration experiences not only trigger preexisting tenden-cies but enhance the attractivenessof self-destructive solutions to one'sproblems. In general, young offenders, males, unmarried offenders,and offenders who abuse alcohol and drugs are more predisposed tosuicide. In this regard, suicidal inmates tend to resemble inmates whoare most unruly. In many instances, suicidal inmates have a history ofpsychiatric disorder, although it is unclear if the rate of mental illnessfor suicidal inmates is higher than for the general inmate population.In addition, many studies find that prison inmates who attempt suicidehave been convicted of a violent offense, suggesting a relation betweenself-directed and other-directed violence. In jails, however, where therange of offense behavior among the inmate population is greater,many suicidal inmates are charged with minor offenses. Also, suicidesare more likely to occur in the early stages of incarceration,especiallyin jails where the first few days of confinement represent the highestrisk period.3. Demographic haracteristics-PrisonMisbehavior. The research oninmate misbehaviorreveals many similaritieswith moregeneral studiesof criminality. Many investigatorsfind racial differences in disciplinaryinvolvement, with black inmates being more unruly and white inmatesbeing more prone to victimization. In addition, young inmates reliablysurface as most disruptive. Although the interpretationof these find-ings is controversial, most explanations of racial differences focus onsubcultural differences while explanations of age differences focus onprocesses of learning and maturation. The profileof inmates who expe-riencedisciplinary problems in prison indicates that these persons have



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 301led relatively marginal lives in the community, having unimpressiverecords of accomplishment in domestic, educational, and occupationalspheres of life. Although it is unclear how the infraction rates of fe-males compare to that of males, the attributes that distinguish femaleinfractorstend to be similar to those that distinguish male infractors.A large variety of individual characteristics have been studied inrelation to prison misbehavior, and among the best-researched corre-lates are age and race. Many studies find substantialracial differencesin rates of disruptive behavior, although the picture that emerges fromthe researchis not entirely consistent. A number of studies report thatblacks are more likely to be charged with institutional rules violations(Poole and Regoli 1980; Flanagan 1983; Ramirez 1983; Goetting andHowsen 1986; Toch and Adams 1989a; Wright 1989) and are dispro-portionately represented among chronic disciplinary violators (Myersand Levy 1978). When prison staff are asked to identify well-adjustedinmates, they more frequently point to white inmates (Coe 1961). Onoccasion, however, researchers find that whites have higher prisoninfraction rates than blacks (Johnson 1966), although the more com-mon finding is of no racial differences in infraction rates (Wolfgang1961;Ellis, Grasmick, and Gilman 1974). A study of the disciplinaryinvolvement of inmates across three state prison systems captured therange of mixed results: in California white inmates had higher infrac-tion rates than black inmates, in Texas blackinmates had higher rates,while in Michigan infraction rates were indistinguishable across racialgroups (Petersilia and Honig 1980).Studies on the characteristics of inmate aggressorsand their victimsmore reliably find racial differences. In general, the research indicatesthat black inmates are more likely to be aggressorsand white inmatesto be victims (Fuller and Orsagh 1977;Toch 1977). Similar racial dif-ferences in aggressor and victim roles have been observed for sexualassaults (Davis 1968; Carroll 1974;Jones 1976; Lockwood 1980). Ingeneral, as compared to studies of general prison misbehavior, theresearchon aggressive and violent behavior shows more consistent ra-cial differences. No study has yet to report that black inmates are lessaggressive than white inmates. While it is possible that the appearanceof consistency in research findings is a function of the modest numberof studies on prison victimization and sexual violence, scholars haveadvanced several explanations to account for the findings. The mostcommon explanationsarguethat a greaterdegree of aggressivebehavioramong black inmates can be traced to the cultivation of subcultural



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302 KennethAdamsvalues that promote violence. Along these lines, scholars have sug-gested that racial differences in prison misbehavior are largely a func-tion of differences in prior criminal history or in urban-ruralexperi-ences, and these arguments find some support in the research. Inseveral instances, it has been shown that the disciplinary rates of blackand white inmates are nearly identical when inmates with equivalentcriminal histories (Wright 1989) or with similar backgrounds(Good-stein and MacKenzie 1984) are compared. However, more direct testsof subculturalexplanations, for example, studies that directly measuresubcultural values or that identify violence as a specific coping styleamong racialgroups, have yet to be carried out among prison inmates.

