Forging Social Order and Its Breakdown: Riot and Reform in U.S.

Prisons
Author(s): Bert Useem and Jack A. Goldstone
Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Aug., 2002), pp. 499-525
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3088943
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FORGING SOCIAL ORDER
AND ITS BREAKDOWN:
RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
BERT USEEM JACK A. GOLDSTONE
Universityof New Mexico Universityof California,Davis

Twocases of prison reformin the 1990s had widely divergentresults.New Mexico

privatizedseveral prisons and these prisons were quicklybeset by multipleriots.
New York'spublicly runRikersIslandprison, by contrast,adopted reformsthat
ended manyyears of riots and violence. Prevailing theories of prison riots cannot
accountfor these divergentoutcomes.A state-centeredtheoryof social order ex-
plains both cases, showing how prison administratorsand state and national gov-
ernmentscan create the conditions underwhich social order breaksdown or is
restored.This analysis has implicationsfor forging social order in other hierarchi-
cal institutions,such as schools, that are responsiblefor the welfare of their depen-
dent clients.

n 1980, the Penitentiary of New Mexico
suffered one of the bloodiest prison riots
in U.S. history. The costly reforms that fol-
lowed left the state with some of the highest
per-inmate costs in the nation. To control
those costs, New Mexico in 1997 authorized
two private firms to construct and manage
prisons for high-security prisoners. The re-
sult was not what was hoped for: In the first
year of operation, all three of the privately
run facilities erupted in riots.
At about the same time, the New York
City Department of Correction began re-
forms at the extremely violent Rikers Island
jail facilities. Rikers Island had experienced
major riots in 1986 and 1990, and remained
disorderly and violent through the first half
of the 1990s. Yet after the reforms under-
taken in 1995 through 1999, inmate vio-
lence dropped by over 90 percent, and fears
of riots went from rampant to almost non-
existent.
Directall correspondenceto Bert Useem, De-
partment of Sociology, University of New
Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 (useem@
unm.edu).We thankCharlesBidwell, Aki Rob-
erts, JohnRoberts,and the ASREditorsand re-
viewersfor theirhelpfulcomments.Travelfunds
wereprovidedby the ResearchAllocationsCom-
mitteeof the Universityof New Mexico.
AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW, 2002,
We seek to explain these divergent cases.
(1) Our analysis challenges existing theories
of prison riots, which treat prison disorders
as a result of inmate demographics or the re-
action of inmates to administrativesanctions
and/or poor management. No existing theory
can explain both the onset of riots in New
Mexico and the attenuationof riots in Rikers
Island. (2) We counter structuraltheories of
social disorder, which treat rebellion as the
unavoidable outcome of structural condi-
tions. We demonstrate that policy interven-
tions can have a rapid and decisive impact
on social stability. In the two case studies,
the situations shifted from riot-tor to stable,
or the reverse, within two years or less of
the implementation of policies that affected
crucial conditions underpinning the social
order. (3) We also challenge current views
of prison privatization, showing that a focus
on cost-savings and efficiency must be bal-
anced against concerns for maintaining so-
cial order in prisons.
Our explanatory framework is derived
from theories of revolution. A "state-cen-
tered" theory of social order, stressing how
external and internal demands on prison ad-
ministrations combine to create institutional
breakdown, shows promise in explaining
prison riots (Goldstone and Useem 1999).
However, we argue for a significant revi-
VOL. 67 (AUGUST:499-525) 499
500 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
sion in this strongly structural theory as it
was originally introduced by Skocpol
(1979, 1994). Skocpol asserts first, that
revolutions are not made-they come.
Rebels cannot "choose" to make revolu-
tions outside of narrowly defined structural
conditions. Second, state leaders are unable
to take actions to avoid revolutions when
the structural conditions summon them
forth. While other analyses have already
challenged the first point (Goldstone 2001;
Sewell 1992), our disagreement is with the
second.
Consistent with state-centered theory, the
two case studies we address show that
prison riots occur when prison administra-
tions are unable to reconcile external de-
mands imposed by state and national gov-
ernments with internal demands from staff
and inmates regarding conditions within the
prisons. Yet, following recent works that
seek to restore the role of agency to studies
of social order and disorder (Emirbayerand
Goodwin 1996; Foran 1997; Goldstone
2001; Goodwin 1997; Selbin 1993), we ar-
gue that administrativeactions can create or
curtail the causal conditions for riots.
Agency thus looms large in our view.
SOCIAL ORDER AND PRISON
RIOTS: A STATE-CENTERED
THEORY
The state-centered theory of revolutions ar-
gues that revolutions arise from the combi-
nation of five conditions: (1) external pres-
sures on the state; (2) internal pressures on
the state from elites; (3) internal pressures
on the state from popular groups; (4) ideolo-
gies that unify rebels and justify their ac-
tions; and (5) ineffective state actions that
demonstrate state weakness or injustice
(Goldstone 2001). We have argued that the
conditions leading to revolution have ana-
logs in prison riot situations (Goldstone and
Useem 1999). We need only substitute
"prison administration"for "state," "correc-
tional officers and staff' for "elites," and
"inmates" for "popular groups." As with
revolution, a combination of several condi-
tions must be present for prison riots to oc-
cur; when all or most of these conditions are
absent, prison riots will not arise. How are
these conditions manifested in prisons?
CONDITIONS LEADING TO PRISON RIOTS
(1) EXTERNAL PRESSURES. State or na-
tional officials may impose new or increased
demands on prison administrations without
augmenting prison resources. These new de-
mands may be fiscal (e.g., periods of bud-
get-cutting, or changes in laws or sentenc-
ing practices that increase the number of in-
mates), or they may be procedural (e.g., ju-
dicial mandates to reform prison practices).
Such demands often result in cuts in staff,
maintenance, or ancillary services relative to
the number of inmates, or an expansion of
inmates' rights.
(2) INTERNAL PRESSURES FROM COR-
RECTIONS STAFF. Administration policies
or reforms may arouse the opposition of cor-
rections staff. Divisions and alienation
among correctional officers may then pro-
duce high absenteeism, high turnover, fail-
ure to follow prison routines, or even harsh
confrontations between groups of staff or
staff unions and the prison administration.
(3) INTERNAL PRESSURES FROM IN-
MATES. While prison conditions may be
good or terrible, what matters for inmate
demands is whether conditions are worse
than they should be, according to broadly
visible and externally validated standards.
Such standards may be established by past
practices within the prison system or other
jurisdictions, or by explicit statements of
external authorities such as courts or legis-
latures. When prisoners are able to appeal
to external authorities to validate their
grievances, this fuels their demands with
the expectation that they will be upheld.
External validation may center on court de-
cisions finding that prison conditions vio-
late inmates' legal rights, or on indictments
of prison staff for failures to comply with
court- or state-mandated procedures. De-
bates within legislative bodies may have a
similar impact. Arbitrary rule enforcement
and excessive use of force by staff, loss of
inmate services considered as rightfully
due, and extreme violence and lack of
safety for inmates also provide the basis for
inmates to make demands and act against
prison authorities.
(4) INMATE IDEOLOGIES THAT JUSTIFY
REVOLT. Inmate ideologies are sometimes
sophisticated, more often coarse; but either
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
way they undercut the legitimacy of the
prison and unite inmates by providing a
common framework for establishing opposi-
tion and justifying rebellion. Inmate ideolo-
gies claim that conditions in prison are not
just bad, but "wrong," and that "if we riot,
people will see what's wrong in here," where
"wrong" is judged in terms of the failure of
the prison administration to meet standards
(often its own explicit and public standards)
of just imprisonment.
(5) UNJUST PRISON ADMINISTRATION
ACTIONS. Prison administrations may take
actions that are widely seen as demonstrat-
ing the administration's injustice or ineffec-
tiveness. Poorly implemented responses to
inmate complaints or actions may furtherle-
gitimize rebellion while demonstrating that
authorities are vulnerable. Ineffective ac-
tions include weak responses to prison es-
capes, to assaults on officers or other in-
mates, or to inmate grievances, as well as
ineffective or bungled attempts to separate
prisoners or conduct operations such as
lockdowns.
THEORETICAL APPROACH
In our previous paper, we examined the role
of these five conditions in the genesis of 13
prison riots (Goldstone and Useem 1999).
For each prison, we compared the incidence
of the five conditions in two different peri-
ods: one period just prior to the riot, the
other a stable period two to five years ear-
lier. The five conditions were not equally
present in all cases of riots. However, in no
case did a riot occur without at least three
of the five conditions being present, and in
a majority of the cases all five conditions
were evident. In contrast, the five conditions
were largely absent in the stable periods,
and no riots occurred in any prison where
three or more of the conditions were absent.
A formal data analysis found that these five
conditions, especially in combination, were
significantly associated with the occurrence
of prison riots.
However, we did not investigate how these
five causal conditions arise. Nor did we
present evidence regardingthe consequences
of deliberate changes in these causal condi-
tions, thus leaving it unclear whether such
deliberate changes are possible, and if so,
501
over how long a time-frame before such
changes would have an impact.
We hypothesize that these five conditions
are not simply "structural"causes of prison
riots and thus beyond control: They are the
result of poor choices or the poor implemen-
tation of policy by state and prison authori-
ties. To the extent that authorities establish a
context in which these five conditions are
absent, stability can be expected. Con-
versely, when prison authorities'actions pro-
duce these five conditions, organizational
breakdown will ensue.
The cases of the New York City and New
Mexico prisons allow us to test both aspects
of this hypothesis. (See Appendix A for a
description of data sources.)
NYC DEPARTMENT OF
CORRECTION: FROM DISORDER
TO ORDER
The New York City Department of Correc-
tion (NYCDOC) is larger than 35 state
prison systems, holding nearly 20,000 in-
mates in primarily high- and medium-secu-
rity facilities. Most inmates are housed in 10
facilities on Rikers Island, an island located
on the East River. Two-thirds of the inmates
are detainees awaiting trial for crimes com-
mitted in New York City-crimes that in-
clude assault, murder, and other felonies.
Another 18 percent are convicted state pris-
oners, either parole violators or inmates
awaiting a transferto a state facility. The re-
maining 15 percent are convicted prisoners
serving a sentence of one year or less. Prior
to 1995, the average length of stay for in-
mates was about 50 days. This high turnover
rate was often cited by corrections experts
and agency insiders to explain Rikers' repu-
tation as a violent and unmanageable place.
Yet by 1999 Rikers Island-despite no
change in this turnover rate-had become
exceptionally orderly and violence free.
In 1989, New York Mayor David Dinkins
appointed Allyn Sielaff as corrections com-
missioner. Sielaff had earned a national
reputation as a pioneer for inmate rights
("New Approach on Virginia Prisons; Cor-
rections Chief Criticized, Praised as Lib-
eral," WashingtonPost, November 30, 1984;
"Jails Chief Is Criticized for Being too Iso-
lated," New York Times [NYT], August 26,
502 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
1990). Yet in New York City, Sielaff's re-
form agenda went largely unfulfilled,
crippled by a fiscal crisis and divisions
within the agency. Sielaff's actions, however
well intentioned, within two years had com-
bined with circumstances in NYCDOC to
create all the key conditions for a prison riot.
The 1990 riot showed the full panoply of riot
conditions we noted in Goldstone and
Useem (1999). Indeed, administrative con-
flicts were so severe that the riot began with
a strike by corrections officers against the
prison administration and was followed by
an uprising by inmates.
THE CAUSES OF THE 1990 RIOT
RISING EXTERNAL DEMANDS AND RE-
DUCED RESOURCES. The crack cocaine epi-
demic of the 1980s hit New York City hard.
Crime rose rapidly, and the city's political
leadership directed police to make more ar-
rests (New York State, Division of Criminal
Services [NYS, DCS] 2000). As a result, the
DOC's populationtripledfrom 7,000 inmates
in 1980 to 21,000 when Sielaff took office
(Citizens Budget Commission [CBC] 1993:
9, 11). To accommodate the influx, the city
spent more than $1 billion to build additional
prison housing. However, the other compo-
nents of the prison system that differentiate a
fully functioning prison from a mere dormi-
tory or housing unit (namely the corrections
staff, food preparation,medical care, and rec-
reation), failed to keep pace. Quickly con-
structed modular units lacked adequate an-
cillary facilities, such as dining, recreational,
and visiting areas (CBC 1993:14). Meals of-
ten arrived late and cold ("City Studies Op-
tions for Overflowing Jails," Newsday,
March 12, 1990). The punitive segregation
unit had a waiting list ("A Rikers Facility for
Most Violent,"Newsday, July 20, 1990). Cor-
rectional officers were rapidly hired, but they
were poorly screened and given only mini-
mal training (authors' interview; "Chief of
Correction Faults Rikers's Way of Hiring
Officers," NYT,August 25, 1990).
While Sielaff promised sweeping reforms
(Allyn Sielaff, "More Jail Space Provides
Only Part of the Answer to Crowding," Op-
ed, NYT, November 21, 1990), little of his
agenda was achieved. Dinkins's administra-
tion inherited the city's worst fiscal crisis in
15 years ("Why Did New York Hire 49,000
Workersin 7 Years?"NYT,October 7, 1990).
Several of Sielaff's key programs, such as
restoring inmate work programs to reduce
inmate idle time, foundered because of
underfunding (CBC 1993:10), and the city
put pressure on the DOC to cut positions to
meet budget.
CONFLICT WITH THE CORRECTIONS
STAFF. With administrative cutbacks and
foundering reforms, tensions between cor-
rectional officers and Sielaff rose sharply.
The lightning rod for the officers' discontent
was a directive governing the use of force
by correctional officers that had taken effect
on February 1, 1990. The guidelines had
