Violent State Prisoners And Their Victims

The past 25 years have seen a major paradigm shift in the field of violence prevention, from the assumption that violence is inevitable to the recognition that violence is preventable. Part of this shift has occurred in thinking about why violence occurs, and where intervention points might lie. In exploring the occurrence of violence, researchers have recognized the tendency for violent acts to cluster, to spread from place to place, and to mutate from one type to another. Furthermore, violent acts are often preceded or followed by other violent acts. In the field of public health, such a process has also been seen in the infectious disease model, in which an agent or vector initiates a specific biological pathway leading to symptoms of disease and infectivity. The agent transmits from individual to individual, and levels of the disease in the population above the baseline constitute an epidemic. Although violence does not have a readily observable biological agent as an initiator, it can follow similar epidemiological pathways. On April 30-May 1, 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Forum on Global Violence Prevention convened a workshop to explore the contagious nature of violence. Part of the Forum's mandate is to engage in multisectoral, multidirectional dialogue that explores crosscutting, evidence-based approaches to violence prevention, and the Forum has convened four workshops to this point exploring various elements of violence prevention. The workshops are designed to examine such approaches from multiple perspectives and at multiple levels of society. In particular, the workshop on the contagion of violence focused on exploring the epidemiology of the contagion, describing possible processes and mechanisms by which violence is transmitted, examining how contextual factors mitigate or exacerbate the issue. Contagion of Violence: Workshop Summary covers the major topics that arose during the 2-day workshop. It is organized by important elements of the infectious disease model so as to present the contagion of violence in a larger context and in a more compelling and comprehensive way.

This study examines prison sexual violence in adult and juvenile New York State prisons. To an inmate, the formal structure of a prison – its planned work, recreation, and rehabilitation – may be a thin veneer. The ‘real’ world is the social environment, created by the convict community, and sexual violence is a traditional part of that environment. A range of sexual behaviors, all perceived as threatening and offensive by the targets of aggressors were examined, with discussion on the nature of the overture, the physical and verbal response of the target, his thoughts and feelings, the living patterns resulting from sexual pressure, and how peers and staff react. In this population, sexual aggression is shown to be racially-based: most aggressors were black, and most victims were white, of a slighter build than the aggressor, and perceived as having feminine physical and personality characteristics. About half of the 152 incidents examined involved physical violence, half initiated by aggressors coercing targets; the rest from targets reacting to threats. Both aggressors and targets tended to come from outside and prison social subcultures which used aggression as a primary means of relieving frustration and irritation. After fights, targets reported that aggressors left them alone, that they moved around the prison with less fear, felt better about themselves, and had a higher status among other prisoners. Sexual attacks increased fear, and victims continued to be affected emotionally months after the event. Prison staff did not usually intervene directly in the incidents, nor is there evidence that such intervention would be effective in reducing the problem. The author recommends the provision of program alternatives such as the Alternatives to Violence (AVP) and other conflict resolutions programs. (NCJRS, modified).