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Institutional Aggression Within Groups

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Institutional Aggression within groups

AO1
Institutional aggression – aggression which occurs and becomes the norm within any form of institution.

IMPORTATION MODEL
• Irwin + Cressey (1962) claim prisoners bring own social histories + traits into prison. This influences their adaptation to the prison environment.
• They argue prisoners are not blank slates when they enter prison + many of the normative systems developed on the outside world be ‘imported’ into prison.

DEPRIVATION MODEL
• Paterline + Peterson (1999) – prisoner aggression is the result of the stressful + oppressive conditions of the institution itself. Oppressive conditions include crowding, staff exp etc.
• Hodgkinson et al. (1985) found trainee nurses are more likely to suffer violent assault than experienced nurses + in prison setting, length of service was also a sig factor with more exp officers being less likely to suffer an assault (Davies + Burgess, 1988).

HAZING
• Bullying/disciplining younger members of a group in order to maintain ‘pecking order’.
• Feb. 2006, Private Andrei Sycher was brutally beaten by older soldiers in Russia. He had to have his legs + genitalia amputated (Vyugin, 2006).
• An extensive study of 11,000+ US students involved in teams showed over half had exp hazing.
It happens because social context is a powerful influence on peoples willingness to aggress.

AO2
• Harer + Steffensmeier (2006) collected data from 58 US prisons + found black inmates had sig higher rates of violent behaviour but lower rates of alcohol + drug related misconduct. These patterns parallel racial differences in US society + so support importation.

• McCorkle (1995) found overcrowding, lack of privacy + lack of meaningful activity all significantly influence peer violence.
• However, research inconsistent. Research into psychiatric institutions (Niijman et al. 1999) found

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