been developed to satisfy a 1983 federal
lawsuit brought by Legal Aid Society that
challenged the conditions at a Rikers facil-
ity, but was later expanded to include issues
of violence by officers against inmates. In
the officers' eyes, the directive mollified the
courts and inmates at the officers' expense.
Inmates would now be able to strike an of-
ficer with near impunity, given the feeble-
ness of the inmate disciplinary process. Of-
ficers felt attacked by the new use-of-force
directive, which they believed crippled their
ability to do their jobs and put them at se-
vere risk.
INMATE DEMANDS. Even to inmates, a
key indicator of whether a corrections
agency is working properly is the level of
serious violence among prisoners. During
the early 1990s, inmate stabbings and
slashings were routine occurrences. In the
first six months of 1990, inmates at Rikers
Island stabbed or assaulted each other an av-
erage of 137 times a month. Correctionalof-
ficers often found themselves rushing from
one violent incident to the next (authors' in-
terviews). An officer stated in 1990, "When
I first joined three years ago, . . . we had
slashing and violence, but now it's a con-
stant ("Inside Rikers Island: A Bloody
Struggle for Control," NYT, September 1,
1990). Inmates blamed the administration
and corrections staff for a failure to protect
them from daily assaults.
IDEOLOGIES OF RFAFI I ION. There is no
evidence that radical or critical perspectives
were present among inmates, or that a gang
"ideology" had developed. Organized gangs
did not develop a presence in NYCDOC fa-
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
cilities until about 1993 (authors' inter-
views), later than in most other major jail
systems. Still, inmates reported that what
might be called a "Hobbesian"ideology pre-
vailed-a belief that "weak" inmates do not
have a right to their possessions, to use the
telephones, or to move freely on the yard.
One inmate commented, "It's hell full-time.
You don't think you'll live from morning to
night" ("Rikers, Armed Rule by Inmates,"
Newsday, July 18, 1990). Inmates thus came
to view the prison authorities as ineffective
and illegitimate, as they could not control
the prison or provide even minimal safety
and security for the inmates.
WEAK OR INEFFECTIVE ADMINISTRA-
TIVEACTIONS. Two events leading up to the
riot had escalated conflicts and shown in-
mates that collective action could succeed.
On July 12, 1990, inmates seized control of
a portion of the Otis Bantum Correctional
Center (OBCC) on Rikers Island. OBCC
was a newer unit, housing 1,200 inmates in
16 dormitory-style units. Prison officials ac-
ceded to the inmates' demand for longer
telephone conversations. Correctional offic-
ers reportedly felt that the OBCC adminis-
tration had "sold out," and the event raised
tension in the unit.
Three weeks later, three OBCC inmates
robbed and severely beat an officer. Officers
became furious when the inmates were
charged with robbery, assault, and posses-
sion of contraband rather than attempted
murder.Officers saw this as kid-glove treat-
ment and part of a patternof inmate appease-
ment. In an open letter to the Commissioner,
a group of Rikers officers stated: "An inmate
should not be able to assault an Officer with-
out paying a price.... You and your subor-
dinates have lost the jail to inmates" (De-
partmentof Investigation, City of New York
[DOI, CNY] 1991, app. A-21). According to
inmate accounts, correctional officers be-
came more confrontational following the in-
cident (authors' interview).
OUTBREAK OF THE AUGUST
1990 RIOT
On August 14, 1990, a riot broke out at
OBCC, although all the facilities on Rikers
were on the verge of disturbances(New York
State Commission of Correction [NYSCC]
503
1991; DOI, CNY 1991; authors' interviews).
Tensions between the prison administration
and corrections staff were crucial to the gen-
esis of this riot.
On August 11, the correctional officers'
union notified the DOC that officers might
engage in a job action because their working
conditions were unsafe. Union complaints
focused on the undercharging of the three
inmates, the policy limiting use of force, and
200 budget-relatedcuts in the number of of-
ficers assigned to shifts and 385 more cuts
slated for the following fiscal year (NYSCC
1991; "Rikers Tension Erupts," The Record
[Northern New Jersey], August 15, 1990;
authors' interviews).
On August 13, 600 off-duty officers block-
aded the only bridge to Rikers Island. City
officials massed police for a possible assault
to end the blockade, but instead sought a ne-
gotiated settlement. This would take 30
hours to achieve. Meanwhile, the blockade
disrupted all routine activities. Hundreds of
prisoners were unable to make court appear-
ances, and those slated for release had to re-
main in custody. Employees could not go
home, and their replacements were turned
away, as were visitors. Food deliveries were
brought to a halt; most inmate activities,
such as recreation and visiting the law li-
brary,were suspended.
By August 14, all Rikers' facilities were
in crisis. OBCC was typical rather than ex-
ceptional. Staff observed inmates stockpiling
brooms, buckets, and other potential make-
shift weapons. The commissary was burglar-
ized, and the perpetratorswent unpunished.
The number of staff was down to 50 percent
of normal, and those who remained were ex-
hausted from 38 hours of continuous duty.
Inmates followed the negotiations on the
bridge over live television broadcasts. By
the afternoon on the second day, managers
were fearful that a massive rebellion in many
facilities would allow inmates to seize con-
trol of the entire island and take hundreds of
hostages (authors' interviews).
At 6:00 P.M.on August 14, a settlement
was reached. The DOC agreed to modify the
use-of-force policy, subject to the approval
of the federal judge. In addition, the Depart-
ment would restore 195 of the staff-shift as-
signments, as well as forgo disciplining em-
ployees for participating in the blockade
504 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
(DOI, CNY 1991:A-23-A-30). Covered live
by local television, the union president
stated to cheering officers, "We got just
about everything we wanted," and that "the
use-of-force directive has been eliminated"
(authors' interviews; "Correction Union
Chief Blasted," Newsday, August 18, 1990).
Moments later, a riot erupted at the Otis
Bantum facility.
The riot broke out when an OBCC inmate
refused to obey an order, and three officers
were sent to handle the situation. They were
met by a crowd of inmates poised for a
physical confrontation. One inmate slashed
the three officers in rapid succession, while
other inmates threw beds and lockers. An of-
ficer called for backup, but within minutes
disorder had spread to almost the entire fa-
cility ("47 Are Injuredas Inmates Rebel Just
as Impasse Ends at Rikers," NYT, July 15,
1990).
The disorganizationthathelped bring forth
the riot was evident in the response. The
chain of command collapsed. About 200 un-
ruly and angry correctionalofficers, who had
been protesting at the bridge, rushed to the
facility. Groups of officers competed with
each other to enter a dormitoryto subdue in-
mates. Control of the prison was regained
mainly by extreme use of force against pris-
oners by a virtually unsupervised staff.
To sum up, these were the key factors be-
hind the 1990 riot: (1) Budget cuts and a ris-
ing inmate population frustratedSielaff's at-
tempts at reform and led to constant conflicts
between the city government and prison ad-
ministration; they also reduced delivery of
inmate services-food, recreation, work,
medical care; (2) a court-imposed use-of-
force directive and budget cuts alienated cor-
rections staff, putting them in sharp opposi-
tion to the prison administration;(3) a dis-
tracted administration and resentful correc-
tions staff allowed inmate violence to build
to extreme levels, creating inmate grievances
over disorder as well as poor delivery of ser-
vices; (4) inmates developed an ideology that
"anything goes" and that staff and adminis-
tration actions were illegitimate, based on
lawlessness in the prison and the officers'
overthrow of the use-of-force directive; and
(5) the administrationwas slow and ineffec-
tive in dealing with early signs of rebellion
and protest by corrections staff and inmates.
INTERREGNUM:RIOT SITUATION
CONTINUED, 1991 TO 1995
After the riot, tensions between the city gov-
ernment and the wardens, and between war-
dens and staff, continued with high adminis-
trative turnover.Under heavy criticism in the
wake of the riot, Sielaff resigned at the end
of 1991. Three subsequent commissioners,
each serving short terms, were unable to
gain the confidence of correctional staff and
high levels of violence persisted. One officer
told a journalist in 1994, "The Department
is in crisis and there's no one who seems to
know how to take control and restore stabil-
ity" (Horowitz 1994:31). Yet by the end of
the decade, this war of all against all had
come to an end, the situation turned from
hopeless to secure. How was this accom-
plished?
INSTITUTIONAL REFORM AND
LEADERSHIP, 1995 TO 1999
In 1994, Rudolph Giuliani replaced Dinkins
as mayor of New York. In 1995, Mayor
Giuliani appointed Michael Jacobson as
Commissioner and Bernard Kerik as First
Deputy Commissioner of the DOC. In Janu-
ary 1998, Jacobson left the agency and Kerik
became Commissioner. Under their leader-
ship, the Department was transformed.This
was achieved neither through "liberalizing"
reforms, sought by previous administrative
regimes, nor by imposing stricter conditions
on inmates, as is often associated with con-
servative regimes. Rather, the riot situation
was ended by attacking the root causes of
disorder.
The new administration (1) balanced re-
sources and demands on the administration
and ended conflict with the city; (2) created
unity and coherence in policy among the
warden and corrections staff; (3) increased
safety for prisoners, curbing excessive use of
force by staff while also providing security
for corrections officers; (4) undercut the
"Hobbesian" ideology that justified rebel-
lion; and (5) enforced swift and effective re-
sponses to inmate provocations.
BALANCING RESOURCES AND DE-
MANDS.By the middle of the decade, New
York City had entered a period of economic
and social revival. In addition, Giuliani's ap-
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
proach to crime was to mobilize officers to
prevent crime, ratherthan merely to increase
arrests(Kelling and Sousa 2001). From 1993
to 1997, the number of serious violent and
property crimes dropped 40 percent (New
York City Department of City Planning
[NYCDCP] 1999:15). This, in turn, helped
stem the growth of the DOC's population.
However, these favorable trends did not
mean a sudden increase in resources per in-
mate. Although the average daily population
of NYCDOC fell from a peak of 21,500 in-
mates in 1992 to 17,520 in 1998, budgets
declined as well. Both expenditures per pris-
oner and uniformed employees per prisoner
were higher in 1993-1994, when the prison
was still violence-ridden, than in 1998-
1999, when violence had dramatically de-
clined. Thus, stability cannot be attributed
mainly to additional resources. Instead, the
relative stability in external demands let the
prison administrationfocus on dealing with
internal issues.
SMOOTHING ADMINISTRATION/STAFF
RELATIONS: TEAMS AND ACCOUNTABIL-
ITY. If the key cause of the 1990 riot was ten-
sion between the prison administration and
corrections officers, the key reform of the
new administration was directed at that
problem. A management forum, given the
acronymTEAMS (Total Efficiency Account-
ability Management System), effected the
reform. TEAMS assembles the Commis-
sioner, his senior staff, heads of civilian and
uniformed units, and three or four wardens
and their senior staff in a single room, once
every three to four weeks to examine events
and trends in their facility (authors' inter-
views and observation).
To support the forum, the TEAMS staff
collects and verifies data on facility perfor-
mance. The data play a crucial role in direct-
ing the TEAMS meetings. Any spikes in the
trends of these indicators, whether the num-
ber of inmate complaints or sick-leave days
taken by officers, are noticed. If the trend is
negative, then a remedy must be developed;
if the spike is positive, the warden is asked
to explain, so others can learn from this po-
tentially best practice. Each and every un-
usual event, such as a stabbing or slashing,
is singled out for discussion. In addition, the
warden is typically asked what are the two
or three most frequent complaints made by
505
inmates in the time period covered and what
has been done to address them.
Prior to TEAMS, wardens rarely toured
their facilities and were generally unaware
of the details of their operation, not even
knowing their daily inmate count (authors'
interview). After TEAMS, wardens became
deeply involved in the management of their
facility. Administrators who clung to past
practices were forced out of the agency (au-
thors' interviews).
By quickly and consistently identifying
and defusing inmate complaints, and clamp-
ing down on inmate violence, the safety of
both officers and inmates was greatly in-
creased. Officers were far less exposed to
danger after the reforms. From fiscal year
1995 to fiscal year 2001, incidents in which
staff used major force in confrontations with
inmates fell from 240 to 73 incidents per
10,000, a decline of 70 percent (personal
communication, Frank Ciaccio, NYCDOC,
February6, 2002). Officers felt less stressed
and more committed to their jobs. Prior to
TEAMS, correctional staff averaged 21 sick-
days per year; this dropped to an average of
14 sick-days per year five years later (Kerik
2000:124).
INMATE GRIEVANCES AND IDEOLOGY:
PROTECTING INMATE SAFETY. Rikers had
been notorious for its violence among in-
mates. Prisoners lived under constant fear of
violence and held the prison authorities in
contempt for their failure to provide secure
conditions. To change this situation, the de-
partment reversed a key policy regarding
penalties for crimes committed while in cus-
tody. Traditionally, an inmate found to have
a weapon, attacking another inmate, or in
possession of narcotics was punished admin-
istratively ratherthan charged with a crime.
Under a new policy, inmates committing
crimes behind bars were to be rearrested,
charged with a new crime, and if convicted,
given a new sentence to be served after any
existing sentence.
Previously, three officers were assigned
to investigate inmate crimes for the entire
agency. Not only was the task overwhelm-
ing, but this small group felt poorly sup-
ported and insufficiently trained (authors'
interviews). Under Jacobson and Kerik, a
regular staff unit was charged with investi-
gating inmate crimes. The unit consisted of
506 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
36 officers under the direction of a deputy
warden. The arrest-initiative would have
foundered without the cooperation of the
local district attorney's office, but this co-
operation was secured. Inmate crimes were
thus investigated and vigorously pros-
ecuted.
Within a short period, the new policies
and external support from prosecutors
changed inmate ideology regarding vio-
lence within the prison. From 1996 to 1999,
