The prison system has many functions that may cause a number of conflicts. There may be conflicts of interest in the meaning of punishment, the rights of prisoners or the duties of officers. The view of the organisational structure of prison can be broken down into formal and informal guidelines. The formal guidelines relates to the administration of secure imprisonment and the rules that would govern any given prison. The informal guidelines relates to the implementation of the rules and the extent that the rules are adhered to or transgressed as a result of discretion of the management or officers in relation to the prisoners. It can be seen that offenders need to be given proper social conditioning during imprisonment by decreasing the frequency of antisocial interaction and increasing the quality of socially acceptable interaction (Graham, 1997; Liebling & Price, 1998; Schiro & Clements, 2001; Shuford & Spencer, 1999). Thus attitudes need to be adapted away from traditional authoriatarian prison management towards a more authoritative form of management. It can be shown how attitude modification is justified from the perspective of officer/ management to prisoner relations and better outcomes of Justice, in particular reduction of recidivist behaviour after release from prison.

Cavadino (1992) has discussed two complex ways of predicting a crisis situation in the prison system. The orthodox account, which is the simpler of the two shows how factors such as high density prison populations and poor prison conditions interact with low staff to prisoner ratios which results in tension and security problems. These variables have been used to explain riots and other problems with in a given prison system. The more complex explanation of the prison crisis is the radical pluralist account of the penal crisis (Cavadino, 1992). This explanation is similar to the orthodox account with some additional features. Theoretical ideology may shift from one theoretical perspective to another as a result of the social conditions such as financial and physical status of the prison system that are viewed in light of the political attitudes of prison management. In combination a crisis including prisoner misconduct, industrial relations problems and political problems can occur (Cavadino, 1992). Regardless of the complexity of the problem presented there is a conflict between the actual cause of such a crisis and the interaction of public management’s loss of control over prisons.

The cause of the problem relates to the ever-increasing size of the general population that leads to an increase of social problems inside and outside of prison. New prisoners mainly younger offenders are added to already imprisoned and recidivist offenders in a growing general population. The social problems include increases in the number of individuals who are involved in criminal cultures. Two major criminal cultures can be identified. Organised crime relates to Biker gangs, Militias, Religious radicals and Terrorist groups. Another way of identifying criminal cultures is with the classification as life course persistent offenders or adolescent onset offender populations (Moffit cited in Bartol, 1999). Adolescent onset offenders are actively involved in crime from age 15 to 25 years of age however life course persistent individuals begin offending very young and continue through out the life course (Moffit cited in Bartol, 1999). Some of the offenders will be brought to Justice and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The interactions of the two offender groups can be described as a criminal school (Scheindlein, 1996). This can be shown through Sutherland’s differential association theory (Sutherland cited in Coleman, 1976).

Sutherland (cited in Coleman, 1976) states that behaviour is learned through social interactions, which if the sum of interactions is antisocial then this will result in antisocial behaviour. Thus it can be seen that offenders need to be given proper social conditioning during imprisonment by decreasing the frequency of antisocial interaction and increasing the quality of socially acceptable interaction (Graham, 1997; Liebling & Price, 1998; Schiro & Clements, 2001; Shuford & Spencer, 1999). This may also involve a continuance of community-based corrections after a sentence has finished. To achieve this it is suggested here in that attitudes need to be tuned so that a system can be set up that facilitates the implementation of acceptable social standards (Schiro & Clements, 2001; Shuford & Spencer, 1999). Bad attitudes inevitably need to be overcome; in particular traditional authoritarian prison management attitudes need to be modified to more productive authoritative ones.

The management of prisons have traditionally prompted an authoritarian approach towards officer and prisoner interaction; however it has been shown in other disciplines (Mounts, 2001; Scully, 2002) and recently in the prison system (Schiro and Clement, 2001) that an Authoritative role model promotes the best social outcomes for behaviour modification. Thus there is a need for the officers to interact with prisoners on a personal level. Traditionally however, interacting with prisoners on a personal level has been met with prejudice. This prejudice is connotative of behaviour that suggests that officers are assisting prisoners to continue to use contraband or escape (Edney, 1997), which is not necessarily true even though it may be possible. Therefore overcoming prejudicial attitudes towards better ground level relationships in prisons may be difficult as the attitudes are ingrained in prison administration culture on all levels.