Age has proven to be the strongest, most robust correlateof prisonmisconduct (Hanks 1940; Schnur 1949; Zink 1958; Wolfgang 1961;Johnson 1966;Jensen 1977; Myers and Levy 1978; Mabli et al. 1979;Petersilia and Honig 1980;Flanagan 1983;Goetting and Howsen 1986;Toch and Adams 1989a). Younger inmates have been shown to haveconsistently higher infraction rates than older inmates, a finding thathas been replicated across several countries, including the UnitedStates, Canada, and England. Also, the propensity for younger in-mates to be disruptive extends throughout incarceration. Younger in-mates have higher infraction rates across all points of the prison term(Toch and Adams 1989a).There are many views on why youth is associated with antisocialbehavior, delinquency, and crime (Hirschi and Gottfredson 1983;Greenberg 1985;Farrington 1986);the research on prison misbehavioroffers several clues. Fox (1958) characterizes disciplinary offenders,who tend to be young, as less mature and less well adjusted. Toch andAdams (1989a)report that for young inmates of the same age, those atthe end of their prison term have lower infraction rates than those atthe beginning. This finding, that younger, more rambunctiousinmatestend to settle down independent of the effects of chronological aging,can be interpreted as evidence of learning and maturation.MacKenzie(1987) finds that even though they are more frequently cited by stafffor misconduct, younger inmates do not report having more conflictswith inmates and guards. She also finds that young inmates with highinfraction rates tend to be more assertive than other inmates. Thesefindings suggest that a major source of the difficulties that youngerinmates have with the prison disciplinary system is their preferencefor resolving conflicts in ways that are demonstrably visible and thatadvertise toughness and strength.



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Adjusting o PrisonLife 303Particularly noteworthy in this context are the findings reported

by Zamble and Porporino (1988). They find that the correlations ofinfraction rates with age (r = -.27) and with ratingsof coping efficacy(r = -.28) are virtually identical. Furthermore, they find that ageranks fourth in terms of strength of relationship with infraction rates,behind drug use, negative perceptions of prison, and number offriends, when using a stepwise regression procedure. These findingsare interesting on a number of counts. First, when psychological vari-ables are measured directly (e.g., coping efficacy), the strength of therelation with infraction rates is the same as that of chronological age,suggesting that attempts to identify intervening processes that mightexplain the relation of age to antisocial behavior should prove fruitful.Second, a history of maladaptive coping strategies in the community(e.g., drug use) is a strong predictorof prison misbehavior. Third, thefindings highlight the importance of contextual influences on prisonmisbehavior;inmates who keep to themselves and have few friends areless inclined to get into trouble, while gregarious inmates more oftenrun afoul of institutional rules. Finally, inmateswith disciplinary prob-lems more generally view their situation in prison as bothersome, sug-gesting that negative cognitive perceptions are implicated in unsuccess-ful coping and adaptation.A variety of other inmate characteristicshave been studied in rela-tion to prison misbehavior, including sex, marital status, drug use,emotional disorder, mental retardation, criminal history, prior incar-ceration experiences, employment history, and educational achieve-ment. Discussion of the relation of mental illness and mental retarda-tion to disciplinary involvement is reserved for a later section onmultiproblem inmates. Regarding sex differences in prison misbehav-ior, there is mixed evidence on the question of whether the infractionrates of female inmates differ from those of males. A national surveyof inmates in state prisons (Goetting and Howsen 1986) found thatwomen have lower rates of self-reported rules violations. In addition,Toch and Adams (1989a, p. 13) observed that female inmates hadlower disciplinary infraction rates than their male counterparts. How-ever, other studies find that female inmates have higher infractionrates(Lindquist 1980). It also has been reported that female prisons in GreatBritain have higher infraction rates than male prisons, although thedifference is mostly accounted for by minor offenses (Morris 1987).Studies of female infractors indicate that those who are more likely toviolate prison rules are young, black, unmarried,without children, and



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304 KennethAdamshave been convicted of a violent or drug-related offense (Faily andRoundtree 1979; Roundtree, Mohan, and Mahaffey 1980). Thus, fe-male inf

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