the number of inmate arrests increased by
400 percent. One inmate stated, "In here,
you do the crime, you will do the time.
They'll nail you" (authors' interview). In a
press interview, another inmate compared
his currentincarceration to an earlier one in
1990: "The brothers know that if I cut
somebody, I will get arrested. And one
thing the brothers are not trying to do is get
more jail time" ("An Iron Hand at Rikers
Island Drastically Reduces Violence," NYT,
November 8, 1999).
To again use felony violence as an indica-
tor of basic order, the number of inmate as-
saults and stabbings decreased dramatically.
The rate of violent incidents per 10,000 in-
mates just before the 1990 riot compared
with the rate two years after the new admin-
istration took power had dropped by 75 per-
cent. The contrast is even sharper if we ex-
amine the period just before Jacobson and
Kerik took charge with the period five years
after they took office. Focusing on the single
month of July for illustrative purposes, in
1994 there were 139 violent incidents in that
month; in July 1999, there were 7 violent in-
cidents; in July 2001, there were 3
(NYCDOC 2000). An inmate commented
that whereas formerly he had to "sleep with
one eye open," now he can "go to sleep
without worrying."An officer said, "It's like
night and day. I'm a whole lot safer now, as
are inmates" (authors' interviews).
EFFECTIVE RESPONSE AND IMPLEMEN-
TATION. The effectiveness of an administra-
tion is often revealed by how well changes
in policy are implemented. Implementation
that is careless to the concerns of staff and
inmates often fails and provokes more dis-
order; in contrast, implementation that is de-
signed to meet staff and inmate demands and
gain acceptance helps establish the authority
of the administration.
For example, to reduce provocations that
could lead to violence, the NYCDOC
banned gang identifiers, such as gang sym-
bols and jewelry. Commissioner Jacobson
first ensured that he had support from exter-
nal legal authorities for the policy change.
Previously, a suit in federal court had given
inmates the right to wear jewelry if it was
not expensive and could not be fashioned
into a weapon. The City returned to court
and sought to modify this right and prohibit
gang-identifying jewelry. For the first time
in almost 20 years, the City prevailed in a
major condition-of-confinement suit in the
federal courts (Sandler 1995).
Jacobson then sought to ensure that the
order was implemented skillfully within the
prison, so as not to generate resistance or re-
bellion. This stands in contrast to the actions
leading up to a riot in 1993 in an Ohio
prison, when the warden enforced a policy
of requiring tuberculosis tests of inmates
against the objections of Muslim inmates,
but without attention to overcoming those
objections (Goldstone and Useem 1999:
1007-1008). In New York, officials ex-
plained the new policy patiently and care-
fully to inmates. Posters gave inmates 15
days advance notice; wardens advised the
inmate councils of the prohibition and an-
swered all questions about the policy; all
staff were given roll-call training in its
implementation; and a deputy warden for
programs at each facility was given respon-
sibility for the process to ensure uniformity.
During the 15-day transition, inmates were
given the option of mailing home prohibited
items or surrenderingthem for safekeeping.
The policy was implemented without major
disruption (authors' interview).
In sum, the new administrationestablished
a solid social order in which external agen-
cies provided support and resources to meet
administration needs; administration and
staff shared a solid information base on con-
ditions in the prison; and inmates felt secure
but were also aware that the staff and admin-
istration were united in enforcing the rules.
This created a situation in which inmates
saw a safe, secure, and well-managed sys-
tem that was responsive to their needs and
not gratuitously abusive. Furthermore, the
reforms greatly enhanced the morale and
sense of commitment of correctional staff.
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
These changes occurred without significant
changes in the inmate composition, inmate
turnover, or resources per prisoner in the
system.
DESCENT INTO DISORDER:
THE NEW MEXICO PRIVATE
PRISON RIOTS
In 1998, New Mexico opened three prisons
that were built and operated by private con-
tractors. Within a year, each of them experi-
enced a major riot or riots. On August 5,
1998, at the County Detention Facility in
Estancia, five officers were injured by in-
mates; 12 days later, five inmates and two
officers were injured, including one who
was nearly beaten to death and left in a
coma. On April 6, 1999, at the Lea Country
Correctional Facility in Hobbs, about 170
inmates rioted, resulting in injuries to 13 of-
ficers and 1 prisoner. Finally, on August 31,
1999, at the Guadalupe County Correctional
Facility in Santa Rosa, inmates stabbed and
critically wounded an inmate and stabbed to
death a correctional officer. One-thirdof the
prison itself was severely damaged. This is
a great deal of riot activity for one state over
a short time. Until then, there had been no
other riots in the New Mexico prison system
in the 1990s. Nationally, none of the 28
other states or jurisdictions with private
prisons, which comprised 88 facilities hous-
ing over 67,000 inmates, had had any fatal
incidents in 1999; New Mexico's private
prisons-three facilities with 1,718 in-
mates-had four distinct episodes resulting
in inmate and/or officer fatalities. In short,
by any standard, New Mexico's private fa-
cilities showed an extraordinarybreakdown
of order in this period. Here we analyze
only the riots at Hobbs and Santa Rosa be-
cause data on the Estancia riots were not
made available to us.
PRISON PRIVATIZATION AND
SOCIAL ORDER
The state-centered theory argues that social
order in prisons rests on the prison adminis-
tration being supported and regarded as ef-
fective and legitimate by external govern-
ment authorities, staff, and inmates. In New
Mexico's private facilities, the conditions of
507
privatization and operation of the facilities
undermined these bases of support.
The intent behind private prisons is to save
money for the public authorities while still
delivering profits to the private contractor.
This is particularlydifficult for high-security
prisons, where needs for control and super-
vision are extremely high. Cost-cutting al-
most inevitably means reductions in staff
training, pay, and benefits; 60 to 80 percent
of the costs of operating a prison are labor
expenses (Camp and Gaes 2002:428). Cost-
cutting is always difficult to carry out, and
this is especially problematic when the
prison administration is both burdened by
extreme demands and is under attack from
external authorities. In New Mexico, gov-
ernment specifically mandated the private
prisons to impose unusual disamenities on
inmates; at the same time, many New Mexi-
can and national political leaders were
sharply criticizing the validity of giving pri-
vate companies control of state prisons.
Thus, from the outset New Mexico's new
private facilities faced attacks from govern-
ment authorities, external pressure to cut
costs, conflicts with staff and inmates over
cost-reducing measures, and questionable le-
gitimacy. When prison administrators re-
acted weakly to inmate provocations and
violence, the stage was set for serious disor-
der and multiple riots.
RISING EXTERNAL DEMANDS AND
REDUCED RESOURCES
In the 1990s, New Mexico corrections was
in a fiscal bind. The state was at or near the
bottom on many indicators of economic
wealth, yet near the top in state expenditures
per inmate. New Mexico ranked 50th in per-
sons below the poverty line (U.S. Census
Bureau 2000a), 50th in the percentage of the
workforce unemployed (Bureau of Labor
Statistics 1999), and 48th in per capita in-
come (U.S. Census Bureau 2000b). None-
theless, the state was fifth among all states
in expenditures per inmate, spending more
than twice as much per inmate as did many
other states (Criminal Justice Institute
1997:74).
These high costs were the legacy of the
1980 riot at the Penitentiaryof New Mexico.
Following the riot, the state entered a con-
508 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
sent decree (Duran v. Apodaca Civ. No. 77-
721-C [D.N.M. July 14, 1980]) to settle a
lawsuit filed by inmates in federal court.
While in some areas the Duran decree only
obligated the state to meet federal courts
standards, in others it exceeded these re-
quirements, imposing significant costs. For
example, the decree prohibited doubling up
inmates in cells, even though the federal
courts have permitted this in other jurisdic-
tions, and much additional prison space was
built to accommodate the state's prison
population in single cells. In addition, to
avoid a reoccurrence of the 1980 riot, the
state committed itself to building small fa-
cilities in different parts of the state. Al-
though this decentralization was intended to
enhance safety, it also raised costs.
After 1984, however, no medium-custody
bed spaces for males were constructed for
over a decade (New Mexico CorrectionsDe-
partment [NMCD] 1996:13). By 1997, New
Mexico had 4,700 inmates but only 3,500
bed spaces (NMCD 1998). Some inmates
were sent to county jails, others to out-of-
state facilities, and still others slept on cots
in day rooms at the medium-security pris-
ons. The federal judge overseeing the Duran
decree threatened to release inmates if the
state did not add new beds.
Yet the state government was divided over
the prison question. The Republican gover-
nor, a business entrepreneur turned politi-
cian, asserted that privatization would in-
crease the number of beds while reducing
costs. He was opposed by the Secretary of
Corrections and the Democratically con-
trolled legislature. When the Secretary and
his deputy expressed their skepticism in leg-
islative hearings, claiming that the cost sav-
ings of privatization were minimal, the Gov-
ernor fired them ("JohnsonFires Top Prison
Officials," Santa Fe New Mexican, August
6, 1996).
The Governor also found a way to circum-
vent the opposition of the state legislature.
Two county governments signed contracts
with private firms to build, staff, and oper-
ate county "jails" ("Deal to Privatize New
Mexico Prisons Will Allow State to Cancel
Bond Issues," Bond Buyer, August 25,
1998). Although there was never any ques-
tion that the "jail" facilities would be used
to house state prison inmates, this arrange-
ment could be effected without legislative
approval. Once the facilities were built, the
pressure on the legislature to appropriate
funds for their operation would overwhelm
antiprivatizationopponents. The Corrections
Department still needed new beds; the fed-
eral judge overseeing Duran ordered the old
Penitentiary (site of the 1980 riot) closed by
October 1997 and its 400 inmates trans-
ferred, making the crowding problem even
more acute; and the two counties selected as
prison sites were eager to bring new jobs to
their high unemployment regions (Crane
2000:55-56). The Lea County Correctional
Facility (Hobbs) opened in May 1998 with a
capacity of 1,250; Guadalupe County Cor-
rectional Facility (Santa Rosa) began opera-
tion in January 1999 with a capacity of 600.
The new facilities dramatically reduced the
overcrowding in the New Mexico prison
system, yet instead of increasing order, they
produced disorder and riots almost immedi-
ately.
Adding fuel to the privatization fire was
the emergence, in the mid-1990s, of a na-
tional prison reform movement that sought
to reduce the amenities and programs avail-
able to inmates. If inmates were provided
fewer amenities, activists argued, prisons
would deter crime more effectively (Finn
1996; McGinnis 2000; O'Bryant 1996). New
Mexico's governor openly agreed with this
"no frills" position and committed the state
to using the new private prisons to achieve it.
TENSIONS WITH CORRECTIONS STAFF
The new private prisons at Hobbs and Santa
Rosa faced problems almost from the outset,
with staff feeling insecure and losing control
of their facilities. The staff at the two pri-
vate facilities, in both the management and
line levels, was inexperienced (O'Brien
2000:167, 214; Vose 2000:306). There were
several reasons for this: The facilities were
new, they were located in remote parts of the
state with little population base from which
to recruit, and the firm offered low pay for
correctional officers. A starting correctional
officer was paid under $8.00 per hour. "War-
dens and staff complained that correctional
staff members are difficult to recruitbecause
of the low entry-level salary" (Vose 2000:
306). Because recruitmentand turnoverwere
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
so problematic, there was a damaging reli-
ance on overtime work (O'Brien 2000:124).
The prison staff was also disturbedby what
they saw as a top-level ineffective response
to violence in their facilities. At Hobbs, and
to a somewhat lesser extent at Santa Rosa,
violence became pervasive (Vose 2000:331).
From August 1998 to September 1999, three
inmates were stabbed to death at Hobbs, and
an inmate was bludgeoned to death at Santa
Rosa. At Hobbs, there were 17 major inci-
dents, several of them resulting in injuries to
staff or inmates (Vose 2000:331). Yet, quite
unlike the NYCDOC, New Mexico prison
authorities made little concerted effort to
impose heavy penalties on inmate violence.
Inmates were rarely prosecuted, and their
custody level or eligibility for parole often
was unaffected by serious acts of violence
(O'Brien 2000:189-90, 263-65). In addition,
because of a shortage of punitive segregation
cells, assignments to those cells were often
trimmed in length.
One consequence of this failure to impose
consistent penalties is that violent offenders
remained in the general population. A sec-
ond consequence was that the staff "lost con-
fidence in the disciplinary system which
does not effectively deter or adequately pun-
ish serious rule infractions" (O'Brien 2000:
122). Officers became less willing to issue
disciplinary reports, in the expectation that
they would likely have little effect.
INMATE DEMANDS AND IDEOLOGY
In part as conscious penal policy, in part as
a strategy to hold down costs, New Mexico's
private facilities offered a level of amenities
and incarcerationclearly below the standard
of the state's public prisons. Inmates' mate-
rial grievances were amplified by the spread
of Native American rights ideology at Hobbs
and by rampant threats to inmate safety in
both prisons.
INMATE DEMANDS: AMENITIES AND DEP-
RIVATION. New Mexico state corrections of-
ficials informed the private contractorthat-
in contrast to other state facilities-their
new prisons should have cells constructed
for two inmates ratherthan one, and that the
cells should not have electrical outlets (Vose
2000:295). Also, once the private prisons
were operating, inmates found that being
509
transferred to them meant somewhat lower
wages for work, higher prices at the com-
missary, and fewer available vending ma-
chines (Zoley 1999). A state audit found that
prices at Hobbs were 16.4 percent higher
than prices in state facilities (NMCD 1999).
The decision to reduce inmate amenities
grew out of a commitment by state officials,
under the governor's leadership, to make
prison life harderfor prisoners.