Attitude adjustments towards a less prejudicial stance towards prisoners by management have its advantages. One is that it reduces the risk of violence occurring (Edney, 1997). Officers have been known to single out troublesome prisoners and make an example of them, at which stage if a complaint was made against them they would have used a use of force report that corroborated blame onto the prisoner (Edney, 1997). This results from the traditional ideology that prisoners are different to civilians. It implies that prisoners should not engage in any rights seeking or defending behaviour that constitutes prejudice. The prejudicial stance against prisoners is oppositional to the maxim that punishment is the loss of freedom alone and not the loss of human rights and dignity. Recent research into this has suggested the traditional form of prison management is responsible for the ‘us and them’ attitude taken against prisoners. That attitude can be seen to be overcome by an authoritative management including staff training in interpersonal skills (Liebling & Price, 1998) and conflict management skills (Schiro & Clements, 2001; Schuford and Spencer, 1997).

Further more the ‘just deserts ideology’ can be used to enforce a harsh stance towards prisoners, which is suggested in the radical pluralist theory (Cavadino, 1992) to impact on the decline of the rehabilitation function of imprisonment. There is also the logical assumption that at least 90 % of prisoners will be released at some stage in the future. The prison system of Missouri, for example, reports that 97% of their prisoners will be released at some time in the future (Schiro and Clements, 2001). This indicates that prejudicial attitudes towards the treatment of prisoners by prison staff will only act as a punishment of antisocial behaviour. The punished behaviour is predicted to re-emerge once the prison guards are not watching and when the prisoner is released from custody, which is a well understood principle of behaviourism and behaviour modification principles.

An alternative form of prison management involves an authoritative stance towards discipline and behaviour. In this approach officers act as a source of assistance to prisoners. This allows officers to build a relationship with a prisoner that promotes pro-social behaviour. One officer has stated for example that relating to prisoners is an important aspect of prison officer duties (Sinclair, 1996). Showing common courtesy for example, was rewarded on the majority of experiences as it promoted co-operative behaviour from inmates in day to day living (Sinclair, 1996). A note of caution however, was that despite avoiding the prejudicial treatment of prisoners some hardened offenders will not benefit from such treatment and may not acknowledge the officers. Liebling and Price (1998) suggest that recently recruited officers may be put at risk however officers who were able to identify methods of operation or underlying motives among aggressive and manipulative prisoners could avoid being assaulted or tricked. A key element that has been documented is the fact that prison officers need to have studied the processes in the justice system including criminal behaviour studies, which serves the purpose of allowing a professional level of intelligence that gives an invaluable insight into the capabilities of prisoners.

Alternatively, Liebling and Price (1998) have proposed that although a good relationship is an essential part of good prison management there is a distinction to be drawn between good and close interaction. The important thing officers may need to remember is that getting too close to prisoners may compromise the role of the officer. Keeping interactions on a professional level thus involves the use of discretion. In this idea of discretion evolves the fact that rules and regulations are not always appropriate. Officers can use trust that has been built up that promotes successful navigation around occasionally unnecessary protocol which allows for a laypersons need for simplicity in day to day living in an otherwise complicated environment. For example an officer may make effective use of listening skills and accurately report the needs of offenders to management, medical or other staff. Here it would be important to use empathy in understanding the feelings being expressed by the prisoner however, an officer would be wise to not get personally involved or ignore the needs of prisoners.

Shuford and Spencer (1999) have stated that the implementation of conflict resolution skills by officers can promote stress reduced working environments. Christian (cited in Shuford and Spencer, 1999) stated that it influences lower rates of recidivism. A Philadelphia prison that implemented conflict resolution into officer training has shown that the majority of officers use the skills to promote better relationships with prisoners and other officers including management and family members.

