Vindictive Vindications: Crime Causation From the Inmates' Standpoint

• NCJ Number: 161575
• Journal: Keepers' Voice Volume: 17 Issue: 2 Dated: (Spring 1996) Pages: 9-13
• Author(s): R J Kelly
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 5 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This article discusses inmates' attitudes toward their criminal behavior, inmates' presentation of self in jail and prison, and professional treatment ideologies that fuel inmates' disposition to avoid accepting responsibility for their acts.

Abstract

Inmates typically look for conditions or people to blame for their criminal acts so as to avoid accepting personal responsibility for what their behavior has done to their victims. At the center of this refusal to assume responsibility is a deceitfulness and disenchantment. Much of what inmates say is part of the complex interactional game known as "Getting Over." Drug addicts, for instance, explain their actions differently, depending on their audience, so as to gain the response from each audience that the offender wants. Inmates are quick to use sociological explanations to excuse their own injurious behavior, identifying such factors as abusive, alcoholic parents; poverty; and neighborhood deprivations. They are not so sympathetic, however, in their view of the causes of other people's behavior, as they perceive that those who treat them badly are acting out of their free will and deserve to be punished accordingly. Inmates' tend to present themselves in jail and prison in accordance with the infrastructure of intellectual entrepreneurs, therapists, social workers, and moral crusaders. These professionals tend to look for various factors in the inmate's background that have produced their criminal behaviors. The major perspectives of sociological determinism are gaining public acceptance. There are advantages for offenders in presenting themselves as helpless victims of social, cultural, and psychological forces over which they have little influence. Corrections professionals must examine how the philosophical structures of their interactions with inmates may facilitate inmates' tendency to avoid assuming responsibility for their behaviors in the past and in the future. 1 reference