ABSTRACT
Prison violence research has resulted in the emergence of a one-sided picture. Empirical investigations yield mountains of data about the identification of correlates with violent incidents but very little information about the settings themselves or the events that take place in them. For instance, in many studies, “violence” is not well defined, let alone the nature of the prisons where violence takes place. This chapter argues that a more rounded holistic understanding of prison violence is needed. An ecological perspective views prisons as social ecosystems and allows for an appreciation of the roles of various actors who occupy different locations within these ecosystems and who exert different types of influence or resistance that impact the social climate, physical design, and the cause and control of violence.
