Question

For each study described below, identify the independent and dependent variables, as well as their apparent relationship, assess the construct and relational validity of the study (using all of the forms of validity discussed in class and in reading, as appropriate), and the ethics of the study.

Heres The Study:

Robert G. Morris and John L. Worrall – Prison Architecture and Inmate Misconduct (2010)

A little less than 1 percent of all of the people in the United States are currently in jail, the highest rate of incarceration in the world (about 30 percent higher than the number two country, Russia), making the understanding of prisons important to American scholars and policy makers. There have been any number of factors which have been found to predict which prisoners will get into trouble while behind bars – length of sentences, previous violent behavior, gang membership, and so on – but Morris and Worrall decided to look at characteristics of prisons, and how they impact inmate behavior.

Modern American prison designs generally fall into two categories. There is the traditional “telephone pole” style prison, in which multi-story cell blocks are placed parallel to each other, with only one or two corridors connecting them, making them look, from above, like a telephone poll with rungs attached. Other prisons make use of a campus-style layout, in which the cell blocks are divided up around a central outdoor area. The telephone pole design was created, in part, to make it harder for inmates to escape - there’s only one way in or out – but has been criticized for having very long corridors that may be difficult for guards to monitor. The campus style buildings are easier for guards to monitor, and are thought to be less degrading for prisoners.

To see if the design of the prison makes a difference, Morris and Worrall looked at the prison records – all of which are public records, available to any interested party – of male inmates sentenced to between 3 years and life in Texas prisons, and assigned to either telephone pole or campus-style prisons, not including private prisons, local jails, and drug punishment prisons. Overall, this resulted in a total population of 12,981 inmates. The researchers then randomly chose 2,500 records to analyze, and tested if the architecture of the prison to which they were assigned had any impact on the likelihood of committing further crimes while in prison. After controlling for other factors, like the initial crime that the inmate committed, the length of the sentence, age of the inmate, and so on, they found that while the style of the prison didn’t have an effect on violence, inmates in campus-style prisons were more likely to have been reprimanded for property offenses (like stealing) and security-related offenses (like making threats, or violating safety rules). These findings are interesting because they seem to indicate that older-style, seemingly more dehumanizing prisons actually led to fewer

reprimands for inmates than the newer-style prisons, though, as the authors point out, it could just be that inmates in the campus-style prisons are more likely to be caught.

Answer 1

In the study of Robert G. Morris and John L. Worrall – Prison Architecture and Inmate Misconduct (2010) as described above, inmate-on-Inmate Violence, Inmate-on-Staff Violence, property offenses, security-related offenses are identified as dependent variables whereas Sentence length, age of the inmate are identified as independent variables.

The utility pole configuration may hinder a few sorts of misconduct. In spite of the fact that structure type or configuration characteristics may fight off certain types of mal-adaptive conduct, other negative impacts from configuration type may exist that we couldn't represent in the present examination. The fundamental finding here is that, the design appears to assume probably have some role in the detainee conduct.

A significant component of thinking about design as an associate of misconduct is that loans itself all the more promptly to control when contrasted with endeavors with straightforwardly alter detainee conduct . An intriguing story that may profit by considering architecture exists in the issue of jail overcrowding. Analysts have gotten very partial to considering how jail swarming is related with unfortunate behavior, however in a state, for example, Texas, overcrowding is, by law, a nonissue. Outside of Texas, assembling more detainment facilities just to ease packing is more effectively said than done.