In modern times, imprisonment has been established as punishment and not for punishment, which means that the only right that is suspended has to do with freedom of movement. Nevertheless, serving a sentence in Chilean prisons has become a form of continuous punishment that extends far beyond the mere deprivation of liberty. Indeed, Chilean prisons have been criticized for their levels of overcrowding, lack of access to rehabilitative programs, and for their levels of mistreatment towards inmates. In addition, violence has become a common, daily reality in many facilities throughout the country. Its occurrence is problematic not only because it threats security and order inside prisons, but also because it undermines any attempt to successfully develop rehabilitative initiatives inside prison walls. Despite that prison violence has been studied in developed nations, much remains unanswered for developing countries. Thus, this dissertation will try to fill part of this gap by analyzing the correlates of violent events in Chilean prisons as well as by examining which theory of prison violence (among deprivation, administrative-control and importation) seemed to better explain the study’s results. In order to do that, this study employed a combination of both administrative data from the Chilean Bureau of Prisons (Gendarmería de Chile) and some results of the First National Survey on Inmates’ Perception of Quality of Life, conducted in 2013 (Sanhueza, in press). Anchored in the literature review and on empirical findings on prison violence, this study included six representative indicators coming for the three theories tested, while controlling for total inmate population size. Then, descriptive analyses and a series of multivariate, negative binomial regression models were run. Main results indicated that the two importation variables (average inmates’ age and the proportion of inmates highly-engaged in criminal activities) and the control variable remained significant in the full model. Finally, this study highlights some of their possibilities and limitations, as well as suggests some further research questions and policy implications.PhDSocial Work and SociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110463/1/gesanhue_1.pd
