Understanding persistent offending among incarcerated offenders through general strain theory

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20194069

In this dissertation, I assess the ability of Agnew's general strain theory to explain ongoing deviance (measured as official misconduct) among an incarcerated adult offender population. In building the argument, I relied on a rich body of literature related to the prison experience to hypothesize how strain and responses to strain might lead to more or less deviance while incarcerated. The pioneering works of Clemmer, Sykes, Goffman, and Irwin and Cressey outlined various dynamic relationships and processes that exist within correctional settings. Deprivation models, for example, point to contextual factors of the correctional facility and prison life as the driving influence behind individual behavior. Behavior, including deviance, is a reflection of the individual's abilities in adjusting to the pains of imprisonment and the structure of life. In importation models, behavior is rooted in culture and lifestyle before incarceration. Deviance within a correctional facility is then an extension of values and traits that were manifested outside the prison walls. These competing models make the argument that upon incarceration, adjustment and adaptation to confinement is heavily tied to the structure and the individual. More recent situational models have tended to adopt elements of both importation and deprivation models.