Procedural Justice, Posturing and Defiant Action: Exploring Prisoner Reactions to Prison Authority

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Accepted Manuscript (AM)
Author(s)
Barkworth, Julie M
Murphy, Kristina
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2019
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Show full item recordAbstract
Prison staff are vital for enforcing order in prisons. However, order is not only maintained by what prison staff do, but also relies on prisoners willingly following the directives of prison staff and complying with prison rules and procedures. This article puts forward the idea that how prison staff treat prisoners can affect the social distancing prisoners put between themselves and prison staff, potentially making defiance and non-compliance more difficult to manage. Social distancing is operationalised in this article as motivational posturing. Using survey responses from 177 Australian prisoners, the article shows a ...
View more >Prison staff are vital for enforcing order in prisons. However, order is not only maintained by what prison staff do, but also relies on prisoners willingly following the directives of prison staff and complying with prison rules and procedures. This article puts forward the idea that how prison staff treat prisoners can affect the social distancing prisoners put between themselves and prison staff, potentially making defiance and non-compliance more difficult to manage. Social distancing is operationalised in this article as motivational posturing. Using survey responses from 177 Australian prisoners, the article shows a strong association between prisoners’ perceptions of procedural justice in prison and their self-reported compliance with prison rules. It also shows for the first time that motivational postures exist in a corrections context, and are associated with both procedural justice perceptions and self-reported compliance behaviour. Postures are also found to mediate the procedural justice/compliance relationship.
View less >
View more >Prison staff are vital for enforcing order in prisons. However, order is not only maintained by what prison staff do, but also relies on prisoners willingly following the directives of prison staff and complying with prison rules and procedures. This article puts forward the idea that how prison staff treat prisoners can affect the social distancing prisoners put between themselves and prison staff, potentially making defiance and non-compliance more difficult to manage. Social distancing is operationalised in this article as motivational posturing. Using survey responses from 177 Australian prisoners, the article shows a strong association between prisoners’ perceptions of procedural justice in prison and their self-reported compliance with prison rules. It also shows for the first time that motivational postures exist in a corrections context, and are associated with both procedural justice perceptions and self-reported compliance behaviour. Postures are also found to mediate the procedural justice/compliance relationship.
View less >
Journal Title
Justice Quarterly
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Taylor & Francis (Routledge). This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Justice Quarterly (JQ) on 24 Sep 2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2019.1666905
Note
This publication has been entered into Griffith Research Online as an Advanced Online Version
Subject
Criminology
Social Sciences
Criminology & Penology
Procedural Justice
PERCEPTIONS
Social Sciences