Conviction Offense and Prison Violence: A Comparative Study of Murderers and Other Offenders

The characteristics of, and 2003 disciplinary data on, 51,527 inmates in the Florida Department of Corrections, including 9,586 inmates who had been convicted of some degree of homicide, were examined for rates and correlates of prison misconduct and violence. Disciplinary misconduct and institutional acts of violence committed by an admissions cohort (N = 14,088) and a subset of Close custody inmates (N = 4,113) also were considered. Regardless of conviction offense, the prevalence and rate of violent prison misconduct fell markedly as the severity of assault increased. Comparative data showed that convicted murderers did not account for a disproportionate share of prison violence, however defined. Furthermore, negative binomial regression models revealed that convicted murderers were not significantly more likely to engage in disciplinary misconduct or commit acts of institutional violence than were inmates serving time for other offenses.