Grievances behind bars: Does procedural justice moderate the effect of deprivation on inmate grievances?

• In Event: Seeking Safety in Prison: Promoting Institutional Wellbeing

Abstract

Although inmate grievance behavior has important implications for prison management and institutional legitimacy, limited research has explored what predicts inmates’ use of the grievance process. Guided by the deprivation and procedural justice models, this study examines how perceptions of deprivation and procedural justice influence grievance filing, and whether procedural justice moderates the effect of deprivation. Using secondary data from 986 male inmates across 20 South Korean correctional facilities in 2009, we estimate a zero-inflated Poisson regression to account for the high proportion of inmates who reported zero grievances. Results from the count model show that deprivation is positively associated with grievance filing, while procedural justice weakens this relationship. In the inflate model, procedural justice increases the likelihood of being in the “never-file” group, suggesting that inmates who perceive greater fairness are less likely to engage with the grievance process. Deprivation decreases the odds of being in this group, and this effect is also moderated by procedural justice. Overall, findings suggest that procedural justice not only reduces the number of grievances filed by deprived inmates but also influences whether they choose to file grievances at all. Promoting fairness in correctional settings may reduce formal complaints and foster constructive inmate engagement.

Authors

• Kyunghwan Ko, University of South Carolina

• Yongjae (David) Nam, The University of Texas at San Antonio