Prisoner victimisation of other prisoners is arguably the most common form of prison violence. It is also the form of prison disorder that has attracted most empirical attention. With the dominance of the deprivation model among social scientists since the 1950s, much of this research has focused on the contribution of prison conditions to prisoner violence. While not quite situational, this research nevertheless provides a relatively large database (compared with other forms of misbehaviour) from which a situational analysis might be constructed.

Nature of the problem

Definition and incidence

Prisoner-prisoner violence is taken to include all incidents of fighting, assaults (with or without weapons) and homicides where prisoners were both the assailant and the victim. In 1995, nearly 26,000 prisoner-prisoner assaults, resulting in eighty-two deaths, were recorded in US prisons (Stephan, 1997). While the number of assaults is considerably higher than the level recorded in 1990 (21,184), because of the dramatic increase in prisoner numbers over this period there has actually been a slight drop in the assault rate (31.3 versus 28.4 per 1,000 prisoners). Looking back further, assault and death rates have fallen considerably from the record highs recorded in the early 1980s (Lillis, 1994).

But, as Cooley (1993) points out, reported assaults are the tip of the iceberg. The actual assault levels may be five times the official rate. This dark figure further underscores the potential offered in the prison environment to carry out offences unobserved.