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Judicial Reform and Prisoner Control: The Impact of Ruiz v. Estelle on a Texas Penitentiary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

James W. Marquart  and
Ben M. Crouch
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Abstract

This article examines the impact of court-ordered structural reforms on a Texas penitentiary. The staff's prisoner control structure is analyzed before, during, and after the reform measures decreed in the complex and sweeping prison reform case Ruiz v. Estelle (1980). Participant observation and inmate disciplinary report data are utilized to examine how legal intervention affected the prison community. Results show that after the court order was inaugurated, inmate-inmate and inmate-guard violence escalated to new plateaus. The final section compares several aspects of the old and new prisoner control structures and discusses the implications of court reforms for prisoner control.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , 1985 , pp. 557 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

*

This is a revised version of a paper delivered at the annual meetings of the Southern Sociological Society, Charlotte, April 1985. Support for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation Program in Law and Social Science (SES-8410925). The assistance of two anonymous referees and Julian B. Roebuck, Frank Cullen, Bruce Jackson, and David Demo in reading earlier drafts is gratefully acknowledged. We are also especially grateful to Richard O. Lempert for his critical comments and editorial suggestions.

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