No national standards exist for inmate
amenities. Still, inmates entering the private
prisons were experiencing a cutback in the
amenities available compared with those
they were accustomed to in the state's pub-
lic prisons. Most salient was that an inmate
in a public facility, but not a private facility,
was allowed an in-cell television and a wa-
ter-heating device. If inmates in the public
facilities could heat water or watch televi-
sion in their cells, why couldn't inmates in
the private facilities? In addition, Duran
specifically prohibited doubling up in cells
in the public facilities. Duran governed the
operation of the two private facilities, but
the settlement agreement permitted double
occupancy in new facilities. The CEO of
the private firm, in the month prior to the
Santa Rosa riot, identified the problem:
"Prisoners do not like being housed in two-
person cells given they came from state
prisons where they were housed in single
person cells, . . . [where they also] had the
benefit of in-cell electricity to watch televi-
sion, listen to music, and make hot drinks"
(Zoley 1999; also see Griego 2000:108;
Vose 2000:296, 331).
Moreover, the controversy over private
prisons-first brought to the public's atten-
tion with the firing of a Secretary of Correc-
tions-stayed alive. As both individual and
collective violence escalated in the private
prisons, calls to abandon the privatization
"experiment" were made by inmate advo-
cacy groups and by some state legislators as
well. The inmates' attorney in the Duran
case told the press that the situation at Hobbs
was "an unmitigated disaster" ("Problems at
Private Jails WorryGovernor,"Albuquerque
Journal (AJ), January 15, 1999).
INMATE IDEOLOGY AND NATIVE AMERI-
CAN RIGHTS. In 1993, the New Mexico leg-
islature passed a law (strengthening a 1983
law) that gave Native American prisoners a
510 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
set of specifically defined rights to practice
their religion (New Mexico, Native Ameri-
can Counseling Act, Freedom of Worship
[1993] Sec. 33-10-4). Native American in-
mates were given these rights: to have a
sweat lodge on the grounds of the correc-
tional facility; to not cut one's hair if doing
so conflicts with one's traditionalbeliefs; to
possess religious and ceremonial items, in-
cluding eagle and other feathers, drums,
gourds, and medicine bundles-as long as
their possession does not threaten the "rea-
sonable" security of the prison. The philoso-
phy behind the Act is that Native American
inmates are culturally and religiously dis-
tinct, and, if they are to rehabilitate them-
selves, they must be given certain cultural
allowances (New Mexico, Purpose of Native
American CounselingAct [1993] Sec. 33-10-
2). While prisons must accommodate a vari-
ety of faiths, the historical situation of Na-
tive Americans in New Mexico warranted
exceptional efforts.
Hobbs prison housed about half of the
state's 240 Native American inmates. This
group took full advantage of the Native
American Counseling Act. Soon after the
prison opened, several Native American in-
mates met with the warden to discuss how to
implement the Act (authors' interviews).
With the warden's approval, they formed the
Red Nation Indian Society and organized
extensive activities for Native American in-
mates. They included, on successive eve-
nings, Indian Pipe Ceremony, Talking
Circles, Native American Alcoholics and
Narcotics Anonymous, Native American arts
and crafts, and Native Americanvideos. Sun-
days were used for sweat lodge ceremonies.
Inmates developed a strong ideology of
Native American entitlement. The Counsel-
ing Act seemed to legitimate, if not legally
guarantee, Native American inmates a rela-
tively broad set of rights to exercise their re-
ligion. When those rights were qualified (a
practice could not constitute a security
threat), some additional burden of proof
seemed to be placed on prison officials to
show that a valid threat existed. At Hobbs,
not a single event had occurred to suggest
that the activities organized under the Act
posed a security threat.
The policy of allowing Native American
religious practices also received strong ex-
ternal support. National advocacy groups
working within the U.S. prison systems,
and in New Mexico in particular, included
the Native American Rights Fund, the Na-
tional Congress of American Indians, the
InternationalIndian Treaty Council, and the
Navajo Nation (Foster 1998). The state leg-
islature also made itself clear. For example,
the chair of the New Mexico Senate Judi-
ciary Committee (himself an attorney)
would later comment, "[T]he spirit and in-
tent of the [Counseling Act] law [is to]
guarantee Native American inmates the
right to practice their religion" ("Experts
Contend the Corrections Department's Ban
Violates the Native American Counseling
Act," AJ, April 22, 2001). From the point of
view of the Red Society inmates, their pro-
gram was rational, very important to them,
and legitimated as advancing the goals set
forth in the Act.
Yet in the months before the riot at Hobbs,
the prison authorities and staff undertook
what amounted to an attack on what the Na-
tive American inmates perceived as their le-
gitimate rights. Under pressure to take steps
to reduce the rampantviolence, the warden-
as part of an effort to impose greater control
within the prison-terminated all of the Red
Nation Indian Society's evening programs
(authors' interviews). A series of incidents
occurred that greatly inflamed emotions. In
one, a correctional officer confiscated an
inmate's (to him) sacred eagle feather,
crumpled it, and threw it on the floor; in an-
other, a correctional officer confiscated an
inmates' cut hair, which he had planned to
mail to his family. Several times, correctional
officers prematurelyterminated sweat lodge
ceremonies with no explanation. Then, the
day before the riot, an officer confiscated a
sacred drumthat an inmate had been assigned
to maintain and bring to ceremonial events.
In one fell swoop, this last incident encap-
sulated not merely the two months of losses,
but the historical oppression of Native
Americans-at least in the eyes of the in-
mates (authors' interviews). While the Red
Nation inmates recognized that the prison
was out of control, this rationale to cut their
programs appeared pretextual, just camou-
flage. The assaults on inmates were plainly
the work of gangs, and the Red Society was
not a gang. Also, the Native American in-
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
mates could hardly be blamed for the lack of
discipline among the correctional force. No
effort was made by correctional authorities
to explain the decision to close down the
Society's programs, and the treatment by
correctional officers seemed gratuitously
abusive. One inmate stated that the sudden
elimination of the program "hurt, deep
down" (authors' interview).
The next day, a group of Native American
inmates started the riot in a coordinated,
planned manner in the cafeteria during the
lunch hour. The group arose on a yelled sig-
nal and began striking correctional officers.
According to numerous accounts, once the
riot started, inmates of all ethnic back-
grounds joined the ensuing pandemonium.
Thirteen officers were severely beaten. One
Native American inmate explained his mo-
tivation: "I wanted them to feel some of the
pain that I had felt. The warden took every-
thing from us. And there was no justifica-
tion" (authors' interview). Another inmate
stated, "We have done nothing wrong, and I
didn't understandwhy" (NMCD 1999:170).
Deprivations that are perceived to be in-
evitable or a fair response to past actions
tend to be accepted as just; those that are
perceived otherwise are likely to be galling
(Stinchcombe 1978:33-35, 37-41; Useem
and Kimball 1989:204-205). Prisoners in
private facilities saw no reason why they
should be "punished"by double-celling and
suffer other deprivations relative to inmates
in the state's public prisons. Prisoners knew
the consent decree between the State and
federal courts had prescribedone standardof
treatment;now, they were being subjected to
a lower standard. In addition, prisoners at
both Hobbs and Santa Rosa faced unreason-
able levels of violence as inmates intimi-
dated correctional officers and took control
of the prisons. Finally, at Hobbs the Native
American inmates perceived severe viola-
tions of their rights. Under these conditions,
it was almost unavoidable that the private
prison authorities appearedboth illegitimate
and ineffective.
WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE
ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS
In the period immediately preceding the ri-
ots, responses to inmate provocations were
51 1
obviously weak. This was clearly evident at
both Santa Rosa and Hobbs. During Hobbs's
first six months of operation, there were
eight inmate stabbings and two stabbing
deaths, yet no new disciplinary measures
were imposed.
Three days prior to the riot at Santa Rosa,
the governor warned the contractor that if
any more inmates were killed, he would or-
der all private-facility inmates transferredto
public facilities. The warning was reported
in the press ("Private Prisons Warned,"AJ,
September27,1999). To reinforce and clarify
the message to inmates, the NMCD posted a
notice in the private facilities stating that
transfers would be to an out-of-state prison,
not to a more desirable in-state public facil-
ity. This notice, according to some observ-
ers on the scene, was perceived by inmates
as a challenge to "get" the contractorby dis-
rupting the facility (Fresquez 2000) and was
later criticized along these lines (Vose 2000:
292). Even more striking is that the warning
implied that, for the felonious act of riot, in-
mates' most severe penalty would be a trans-
fer to a less desirable facility. Inmates could
have been told to expect new sentences for
rioting, but they were not.
Just prior to the Santa Rosa riot, numer-
ous inmate actions occurredthat should have
signaled trouble, yet these went largely un-
punished and unheeded. These actions in-
cluded: (1) Three days before the riot, 15 in-
mates in a group were observed to be "pad-
ding up" (putting on extra clothing in antici-
pation of violence) and acting in a threaten-
ing manner. The 15 included known gang
leaders. No administrativeaction was taken,
and the inmates were allowed to stay in the
general population (Vose 2000:293). (2) Two
days before the riot, two inmates were as-
saulted. The alleged assailants were identi-
fied, but no action was taken pending an in-
vestigation (Vose 2000:294). (3) On the day
of the riot, rumors were circulating among
both inmates and officers that a major disor-
der was going to happen (Weber 2000:12).
The rumor was not communicated to the
warden or members of his executive staff,
nor was it acted on in any way.
To restate the conditions in the New
Mexico private prisons, by 1999: (1) The
state had made demands on private prisons
that prison administratorsfound difficult to
512 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
justify or handle, including mandating a
lower level of amenities than were available
at public institutions in the same system. In
addition, segments within a deeply divided
state government frequently attacked the le-
gitimacy of conditions in the private prisons
and the privatization experiment itself. (2)
Corrections staff members were recently re-
cruited and given lower pay and less train-
ing than were the officers in the public pris-
ons. (3) Prisoners were subjected to reduced
amenities, arbitrarysuppression of state-rec-
ognized religious rights, and high levels of
inmate violence. (4) An ideology stressing
the illegitimacy of the private prison admin-
istration, and of specific conditions of con-
finement in the private prisons, was fueled
by external debate and criticism by both na-
tional advocacy groups and state officials.
(5) Prison authorities were lax in responding
to provocative and violent behavior by in-
mates. Under these five conditions, state-
centered theory would predict riots as a
highly likely outcome.
ALTERNATIVE THEORIES
AND DATA
We have argued that the state-centered
model is a useful guide to the causes of
prison riots but, in addition, that the five
causal conditions can be altered by the
policy actions of state and prison authorities.
We now consider three alternative explana-
tions for the New York City and New
Mexico riots, and for the reduction of vio-
lence in New York City after 1995.
The simplest alternative explanation is
that there were demographic changes in
these institutions-changes in the inmate
population, spending per inmate, staff lev-
els per inmate, crowding, and inmate turn-
over. Two other theories we examine are the
prevailing theories of riots in the correc-
tions literature. "Inmate-balancetheory" ar-
gues that social order in prisons is main-
tained by the inmates' own social organiza-
tion, using their own resources and sanc-
tions (Bright 1996; Cloward et al. 1960;
Sykes 1958). Riots therefore follow from
administrative "crackdowns," which curtail
inmates' ability to regulate their own af-
fairs. The other theory, "administrativecon-
trol theory," explains riots in terms of inef-
fective prison administrations, focusing on
internal divisions within the prison admin-
istration, weaknesses in staff training,
flawed execution of routine, and tolerance
of gangs and violence (DiIulio 1987;
Useem and Kimball 1989).
DEMOGRAPHY OF THE PRISON
POPULATIONS
Tables 1 and 2 present data on the number
and composition of inmates at New York
City and New Mexico from 1990 to 1999.
For New York City, Table 1 shows that there
was a gradual decline in total inmate popu-
lation in New York City over this period,
from a peak of 21,450 inmates in 1992 to a
low of 17,520 in 1998. Crowding also
dropped, albeit more slowly, from 103 per-
cent of capacity in 1990 to 98.1 percent in
1999. However, these gradual trends corre-
late poorly with the dramatic shifts in vio-
lence that occurred after the Jacobson/Kerik
regime took charge in 1995.
We look at the years 1994-1995, immedi-
ately before the change in regime, compared
with 1996-1997. In 1994 and 1995, the av-
erage daily inmate populations were 18,090
and 18,870; these numbers increased to
18,330 and 19,200 in 1996 and 1997. Pres-
sures on capacity also increased, from 93.6
percent and 98.5 percent in 1994 and 1995
to 99.2 percent and 99.2 percent in 1996 and
1997. Population was thus stable or even
slightly increasing over these years. Yet a
key violence measure in Table 1-the rate of
inmate slashings and stabbings-fell from
44.3 per 1,000 inmates in 1994 and 54.5 in
1995 to 22.5 in 1996 and 20.9 in 1997-a
sudden decline of well over 50 percent. In
the years from 1996-1997 to 1998-1999,
there was a further fall in average inmate
population by less than 10 percent, yet the
rate of inmate slashings fell another 72 per-
cent between 1997 and 1999. And in the
same period the use of force by officers
against inmates fell by two-thirds. In short,
the decline in violence was rapid and mas-
sive, and particularly for the difference be-
tween 1994-1995 and 1995-1996, the de-
cline cannot be explained by changes in in-
mate population or crowding.
Earlier we pointed out that some authori-
ties blamed the high level of violence in
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS 513

