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The Caged Melting Pot: Toward an Understanding of the Consequences of Desegregation in Prisons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Chad Trulson  and
James W. Marquart
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Abstract

This article tests the equal status contact hypothesis in the aftermath of desegregation in the Texas prison system. This study uses ten years of inmate-on-inmate assault data and compares the rates of violence among inmates racially integrated in a double cell versus inmates racially segregated in a double cell. The analysis revealed that violence between integrated inmates was not disproportionate to the level of violence between segregated inmates—in fact, it was lower. This article addresses the conditions under which positive racial group contact will likely be found in a prison setting and concludes with a discussion of implications.

Type
Of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , 2002 , pp. 743 - 781
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This is a revised version of a paper delivered at the annual meetings of the Law & Society Association, Miami, Florida, July 2000. This research was supported by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice under Research Agreement #016-R99. Points of view are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the position of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

We would like to thank the editor of Law & Society Review, Joseph Sanders, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier revisions of this article. We also thank Law & Society Review managing editor Nita Lineberry for her diligence and patience in the review process. We would also like to thank the employees of the Texas prison system, especially Ron Steffa, Wendy Ingram, Amy Clute, and Sherman Bell. We also thank Craig Hemmens of Boise State University for comments and suggestions to this article and Sheldon Ekland-Olson of the University of Texas at Austin for portions of historical records and data.

References

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