Overcrowding and violence in federal correctional institutions

Abstract

This study proposed to develop a model of inmate violence in order to examine the effect of overcrowding on the rate of inmate violence in federal correctional institutions. Archival data of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) were used to gather data on the frequency of inmate violent episodes. Data on the populations of non-administrative federal facilities, the rated capacity of each facility, security level, inmate-staff ratio, and inmate age were entered into four logistic regression analyses to determine how well these variables predicted the probability of inmate homicide, homicide and assaults combined, fights and total violence. Although the overall models predicted the odds of violence significantly better than chance, results suggested that overcrowding is not related to violence when security level is controlled.%%%%Ph.D., Clinical Psychology – Drexel University, 2004