Table 1. Administrative Infrastructure and Violence Measures: New York City Department of
Corrections, 1990 to 1999
Fiscal Year
Variable 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
AdministrativeInfrastructure
Average daily population 19.64 21.07 21.45 19.34 18.09 18.87 18.33 19.20 17.52 17.56
(in 1,000s)
Populationas a percentage 102.8 102.6 97.4 93.7 93.6 98.5 99.2 99.2 98.8 98.1
of capacity
Operatingexpenditures 1,319 1,311 1,321 1,317 1,302 1,306 1,255 1,203 1,151 1,149
(in constant 1999 U.S.
millions of dollars) a
Operatingexpenditures 67.16 62.22 61.58 68.10 71.97 69.21 68.47 62.66 65.70 65.43
per prisoner(in $1,000s)
Ratio of inmatesto 1.9 1.8 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.8 1.7 1.8 1.6 1.6
uniformedstaff
Prisonerturnover(average 57 67 71 66 60 55 53 53 49 51
length of stay, in days)
Staff Cooperation
Uniformedstaff absence 16.1 15.2 18.7 18.6 18.0 19.6 17.0 13.7 14.6 14.1
rate b

InmateCharacteristics
Number of inmates admitted - - - - 30,694 32,161 32,573 32,639 31,653 29,189
c
chargedwith violent crime
Percentage of total admissions - - - - 27.8 25.5 25.5 24.5 24.3 23.0
chargedwith violent crime
Ratio of violent to property - - - 2.04 2.01 2.08 2.13 2.12 2.22
crimes, new admissions
ViolenceMeasures
Inmate-on-inmateslashings 77.7 65.7 42.3 42.1 44.3 54.5 22.5 20.9 13.1 5.8
and stabbings,per 1,000
inmates
Use of force by officers 62.7 43.0 32.1 32.1 37.1 42.4 32.2 34.7 26.4 12.1
againstinmates, per 1,000
correctionalofficers d

