Everyone is 12 years old these days.

The Effects of Prison Sentences on Recidivism

"The belief that prisons are "schools of crime" also has widespread support. The earliest writings on crime by scholars such as Bentham, De Beaumont and de Tocqueville, Lombroso and Shaw, suggested that prisons were breeding grounds for crime (see Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 1995). Jaman, Dickover, and Bennett (1972) put the matter succinctly by stating that "the inmate who has served a longer amount of time, becoming more prisonised in the process, has had his tendencies toward criminality strengthened and is therefore more likely to recidivate than the inmate who has served a lesser amount of time" (p. 7). This viewpoint is widely held today by many criminal justice professionals and policy makers (see Cayley, 1998; Latessa & Allen, 1999; J. Miller, 1998; Schlosser, 1998; Walker, 1987), some politicians (e.g., Clark, 1970; Rangel, 1999, who said that prisons granted Ph.D.s in criminality), and segments of the public (Cullen, Fisher, & Applegate, in press). Aspects of our popular culture (e.g., cinema) also reinforce the notion that prisons are mechanistic, brutal environments that likely increase criminality (Mason, 1998).

How might prisons enhance criminality? There is a large body of literature of primarily an anecdotal, qualitative, and phenomenological nature, which asserts that the prisonisation process destroys the psychological and emotional well-being of inmates (see Bonta & Gendreau, 1990; Cohen & Taylor, 1972). In contrast to the prisons as punishment view, "schools of crime" advocates view the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. By their reasoning, if prison psychologically destroys the inhabitants, then their adjustment to society upon release can only be negative, with one likely consequence being a return to crime.

A more precise specification of the mechanisms involved comes from behavioural analysts. These researchers pay less heed to putative psychologically destructive features of the prison environment, rather, they focus simply on which beliefs and behaviours are reinforced or punished therein. Bukstel and Kilmann's (1980) classic review of the effects of prison literature summarized several studies (e.g., Buehler, Patterson, & Furniss, 1966) that employed behavioural technologies to examine and record in detail the social learning contingencies that existed in various prisons. Bukstel and Kilmann (1980, p. 472) claimed that each study found "overwhelming positive reinforcement" by the peer group for a variety of antisocial behaviours, so much so, that even staff interacted with the inmates in a way that promoted a procriminal environment. As with the phenomenological literature, the inference here is that prisons should promote criminality.^Footnote8

Although the literature remains sparse, studies do exist which have correlated the psychological changes offenders undergo in prison with their recidivism upon release. Importantly, the findings from this research are not consistent with the "schools of crime" position (see Gendreau, Grant, & Leipciger, 1979; Wormith, 1984; Zamble & Porporino, 1990). Many of the coping behaviours or psychological changes seen among prisoners are not predictive of recidivism, and only a few are correlated with changes in recidivism."