A point of criticism on Sutherlands differential association theory of criminal behaviour (Coleman, 1976) in relation to overcoming negative attitudes towards prisoners may be that officers can often display an unwillingness towards prisoners due to the prisoners antisocial attitudes (ref), however it is likely that a good role model would prove a positive association for a prisoner. The prisoner may wish to form an association that is positive though this can not happen if an officer is unable to utilize conflict management skills to overcome initial attitudinal problems displayed by a prisoner. One officer has reported that using positively oriented conflict resolution skills has improved the officer’s ability to overcome prejudicial attitudes toward offenders who were perceived to display a negative attitude towards that officer (Shuford and Spencer, 1999).

Schiro and Clements (2001) have reported positive results of a prison management strategy that incorporates authoritative principles including reintegration and rehabilitation while dismissing the role of traditional prison management with out compromising security. The Missouri prison system has named the program parallel universe as it was stated “life in prison …should resemble life outside of prison so inmates can acquire the values, habits and skills needed to function as productive, law abiding citizens upon there release” (Schiro and Clements, p. 140, 2001). The program has been fully extended due the fact that since its implementation there has been a 14 % decrease in reimprisonment of prisoners after release, that is between 1994 and 2000 the rate of recidivism has dropped from 33% to 19 %. The rate of recidivism in Australia in comparison shows offender population increasing form 16944 prisoners in 1994 to 20713 prisoners in 2000, with a steady rate of reimprisonment of released prisoners of 58.5 % (Prisoners in australia, 2001). It may be possible to show that attitudes in Australian prison management culture need to change to allow for a reduction in the level of crisis in the Australian prison system.

The parallel universe project outlines that inmates must be better prepared to face life outside of prison (Schiro and Clements, 2001). Four principles were outlined for this. Firstly activities that are common in the community are also practiced in the prison including education, employment, treatment of behaviour problems and appropriate leisure activities such as sport and religious activities. The implementation of appropriate leisure activities is important due to the fact that many individuals offend during their leisure time (Schiro & Clements, 2001). Relapse prevention is used so that individuals may practice the processes of not entertaining the thought of offending, and criminal behaviour becomes less acceptable to the prisoner (Schiro & Clements, 2001). An important point to remember is that individuals in the parallel universe were rewarded for successful and continued pro-social behaviour (Schiro & Clements, 2001). Offenders are assisted to make more appropriate decisions, which is a move away from the traditional prison management which allows development of the association of consequences based on decisions is made by the offender (Schiro & Clements, 2001). Graham (1997) has also stated that this is important aspect of running prisons as reintegration principles helps to overcome the institutionalisation of inmates into helplessness and dependency.

Another equally important consideration is that a special dispute resolution unit is working to reduce conflict and prisoner law suite action against officers (Schiro & Clements, 2001). The dispute resolution teams make resolution faster and effective by increasing the effectiveness of communication in the prisons. This may serve as a pro-social example of dispute resolution that can be carried over into outside life upon release form prison. Prisoners may use the agencies outside to pursue injustice rather than offending against the law. It can be seen that that idea is a product of the use of acquired decision-making skills. The experience of successfully replacing the habit of taking matters into ones own hands for example, may be replaced with more socially appropriate action such as filing a complaint and following through with reasonable negotiations of matters such as what would be tolerated in the prison model suggested in the parallel universe scheme (Schiro & Clements, 2001).

The evidence from the parallel universe system has given some reliable results that show how proper association can lead to the likelihood of pro-social behaviour as hypothesised by Sutherland’s differential association theory. Furthermore, the role of behaviour psychology such as reinforcement theory and social cognition such as prejudice concepts provide reliable explanations for the crisis in many prison systems. An important point however is that the cost of such a system would be to persuade management to adopt the less traditional management strategies and increase the implementation of officer training that accounts for the necessary skills that are needed to overcome the traditional way of prisoner management. There is also a need for greater professional association with prison psychology staff to oversee the implementation of the activities. Such a problem would be met with great resistance, however the overall result of the changes would reduce the growing demand for new prisons and the running down of the present system due to overpopulation. It is true that the attitudes of those in authority do have an impact on subsidiary member in a group and this holds true for prison groups also. This is the essence of Sutherland’s differential association theory however it can be shown to also work in reverse evidenced by the application of good associations to prisoner time and activity, which is governed, by the application of Authoritative rather than authoritarian prison management.

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