ComparisonAgency
New York State Department 19.2 18.0 19.3 19.5 6.5 24.2 22.4 10.7 20.9 17.3
of CorrectionalServices;
Inmateassaults against
inmatesrequiringmedical
attentionper 1,000 inmates
Sources: Average daily population,operatingexpenditures,ratio of inmates to uniformedstaff, prisoner
turnovercome from CBC (2001); populationas a percentageof capacity and use of force by officers, Mead
(1997) and FrankCiaccio (personalcommunication,NYCDOC,February6, 2002, on file); uniformedstaff
absence rate, Frank Ciaccio (personal communication); inmate-on-inmate slashings, Mead (1997) and
NYCDOC (2000); New York State Departmentof CorrectionalServices, inmate violence, CriminalJustice
Institute(variousyears).
a
Operatingexpendituresare the agency's total expendituresand exclude only capital expenditures.
b
Average numberof days absentper employee.
c Admission
by "highest"or most serious charge.
d Serious or "ClassA" force
only (results in injury,or a correctionalofficer uses a weapon, such as a gun,
baton, or flashlight).
514 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Table 2. Administrative Infrastructure and Violence Measures: New Mexico Corrections

Department, 1990 to 1999
Year
Variable 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
AdministrativeInfrastructure
Population 3,134 3,164 3,325 3,472 3,716 4,151 4,549 4,701 4,884 5,127
Populationas a percentage 103.7 98.0 102.7 110.0 112.5 124.7 132.0 127.5 135.5 100.4
of capacity
Operatingexpenditures 124.3 120.0 122.2 120.2 119.1 115.0 147.9 149.4 151.4 155.8
(in constant 1999 U.S.
millions of dollars)a
Operatingexpenditures 39.66 37.93 36.75 34.62 32.05 27.70 32.51 31.78 31.00 30.39
per prisoner (in $ 1,000s)b
Ratio of inmatesto 2.8 2.6 2.8 2.9 3.3 3.6 3.4 3.1 3.2
uniformedstaff
[Nationalaverage] [4.1] [4.4] [4.3] [4.4] [4.4] [4.6] [4.5] [4.5] [4.8]

Prisonerturnover:
Rate of new admission 70.2 68.3 74.1 74.6 77.5 73.2 66.9 63.7 59.7 59.5
to total population
(%, males only)
Average length of stay, 16.4 17.9 16.0 17.8 17.5 17.9 19.4 21.0 21.2 22.0
in months (males only)

Staff Cooperation
Uniformedstaff turnover 17.0 15.9 11.4 13.2 20.5 17.6 15.7 17.9 18.9 17.9
[Nationalaverage] [14.6] [9.6] [11.6] [12.0] [11.6] [12.7] [12.9] [14.9] [15.4] [16.0]
ViolenceMeasures
Inmateassaultsagainst - - 3.6 1.8 1.8 1.5 3.0 3.3 10.1
inmatesor staff, requiring
medical attention,per 100
prisoners
Sources:Population,populationas a percentageof capacity,prisonerturnover(both measures)come from
NMCD (2001); operatingexpenditures,ratio of inmates to uniformedstaff, and inmate assaults, national
average uniformedstaff turnover,CorrectionsYearbook,various years; New Mexico uniformedstaff turn-
over, RobertAlford (personalcommunication,NMCD, February15, 2002, on file).
a Operatingexpendituresreflect the agency's total budget,excluding only capital budget.
b
Average daily cost per inmatefor inmatesconfined in institutions,calculatedby the agency.

Rikers on the high rate of turnover of in-
mates. Yet the data show this is not true.
Prisoner turnoverin Rikers in the late 1990s
(given by length of stay in Table 1) was
higher than in the early 1990s; indeed prison
stays were 15 to 20 percent shorter. None-
theless, slashings and stabbings among in-
mates were reduced by over 90 percent dur-
ing the decade.
While population size and turnover were
stable or worsening, perhaps the prison
population had become less dangerous by
1999, with fewer violent offenders. Yet the
classification of the incoming inmates by
crimes committed shows little change in the
number or proportion of violent inmates. In
New York City in 1994, 30,694 violent of-
fenders were admitted; 32,161 were admit-
ted in 1995; and 32,573 in 1996 (Table 1).
The percentage of inmates listed as having
committed violent crimes was 27.8 percent
in 1994, 25.5 percent in 1995, and 25.5 per-
cent in 1996. The ratio of inmates admitted
for a violent crime to those admitted for a
property crime changed only slightly and in
the direction of a more violent offender
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
population from 1994 (2.04) to 1996 (2.08).
But violence inside the prison fell by half
between 1995 and 1996.
Over two-thirds (68 percent) of the inmates
in the New York State Department of Cor-
rectional Services had been sent to state
prison from New York City (NYS, DCS
2002). Thus, if New York City inmates were
becoming less violence prone after 1995, this
should be reflected in decreased violence in
New York State prisons as well. Yet in 1995-
1996, inmate assaults per 1,000 inmates in
the state prisons, shown at the bottom of
Table 1, was the highest of the decade; more-
over this rate in 1998-1999 was nearly iden-
tical to the level in 1990-1991. If we com-
pare the inmate assault rates in NYCDOC
prisons with New York state prisons over this
decade, we see that the violence rate declined
substantially only in NYCDOC; it had been
much higher than that in New York state pris-
ons at the start of the decade but had de-
creased considerably by the end.
Additionally, if New York City was send-
ing the state increasingly less dangerous of-
fenders, we would anticipate that fewer state
inmates would be classified as maximum se-
curity. In fact, the reverse is true: Table 3
shows that, in 1998-1999, the percentage of
maximum-security prisoners in the New
York state prison system was slightly higher
than in 1996-1997, though rates of inmate
violence in NYCDOC were substantially
lower in the later period.
For New Mexico, Table 2 shows that
prison population and overcrowding in-
creased dramatically in the 1990s. However,
these figures are for the state system as a
whole-and riots occurred only in all the
privatized state facilities. Crowding was be-
coming severe in the late 1990s, which is
why the private facilities were rushed into
operation. Yet despite the fact that crowding
subsided in 1999 because of the opening of
those facilities, it was only then that multiple
riots occurred.And as with crowding, the ra-
tio of inmates to staff escalated rapidly from
1993 to 1997. Yet it was when the ratio of
inmates to staff dropped back to the levels
of the mid-1990s (again mainly because of
bringing the new private prisons into opera-
tion) that the riots broke out. Looking at
Hobbs and Santa Rosa, we find no relation-
ship between staffing levels and riots. Both
515
private prisons had riots in 1999, yet Santa
Rosa had the fourth lowest ratio of inmates
to custody staff of any private prison in the
country at 2.1, much lower than the New
Mexico state average of 3.2; Hobbs had a
ratio closer to the average for state prisons
at 5.5 and rather worse than the state norm
(Camp and Gaes 2000:45-46).
Moreover, despite the growth in prison
population, expenditures per prisoner
dropped mainly in the first half of the de-
cade, and during that drop there were no ri-
ots. Later in the decade, from 1995 to 1999,
the period leading up to the riots, expendi-
tures per prisoner were stable. Interestingly,
turnoverin New Mexico's prisons was mov-
ing in the direction of greater stability in the
years before the 1999 riots: Rates of new
admissions fell and the average stay of pris-
oners increased. But none of this prevented
the 1999 riots.
It is particularlyinteresting to view the se-
curity status of prisoners in New Mexico.
There was systematic underclassification of
prisoners in New Mexico involved with the
placing of some in private institutions. The
Duran decree as well may have led to
underclassification. The decree covered only
medium- and maximum-security prisoners;
thus minimum-security inmates could be
housed more cheaply under non-Duran con-
ditions. Still, Duran did not give the state an
incentive to classify prisoners as medium
versus maximum security. The evidence in
Table 3 suggests that New Mexico had an
unusually low percentage of maximum-secu-
rity prisoners in its prisons compared with
New York State or the Federal Bureau of
Prisons. In 1999, the year of the riots in New
Mexico, only 6.2 percent of its inmates were
classified as maximum- or high-security pris-
oners; compare this with 28.1 percent in that
classification in New York State, and 41.4
percent in that classification in the Federal
Bureau of Prisons. Nationally, for all state
and federal prisons, 25.5 percent of prison-
ers were classified as high- or maximum-se-
curity inmates. (The two prisons we exam-
ined, Hobbs and Santa Rosa, formally had
all of their prisoners classified as medium se-
curity; none was classed as maximum or high
security [O'Brien 2000:128,179]). Even al-
lowing for considerable underclassification
(and the percentage of maximum-security
516 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Table 3. Percentage Distributions of Inmates Classified by Custody Level, 1990, 1991, and 1995 to
1999: New Mexico, New York State, Federal Prisons, and National Average

Percentageof the InmatesClassified

Classificationa 1990 1991 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
New Mexico Departmentof Corrections
Maximumsecurity 11.0 17.0 3.8 5.2 4.7 3.6 6.2
Mediumsecurity 47.6 54.6 60.8 47.6 51.1 60.0 62.0
Minimumsecurity 32.8 12.7 25.3 22.8 34.8 21.4 17.6
Other 8.6 15.7 10.2 24.3 9.5 15.1 14.2
Numberof cases 3,004 3,195 3,868 4,805 4,658 4,682 5,045

New YorkState Departmentof CorrectionalServices

Maximumsecurity 40.0 36.8 31.6 26.8 26.6 30.8 28.1
Mediumsecurity 49.0 49.5 53.8 51.5 53.0 57.6 53.9
Minimumsecurity 11.0 7.7 14.6 14.5 19.6 11.6 17.5
Other 0 6.0 0 7.1 .8 0 .5
Numberof cases 51,227 54,895 66,758 68,489 69,709 69,384 70,001

Federal Bureau of Prisons

Maximumsecurity 40.2 32.3 32.7 31.1 41.4
Mediumsecurity 24.2 24.3 26.5 29.0 19.7
Minimumsecurity 23.9 26.1 24.4 23.4 22.6
Other 11.8 17.3 16.4 16.4 16.4
Numberof cases 54,644 60,734 85,573 100,250 105,544 112,973 123,041

National Average
Maximumsecurity 21.4 24.5 25.6 25.0 25.5
Mediumsecurity 41.4 34.4 34.7 34.6 33.7
Minimumsecurity 26.7 31.9 31.6 30.6 30.2
Other 10.5 9.3 7.9 9.8 10.5
Numberof cases (1,000s) 674 732 981 1,104 1,150 1,228 1,293
Source: The CorrectionsYearbook(CJIvariousyears).
a "Maximum
security"includes maximum security and high/close security classifications. "Other"in-
cludes inmatesin community(not secure) facilities and unclassifiedinmates.

