Date of Award
12-1-2021
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Criminology and Criminal Justice
First Advisor
Narag, Raymund
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to add an understanding on the relationship between characteristics of prison population and environmental characteristics of prisons with prison misconduct in the context of Japan, where little empirical research on prison misconduct has been conducted. To aid in the analysis, three theories (the deprivation, importation, and administrative control models) that had been developed in Western countries will be utilized. This study will test thirteen predictors derived from these theories. Using time-series data obtained from annual official reports of Japanese prisons between 1972 and 2019, the relationships between characteristics of prison population (gender, age, violent conviction, criminality, and health problems) and environmental characteristic of prisons or environment-driven characteristics of prisoners (occupancy rate, sentence length, foreign prisoners, drug conviction, and staff-to-inmate ratio) on prison misconduct (total, violent, and non-violent misconduct and refusal to work) were examined through descriptive analysis, graphical portrayal, bivariate correlations, and multivariate analysis using ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average) analysis. The results showed that all models can predict prison misconduct partially. Staff-to-inmate ratio was the most consistently significant predictor in this study. Occupancy rate and old age were also significantly related to several types of prison misconduct. Limitations and policy implications are discussed considering these results.
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