Evaluation of Correctional Environments

This article describes an effort to develop and test a standardized, generic set of evaluation instruments for assessing behavioral effects of the design of correctional institutions. The goal was to provide a system for rapid, efficient, and comprehensive environmental evaluation. The system was to produce information useful to individual institutions any yield pooled data from many institutions concerning environmental influences on behavior. Instruments were developed to obtain attitudinal and environmental perception data, to perform behavioral observations, to record information about the physical setting, to assess organization type and style, and obtain archival data. Portions of the data from two case studies in which these instruments were pilot tested are presented in this article.