prisoners in New Mexico dropped from 17
percent in 1991 to 6 percent in 1999, so it
may be that the actual percentage that should
have been classified as maximum security
was closer to 15 percent), it would seem dif-
ficult to argue that the extraordinaryamount
of riot activity in the New Mexico prisons
reflected an unusually violent or high-risk
population of inmates compared with other
prison systems.1
1This conclusion is
supported by a 1997 sur-
vey of inmates entering prisons in New Mexico,
New York, and Arizona (Piehl, Useem, and
In short, whether we look at total prison
population, prisoner turnover,crowding, ex-
penditure per prisoner, or security classifi-
cations of inmates, there seems to be noth-
ing in the basic demographic data that can
explain either the enormous and rapid drop
in violence in the New York City prisons, or
Dilulio 1999), which asked inmates about the
crimes they committed just prior to their impris-
onment. The costs of the crimes of the top one-
fifth of offenders were considerably higher in
New York ($240,000) and Arizona ($220,000)
than in New Mexico ($163,000).
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
the eruption of multiple riots in the New
Mexico private prisons.
INMATE-BALANCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE-
CONTROL THEORIES
Both inmate-balance and administrative-
control theories appear strongly supported
when applied to certain elements of the two
cases. In New Mexico, the leading role taken
by Native American inmates in the Hobbs
riot was a reaction to a crackdown on their
religious activities. In New York City, the
pacification of Rikers Island followed an ad-
ministrative tightening by the new leader-
ship. Each theory accounts for elements of
each case.
The problem is whether these theories can
be applied more broadly to cover important
elements across all cases of riots and their
absence. The riot in Santa Rosa was unre-
lated to administrative crackdowns and is
better explained by the lax control of vio-
lence and weak response to inmate provoca-
tions and actions, as pointed to by adminis-
trative-control theory. Moreover, in New
YorkCity, the crackdown on violence among
inmates, and particularlyon gang-identifiers
such as jewelry, would be predicted by in-
mate-balance theory to increase disorder and
generate riots, yet it had the opposite result.
In these cases, inmate-imbalance theory pre-
dicts the opposite of what occurred.
Administrative-controltheory, for its part,
cannot account for the broad sense of injus-
tice over deprivation of amenities expressed
by the inmates at the New Mexico private
facilities, as these deprivations were partof a
deliberate policy of the state government and
not the result of lax or arbitraryadministra-
tion. Similarly, the impositions on Native
Americans at Hobbs were partof a deliberate
attemptto combat violence by imposing uni-
form rules for behavior; their impact on in-
mates was highly provocative but again was
not a result of lax or weak administration.
Violence is a clear symptom of deteriorat-
ing order and is cited as evidence of failure
by administrative-control theory. High lev-
els of violence against inmates and staff, if
not suppressed, generally set the stage for
further assaults and riots. Yet a prevailing
climate of inmate violence is not a general
cause of prison riots. Of the 13 riots we ex-
517
amined in our prior study (Goldstone and
Useem 1999), only two cases were marked
by a "Hobbesian"ideology in which prison-
ers complained of a war of all against all and
generalized insecurity. The majority of the
riots were generated not by concerns about
inmate violence, but by external demands or
administrative shifts that produced new and
poorly implemented policies, staff conflicts
over new rules and routines, inmate griev-
ances over arbitraryor illegal reduction of
services or privileges by the administration,
and failures of physical plant or security rou-
tines to control inmates.
More directly, simply connecting general
inmate violence to riots does not make sense
of the details of the New Mexico and New
York City riots. The Native Americans who
led the Hobbs riot had been, until the riot,
nonviolent members of the prison commu-
nity. It was attacks on their religious posses-
sions and activities by prison staff-not vio-
lence by or against their persons-that led
to their key role in initiating the riot. In the
New York City riot of 1990, the leading role
was played by corrections officers who bar-
ricaded the prison to protest an externally
imposed court order (the use-of-force direc-
tive) that they believed placed them in grave
danger.
In short, inmate-imbalance and adminis-
trative-control theories point to factors that
are important in causing particular riots, or
to specific elements of riotous situations.
But neither theory can account for the full
range of elements leading to the breakdown
and restoration of social order in these two
cases. Both are accurate in some respects,
but by themselves are too simple to account
for the complexities of these cases and our
data. The state-centered theory-which
points to a combination of external adminis-
trative demands on prison administration,
conflicts with staff, inmate grievances, ide-
ologies of resistance, and ineffective re-
sponse to inmate actions-comprehends the
most valuable points of each theory and ac-
counts for more elements of these two cases.
The theory is also more general, capable of
explaining a phenomenon that neither in-
mate-imbalance nor administrative-control
theory lead us to expect, namely the strains
that private firms face in maintaining social
order in high-security prisons.
518 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
PRIVATE PRISONS: LESSONS
FROM NEW MEXICO AND STATE-
CENTERED THEORY
Over the last quarter century, U.S. policy-
makers have increasingly embraced priva-
tization as the solution to public problems,
in spheres ranging from healthcare to low-
income housing, from electric power to
refuse collection. Government came to be
seen as ineffective, while private enterprise
gained credibility as an engine of innovation
and efficiency. The failures of privatization
in New Mexico's prison system suggest
some problems with the presumption that
private enterprises are always more effective
than public institutions.
In fact, although the experience of New
Mexico's private prisons was extreme, it was
by no means unique. Surveys of private
prison performance have found that
"[p]rivately operated prisons appear to have
systemic problems in maintaining secure fa-
cilities" (Camp and Gaes 2002:444).
PERFORMANCE OF PRIVATE VERSUS
PUBLIC PRISONS IN MAINTAINING
ORDER
Private prisons have experienced unusually
high rates of riots and prisoner escapes
(Greene 2001). In 1999 alone, riots occurred
in private prisons in Oklahoma (in two dif-
ferent facilities), Tennessee, Montana, and
Colorado, as well as those in New Mexico.
That makes eight riots during that year
within the nation's 49 private maximum- and
medium-security prisons. These prisons held
35,860 prisoners, for an average riot inci-
dence of 1 riot for every 6 prisons and for
every 4,482 inmates (Camp and Gaes 2000,
table 1; McDonald and Patten 2000:110).2
Comparing this with national data, between
1990 and 1998, an average of 6.1 prison ri-
ots occurred in the United States, ranging
from a peak of 12 in 1995 to a low of 2 in
1998 (authors' tally from New York Times
2 There was also one riot in a
privateprison
with predominantly low- and minimum-security
prisoners-at Taft CorrectionalInstitution in
California.This riot was over food servicesand
resultedin no injuriesbut causedapproximately
$50,000 in damages(CampandGaes2000, table
1).
and Lexus-Nexus searches). This was in a
national prison system that in 1995 held
606,252 inmates in 494 state and federal
maximum- and medium-security prisons, for
an average incidence of 1 riot per 81 prisons
and per 99,386 inmates (CJI 1996:53;
McDonald and Patten 2000:100). Even in
the peak year of the decade for riots in U.S.
prisons (1995), riot incidence was only 1 riot
per 41 prisons and per 50,500 inmates. Com-
paring these rates of riot incidence, we find
that in 1999 private prisons experienced ap-
proximately seven times as many riots per
prison, and over 10 times as many riots per
inmate, as occurred in the peak riot year in
the previous decade for all U.S. prisons.
This is a remarkablerate of disorder-es-
pecially considering that in the United States
maximum-securityprisoners are one-third of
the medium-securityplus maximum-security
inmate population, while maximum-security
prisoners are still rare in the private prisons,
at under 10 percent of this group. In addi-
tion, most private facilities are newly built,
and thus out-of-date architecture or run-
down conditions cannot be blamed.
This pattern is confirmed by looking at
prison escapes. In 1999, 23 prisoners (out of
a total inmate population of 69,188 in all
classifications) escaped from private pris-
ons. By comparison, only 1 prisoner escaped
from the secure facilities of the Federal Bu-
reau of Prisons (and that was the first escape
since 1996), out of a secured inmate popula-
tion of 80,800 with many more medium- and
maximum-security inmates (Camp and Gaes
2002:442).
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is particu-
larly good at preventing escapes, and so it
may not provide a fair comparison. Focus-
ing on escapes of prisoners in all state and
federal medium- and maximum-security
prisons, there were 114 such escapes in 1999
(the latest year for which we have data) out
of 764,784 inmates in 499 institutions
(Criminal Justice Institute 1999; Criminal
Justice Institute 2000).3 This yields an es-
3 These figures do not include Maine's 820
high security inmates and one prison because
Mainedid not reportits escapesin 1999 (if any)
to the Corrections Yearbook. If Federal inmates
are excludedfrom the denominator,the escapes
to inmates ratio is 1 per 6,102.
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
cape rate of 1 per 6,709 inmates and per 4.4
institutions. In the private-prison sector, 20
of the 23 escapes were from 49 maximum-
and medium-security facilities, which
housed 35,860 inmates, including five es-
capes of inmates during transportto or from
such facilities. This is an escape rate of 1 per
1,793 inmates, or almost four times higher
than all comparable federal and state pris-
ons. The escape rate per institution of 1 per
2.45 is almost twice as high as in the com-
parable public sector.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to compare
assault and homicide rates among prison
systems because assaults are recorded differ-
ently in different jurisdictions, and homi-
cides are rare events. Moreover, most homi-
cides occur among maximum-security pris-
oners, of which there are over 200,000 in all
state and federal prisons and only 2,772 in
private prisons (McDonald and Patten
2000:110). Camp and Gaes (2002:443) con-
clude that results comparing homicides and
assaults in public and private facilities are
ambiguous. Based on a survey conducted in
1997, Austin and Coventry (2001) found
higher rates of inmate-on-inmate assaults in
private prisons (35 per 100,000) than in pub-
lic prisons (25 per 100,000).
Finally, these problems in private prisons
cannot be blamed on a concentration of
faults at facilities run by a single jurisdic-
tion or contractor.In 1999, escapes, riots, or
inmate deaths spanned 23 separate incidents
at 19 different facilities in 11 different states,
run by 5 different contractors. The two larg-
est contractors-Corrections Corporationof
American and Wackenhut Corrections Cor-
poration-reported 10 and 8 incidents re-
spectively (Camp and Gaes 2000:39-43).
EXPLAINING THE PERFORMANCE OF
PRIVATE PRISONS
Private prisons face external pressures to
meet financial goals, and this differs from
the primary mission of prisons generally.
The imperative to keep costs down to win
contracts and make profits may conflict with
the key mission of prisons, which is to pro-
vide for the safe and secure confinement of
inmates. Keeping costs down creates new
problems for the administration,particularly
with regard to staff compensation and
519
amenities for inmates. The result is often a
less well-paid, less experienced work force,
with a higher turnoverrate (Camp and Gaes
2000, 2002). For inmates facing disamen-
ities-whether in the form of deliberate pri-
vations or arbitraryexercise of authority (as
in the suppression of Native American ac-
tivities at Hobbs)-these disamenities are
easily regarded as imposed for the sake of
the private contractor's gains, and thus as
unjust. This ideology is further exacerbated
by a vocal public debate criticizing the op-
erations of private penal institutions. Com-
bining the several elements above is exactly
what the state-centered theory argues will
lead to a breakdownof social order-and the
data bear out this expectation for the opera-
tion of private prisons in the United States
in the last several years.
The poor performance of private prisons
under a variety of contractors and in a large
number of jurisdictions further suggests the
limits of the administrative-controltheory of
prison order. Private prisons should excel in
efficient management because of the disci-
pline of the market and the bringing in of
private sector experience. Yet efficient ad-
ministration is evidently not sufficient to
create good order in prisons; such institu-
tions present complex dynamics that require
attention.
In particular, these complexities have to
do with the operation of prisons as hierar-
chical societies. Many analysts treat prisons
as "societies" (Sykes 1958) and view their
effectiveness in terms of how well they op-
erate as organizations (Dilulio 1987). We
argue, however, that prisons must be under-
stood as having the characteristics of both
societies and organizations, and that their
effectiveness depends on succeeding in
both respects. Prison management must
gain the loyalty of a professional staff and
the compliance of a base population that is
involuntarily placed in their care, while also
coping with external demands and con-
straints. This dilemma is familiar to heads
of authoritarianstates. Thus, we are not sur-
prised that theories of social order obtained
from the political sociology of revolutions
do so well in explaining order and disorder
in prisons.
Although privatization increases the com-
plexity and intensity of external demands
520 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
on prison management, we do not believe
that private prisons as such are doomed to
fail. The privatization in New Mexico failed
because the governor and legislature im-
posed a combination of conditions that im-
pacted those prisons-a mandated depriva-
tion of prisoners and cost savings, along
with a high level of criticism and contro-
versy that undercut the private facilities' le-
gitimacy. When combined with an inexperi-
enced, poorly trained, and poorly compen-
