Responses to Prison Riots

Abstract

Examination of responses to rioting presents considerable difficulties. Research into responses to riots tends to be based on hindsight and, to the extent that riots are rarely predictable, serendipity as far as accurate, standardized data are concerned. There is an ambiguity in the term ‘responses’. Responses to prison riots include policies and practices at the time of specific incidents and subsequent actions after the riot is over in the prison and at the level of penal policy. Every action also can be considered as a response to other, usually preceding and perhaps anticipated, actions. So the actions of prisoners in rioting, which precipitate responses by the authorities, are themselves responses to other factors which need also to be considered as consequences, in more or less a succession. Taking cognizance of these factors, this chapter considers how responses by the authorities to prison riots have changed over time.

Crushing power exercised relentlessly by and without hesitation is really the merciful, as it is the necessary, course to be pursued.

(Molineux, 1884, p. 15)