How Do I Treat My Hungry Lion: A Model for Violence Management in Prison

Abstract

This theoretical model for the management of violence relies on the notion that there are fundamentally only two kinds of prison violence—provoked and unprovoked—and that all violence is caused by the influence of some fear-causing agent which triggers the autonomic nervous system's Fight or Flight Response (FFR) which in turn causes the release of FFR chemicals to create and enable an action potential for violence in the actor. Provoked violence is an act of violence which occurs in response to an FFR instigated by some external, independent contemporaneous, real or imagined fear causing agent. Treating provoked violence must include suppressing the production of an excess of FFR stimulant chemicals, which at the same time employing psychodynamic therapy to modify the negative behavior learned from a lifetime of excessive responses to FFR chemical releases. Unprovoked violence is the result of an actor's addiction to FFR chemicals. This addiction leads the actor to experience an apperceptive compulsion to engage in thrill seeking as a method of exposing himself to fear causing agents that are calculated to cause the release of FFR chemicals. In order to treat unprovoked violence you must treat both the chemical addiction and the negative pattern of behavior which was learned to support the habit of self-triggering an FFR. Thus any successful treatment of violence must employ both energetic and psychodynamic models for development of fear management strategies.