sated staff, abuses of inmates' perceived
rights, and weak or inept responses to in-
mate actions, the combination of riot condi-
tions was essentially complete. Private fa-
cilities that are managed with an awareness
of the conditions that lead to riots and are
given full public support and reasonable
mandates for the treatmentof inmates could
fare far better.
It is necessary to point out, however, that
if private prisons see as their main goals sim-
ply the housing of inmates at lower cost and
earning the maximum return for sharehold-
ers while delivering cost-savings to the state,
problems may arise. The administratorsare
then likely to neglect those aspects of prison
managementthat requireseeing the prison as
a society, and may fail to realize that a key
component of effective prison management
is providing good social order for that soci-
ety. We believe that such neglect most likely
accounts for the relatively poor performance
of private prison facilities to date.
CONCLUSION: CREATING ORDER
IN PRISONS AND BEYOND
Prisons should be seen as small-scale societ-
ies, and as a particulartype of society-a hi-
erarchicalauthoritariansystem, analogous to
a monarchical or dictatorial state (Goldstone
and Useem 1999). We have drawn on theo-
ries of revolution to identify structuralcon-
ditions that lead to social order or break-
down in prisons. We have shown that (1) the
structuralconditions are not static, but react
in a relatively short time to policy decisions
made by state authorities and prison admin-
istrations that affect those conditions; (2) the
state-centered theory provides a more accu-
rate and comprehensive explanation for
change over time than to competing expla-
nations that look to changes in inmate popu-
lations, administrativeexpenditures, or reac-
tions to administrative crackdowns; and (3)
the state-centered theory accounts for the
high rates of disorder in private prisons that
have been documented in recent data.
Two sets of policy conclusions can be
drawn. One set comes primarily from the
Rikers case study and speaks to issues in
prison management. The other set arises
from the New Mexico case study and ad-
dresses issues in the privatization of public
institutions.
BRINGING ORDER TO PRISONS
The analysis presented here bears on the fu-
ture of prisons and jails in the United States,
which are now home to more than 2 million
people. Blomberg and Lucken (2000) re-
cently argued that prisons will continue to
deteriorate: "Prison riots, hostage taking,
gang warfare, and inmate to inmate, inmate
to staff, and staff to inmate violence are all
increasingly routine aspects of everyday
prison operations" (p. 132). But we suggest
the possibility of a different path. Indeed, the
evidence from Rikers Island-a prison sys-
tem that was considered hopelessly vio-
lence-wracked and unmanageable-suggests
that prisons can be quickly turned into a
model of stability despite no change in in-
mate population or public control. Our case
studies show that this remains true whether
prisoner turnoveris high or low, and regard-
less of whether prisons are old or new,
crowded or not crowded.
The actions that reduce riot risks are as
follows:
(1) Maintain cohesion and clarity of pur-
pose among state authorities, prison admin-
istrations, and corrections staff. Do not un-
dertake changes in policy without clear sup-
port and the financial and political resources
to carry out the policy.
(2) Train and protect staff, to maintain
high morale and loyalty to the prison admin-
istration among corrections officers.
(3) Do not impose arbitraryor poorly ex-
plained or understooddisamenities or penal-
ties on inmates. Levels of inmate safety,
medical care, amenities, and punishment for
infractions of rules should be clear and con-
sistent across the prison system and should
be consistent with state (and where man-
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
dated, federal) standardsfor treatmentof in-
mates.
(4) Treatment of inmates by staff and ad-
ministration should strive to maintain legiti-
macy in terms of public and legal standards
for treatment of prison inmates. Prisoners
should not have a reason to develop an ide-
ology that unites inmates in the belief that
prison conditions or staff actions are illegiti-
mate and would be rectified if people "knew
what was happening inside."
(5) Respond quickly, firmly, and consis-
tently to inmate actions that infringe rules or
challenge prison authorities.
PRIVATIZATION, CLIENT-INCLUSIVE
INSTITULTIONS, AND SOCIAL ORDER
Given the common practice of privatizing
the delivery of all kinds of services, includ-
ing services such as food provision in pris-
ons, it may seem odd that privatization of
prison management has been riddled with
difficulties. However, the logic of market
competition that is supposed to provide for
more efficient delivery of services is not
fully applicable to an institution that in-
cludes and has extensive responsibility for
the welfare of its clients.
To operate effectively, prisons must rec-
oncile a dual responsibility: (1) to provide
secure confinement of inmates for the state,
and (2) to provide a stable social order
within the prison. In this dual character,
they are not alone. Bidwell and Vreeland
(1963a, 1963b) point out that schools face a
similar challenge that is also rooted in the
relationships among school administration,
professional staff, and the population
placed in their care. They argue that schools
have a technical aspect-delivery of peda-
gogical services-and a communal aspect-
socializing students to norms of good order.
Both aspects are important, as learning
takes place within a community of students
who are subject to the authority of profes-
sional staff and administrators.Rejection of
that authority is inimical to learning. This
dual character is a general feature of orga-
nizations that include their clients and sub-
jects them to the authority of the organi-
zation's administration. The preceding case
studies have implications for privatization
in other institutional settings.
521
The debate on school privatization is ex-
tensive, with some claiming that privatiza-
tion has been shown to fail (Ascher,
Fruchter,and Berne 1996), and others argu-
ing that it has been proven to succeed
(Hoxby 1994). Many public schools are
wracked by violence and poor learning; thus
building new private facilities, or giving
control of an entire school system to a pri-
vate provider may appear to be a solution.
Yet the contrasting experiences of New
Mexico and New York City should give
pause to accepting that solution. We believe
that many apparentlyunmanageable schools
or school systems could be greatly improved
by explicit attention to the five conditions
central to maintaining effective order in hi-
erarchical social systems.
In fact, several studies of schooling have
stressed the importance of precisely the fac-
tors we have noted above as key to maintain-
ing social order in hierarchical societies as
importantfor the success of schools. Meyer
(1970) has argued that certain colleges suc-
ceed because there is an exceptional degree
of consensus and support from the outside
community for the goals of the school.
Chubb and Moe (1990) have shown that
effective school organization improves stu-
dent learning. Controlling for other factors,
a student gains at least one year in school
attainment by attending an "effectively or-
ganized" school that stresses leadership,
goals, personnel, and administrative prac-
tices. Soundness on these factors, ratherthan
particular pedagogical or disciplinary rou-
tines, promoted school success.
S0renson and Morgan (2000) point out,
however, that Chubb and Moe ". . . were un-
able to cast much light on what schools with
effective organization actually do to produce
more learning. They found no effect of the
amount of homework required, graduation
requirements, administrative routines in the
classroom, or discipline" (p. 147). In other
words, education researchers who focused
on the delivery of learning services, and not
on the degree of social order in the school as
an hierarchical organization, were puzzled
by Chubb and Moe's findings. These results,
however, are exactly what we would expect
from our theory of social order in hierarchi-
cal organizations. Schools have a social
character,and a sound social order is neces-
522 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
sary for schools to perform well. Without
good social orderin the organization,includ-
ing respected leadership, good administra-
tive coordination, and acceptance of teach-
ers' authorityby students, other factors-the
amount of homework assigned, graduation
requirements, or disciplinary routines-will
not produce good results. These conclusions
parallel our findings for prisons: We have
shown that neither demographic factors, nor
reform policies, nor a lax or harsh style of
management, have any particular advan-
tages; what matters for good order are sound
and coherent relationships among adminis-
trators, staff, base population, and the exter-
nal community. To the extent that learning
depends on good order in the school com-
munity, we expect that attention to the key
conditions for social order-including staff/
administration/externalconsensus on goals
and procedures and student acceptance of
the legitimacy of staff and administrationau-
thority-would be crucial for good results.
Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993) explain the
superior performance of Catholic schools
compared with public schools as mainly the
result of success in building the communal
aspects of schooling. In Catholic schools,
"[s]hared understandings about what stu-
dents should learn and how adults and stu-
dents should behave grounds a communal
school organization.... [S]chool principals
described their top goal as 'building commu-
nity among faculty, students, and parents'"
(Bryk et al. 1993:139).
Prisons are not exactly like schools, but
neither are they exactly like states. For ex-
ample, prisons do not collect taxes from in-
mates as states do from their subjects.
Rather, we argue that authoritarian states,
prisons, and schools are all in varying de-
grees client-inclusive organizationsin which
the baseline population is involuntarily sub-
jected to the authorityof state administration
and professional elites. Thus, a similar logic
applies to the operation of these organiza-
tions and to the conditions for their effec-
tiveness. These conditions must balance the
technical mission of the organization with
the need to provide good internal social or-
der among the administration, staff, base
population, and external actors.
The debate about privatization of schools
-and of other client-inclusive organiza-
tions, such as hospitals and medical facili-
ties-may turn on the wrong issues. If
privatization "works," it is not because of
market-driven superiority in the delivery of
pedagogical (or medical, or other) services.
Rather, private organizations are effective
only if the conditions of privatization-such
as a clear charter from the community or
strong communal values from the Church or
other source-favor the conditions for good
social order within the organization. Public
institutions that pay attentionto, and are able
to achieve, the conditions for good social or-
der are likely to be just as effective. By con-
trast, private institutions that focus on the
cost-efficient delivery of services to the ex-
clusion of concern for the social order of
their organization are likely to provoke dis-
order and poor performance.
Enthusiasm for treating all institutions as
"firms" whose efficiency can be improved
by privatization has led to privatization of
many public services. Yet privatization does
not carry the same implications for all orga-
nizations, nor does it always assure effective
management, as recent studies of the pitfalls
of privatization reveal (Markusen forthcom-
ing; Sclar 2000). Many institutions and com-
plex organizations are far more than just
firms; viewed internally, they have the char-
acteristics of societies. In these circum-
stances, which prevail in prisons and may
exist in other institutions, economic analysis
is not sufficient for understandingthe com-
plex dynamics of internal order. Sociologi-
cal analysis, based on theories of state order
and disorder, is essential in understanding
those dynamics.
Prison riots are extremely costly in inju-
ries and lost lives, property damage, and
perhaps most important, damage to the in-
tegrity of the criminal justice system. We
believe the basic causes of riots do not lie
mainly in the inherently violent or irratio-
nal nature of inmates, but in more general
principles regarding the dynamics of social
order in prisons. Order can be created and
maintained by improving the relationships
among prison management, staff, inmates,
and outside authorities. We hope that un-
derstanding this will bring on a time when
riots, instead of being a regular feature of
our penal system, become increasingly
rare.
 RIOT AND REFORM IN U.S. PRISONS
Bert Useem is Professor of Sociology at the Uni-
versity of New Mexico. He has written widely
about social movements and prison riots, and is
currently completing a study of the effects of
rates of imprisonment on the crime rate.
Jack A. Goldstone is Professor of Sociology at
the University of California, Davis. A specialist
in the analysis of revolutions and contentious
politics, he is editor of the Encyclopedia of Po-
litical Revolutions (Congressional Quarterly
Press, 1998), coauthor, with others, of Silence
and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics
(Cambridge University Press, 2001), and editor
of States, Parties, and Social Movements (Cam-
bridge University Press, forthcoming).
APPENDIX A Bryk, Anthony S., Valerie E. Lee, and Peter B.
Sources of Data
The data for this study are from original ethno-
graphicresearchand secondaryanalysis of official
governmentreportsand from journalists' accounts.
The field work consisted of the following:
NEW MEXICO
The New Mexico Departmentof Correctionmade
available files from its investigation of the two ri-
ots, which includeddozens of memorandums,40 in-
mate interviews, and 24 staff interviews. In addi-
tion, the first author interviewed six inmates in-
volved in the Hobbs riot on January9, 2002 and
January23, 2002. At the time of the research,most
of the SantaRosa inmatesremainedunavailablefor
interviews in an out-of-stateprison.
NEW YORK CITY
The first author made two trips to Rikers Island.
During these site visits, he was permittedto travel
freely throughfour facilities, observing and talking
to inmatesand staff. In addition,he interviewedthe
entire seniorexecutive staff of the agency and much
of the middle management(both individually and
in focus groups). He also attendeda TEAMS meet-
ing and observed the operation of the Training
Academy. The site visit and interviews were con-
ducted October26-28, 1999 and November 18-20,
1999.
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