NCJ Number
95833
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 12 Issue: 6 Dated: (1984) Pages: 579-590
Date Published
1984
Length
12 pages
Annotation
The level of control exercised by guards over inmates, it has been argued, has decreased recently as a result of therapeutic, legal, and bureaucratic changes in American prisons.
Abstract
Feeling that inmates too often and too easily circumvent their authority, and that greater inmate rights pose a serious threat to their ability to maintain order, guards tend to discredit inmate complaints and to deny inmates the right to lawful social protest. Questionnaire data are analyzed to examine (1) the extent and degree to which guards perceive as legitimate the various means by which inmates may protest unfair treatment by staff and (2) the relationship of this perceived legitimacy of inmate social protest to a variety of factors that prior research has isolated as important in understanding prison guards as an occupational group. (Author abstract)