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Prisons as Self-Regulating Systems: A Comparison of Historical Patterns in California for Male and Female Offenders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Richard A. Berk ,
Sheldon L. Messinger ,
David Rauma  and
John E. Berecochea
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Abstract

Building on our earlier work testing the stability of punishment hypothesis, we here combine the general modeling strategy previously employed with more behaviorally grounded models of actors' expectations and preferences. Using these tools, we model the historical attempts by criminal justice actors in California to balance prison admissions and releases in an equilibrating manner. We find that there have been efforts to regulate the flow of individuals through prison and that, contrary to expectations, these processes are not very different for males and females.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , 1983 , pp. 547 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1981 Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology. Data collection for this paper was supported by the National Institute of Justice (Grant No. 78-NI-AX-0093) and the data analysis by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. SES81-10251). We are deeply indebted to Marie Vida Ryan and Dona Good of the California Department of Corrections for making available, and helping us interpret, many of the data on the prison population. Finally, Ann D. Witte, Karl E. Schuessler, and Daniel L. Rubinfeld provided useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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