Empirical exploration of the importation, deprivation and integrated models concerning types of aggression in youth custody

Recently in Canada and the United States there has been an intensifying political debate about serious and violent young offenders. The policy issues in the US have focused on capital punishment and mistreatment of incarcerated young offenders, and the implementation of mandatory minimum custodial sentences for young offenders in Canada. There have been few studies on how young offenders adapt to custody. The three dominant perspectives have been the importation, deprivation, and integrated models. Certain key imported, deprivation, and combined factors were statistically related to separate measures of physical, verbal, and property aggression in a sample from British Columbia’s largest young offender’s custodial facility. Qualitative interviews with key government officials provided an historical perspective about the deprivation structure of custody in this facility. Structured in-depth interviews with 189 incarcerated young offenders provided for bi-variate and multi-variate analyses of the relationship between key imported and deprivation variables, and three types of aggression. While imported variables predominated the statistical models, particularly regarding physical aggression, deprivation variables and interactive effects were also identified for verbal and property aggression. This suggested that an integrated model best explained different forms of aggression in youth custody.