When the National Institute of Justice asked Temple University's Dr. George Rengert to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map incidents of violence against officer inside correctional facilities, he never imagined that the results would lead to redecorating recommendations.

“We get mixed reactions when we present this research,” says Rengert. “Many people in corrections say that jails and prisons should not be welcoming places. But our come back is: do you want them to be threatening and frightening places where the natural reaction of the inmate is either fight or flight?”

A response that comes after Rengert and his colleague Jerry Radcliffe conducted research at two facilities in Seattle, Washington to determine where and under what circumstances assaults against officer were likely to take place.

Instead of the typical outside GIS application, Rengert and Radcliffe used GIS technologies to map the officer and inmate activities inside the buildings.

“We were interested in studying the environments related to attacks against officers,” says Rengert.

According to Rengert, the results and their recommendations raised mixed reactions.

Mapping Violent Attacks

Rengert and Radcliffe found that most attacks against officers occurred in open areas with the highest concentration of officers such as intake, administrative segregation and release. 

“Most of the attacks against COs didn't take place in necessarily out of the way places – stairways, dark corners,” says Rengert.

They also noticed that most violent attacks occurred when inmates where taken out of their daily routines in the midst of everyday procedures.

“For instance, they would ask inmates to go back to their cells after an hour out, or asking them to leave their cells to go to court. Generally, the corrections officers were just doing their jobs – but the inmates saw it as being asked to change what they were doing.”

According to Rengert, this disruption is when most attacks tended to happen.

“Inmates became more likely to resist which often led to violent incidents,” says Rengert.

Mapping Officer Asserted Authority

Once they discovered that most incidents of violence occurred during every day activities, the researchers turned their focus to the officer's state of mind. Rengert and Radcliffe studied the idea of perceived threat versus actual threat. 

“[We knew that] when police officers answer calls for service in areas that they perceive to be dangerous, they tend to respond with a kind of authority and this could sometimes escalate with violence. We wanted to look at what prompted them to use their authority,” says Rengert.

Rengert and Radcliffe also interviewed staff one-on-one to get more answers.

“We asked officers to locate the five most threatening areas of their facility,” says Rengert. “We also asked them to map the place where the last two violence incidents they were involved in took place.”

After mapping these incidents, they were surprised to find such a high number of officers felt threatened on their particular posts. They found that over 50% of the people in both Washington institutions felt that they were working in the most dangerous part of the facility.

“We found that interesting because going to work every day feeling threatened certainly adds stress – and we thought that stress might contribute to violent situations,” explains Rengert.

They also found that the feelings may have been accurate because they did work in the most threatening areas – they work in intake and release and then of course administrative segregation with possibly difficult individuals out of their normal routines.

Chicken or The Egg

“After this research, our recommendations are that rather than having an austere type of environment, especially in areas like Intake, that corrections facilities use a means of calming the area – such as putting artwork on the walls or painting the facility a brighter color,” says Rengert.

Although the researchers attempted to find a connection between the use of authority and violent incidents, they had a hard time pinpointing how the two were related.

“We didn't get a definitive answer on whether or not officers tend to respond with a kind of authority that could sometimes escalate with violence,” says Rengert. “We wanted to look at what prompted officers to use their authority. But we would need more in-depth research to answer that. What we did find was that the areas officers perceived to be more threatening might actually be more threatening.”

By evaluating the relationship between violent incidents and the use of authority, the researchers hoped to discover more about whether or not violent incidents occurred before the use of authority or vice versa.

“The problem was that we didn't really have any information to the chicken and the egg – were officers authoritative first, and then had a negative response? Or was there negative response and then use of authority? Future researchers will probably look at this – the use of force by COs related to the areas of the institution. Finding that out will take more refined research.”

So although there are mixed reactions in corrections, Rengert says that he is hopeful there will be more refined research on the subject. Meanwhile, he suggests some small changes to make life easier for officers.

“The other thing we recommended was to make things more comfortable for the staff in corrections,” says Rengert. “We thought staff should have more comfortable chairs and environments. They become less tired and less stressed – and they become more professional about their work.”

Making a Visual Impact

In order to change corrections facilities from a grey environment to one that is more calming, Rengert suggests that facilities revisit the concept of interior design.

“Our recommendations are that rather than having (especially in ITR and intake) an austere type of environment that is painted grey, that they use means of calming the area, possibly even putting some artwork on the walls or painting it a brighter color. We say they should maybe take clues from children's hospitals,” says Rengert. “We recommended this because we thought calming the environment down on the whole. We thought by providing a less threatening environment, for both inmates and COs, it will be a win-win situation.”

Rengert and Radcliffe have made similar conclusions to one administrator that has given them the chance to see the impact of their recommendations. According to Rengert, one administrator took another look at his facility Intake room. After realizing that the set-up of the room might make officials prone to using authority and incoming offenders prone to acting out, the facility made adjustments.

“We've had one administrator that has changed the elevations of their officers in intake so they are at eye-level so they are speaking eye-to-eye,” says Rengert. “That administrator says this has had a real impact because someone who was working on a higher level had a different attitude. It seems threatening to sit above an inmate at intake.”

Moving GIS Incident Mapping Forward in Corrections

Rengert and Radcliffe are currently finishing up their final report on their findings in Seattle, and recently presented some of their findings at the American Correctional Association's 2006 Winter Conference.

They are also working to help expand the U.S. DOJ's GIS mapping initiatives in Corrections. One new Rengert-Radcliffe program maps crimes within the facilities, but it maps them by unit.

“We have developed a package for record keeping that has a mapping and graphing component to it. This is free [to] download from the Department of Justice.”

According to Rengert is a take-off on a school program that was put together to map incidents within schools.

“We updated that program to make it useable for correctional institutions. It is mapping, graphing and tabular calculations of incidents,” says Rengert. “When an incident occurs, it keeps a record of the people involved, characteristics and location. All the records that used to be kept in longhand can now be kept here. It's free and that's about as cheap as it comes.”