Sentencing within Prisons: An Examination of Influences on the Disciplinary Response to Inmate Misconduct

• In Event: Inmate Misconduct: Risk Factors and Punishment

Abstract

The majority of the research on sentencing processes and outcomes occurs in the context of criminal courts, which are relatively easy to observe. The inmate disciplinary process, which involves sentencing decisions made within the prison setting, is a routine occurrence within correctional institutions. Yet in contrast to the court system, the closed nature of correctional institutions shields the process and outcomes of inmate disciplinary review from public and empirical scrutiny. Prior research on discretionary decision making at various stages of the criminal justice process suggests that differential processing my occur based on a variety of legal and extra-legal factors, and that discretionary decision making may be more likely to occur at those decision points that are less visible – such as the inmate disciplinary process. The extent to which this finding extends in to this decision point remains largely unaddressed within the empirical literature. The current study incorporates key factors identified in the literature emergent from studies of criminal courts to systematically examine the various legal, quasi-legal, and extra-legal influences on the disciplinary outcomes following guilty misconduct proceedings among a national sample of incarcerated male and female inmates.

Author

• Katherine Ginsburg Kempany, Arizona State University