Authors:

Melina Rozehkhan

Date Created:

Not specified

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About Paper:

Solitary confinement is often criticized as being one of the most cruel punishments utilized by the U.S. Criminal Justice System. In it, individuals are deprived of human contact and, as a result, can develop disorders that prevent them from reintegrating into society. This study seeks to establish whether the opposite of that punishment might therefore have the opposite effect. Specifically, it examines the effect of community groups in prisons — such as religious or educational groups — on rule violation rates. This study conducts a logistic regression of almost 14,500 entries from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' "Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities" and adjusts them for confounding variables such as race, age, sex, facility ID, and others. It finds that while involvement in community groups such as education and religion leads to a statistically significant (p<0.05) increase in rule violations, it is also correlated with a decrease of violent rule violations (albeit with a less significant p -value). While there are certain 67 limitations to this study, namely not being able to control for how long an individual has been a part of a community group or when their rule violation was committed, its findings do suggest that communities can be a useful method for reducing violent rule violations and a powerful policy tool for enacting such change.

Source:

Columbia / Political Science / 2026

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Co-authors:

Melina Rozehkhan