Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The disciplinary regime, aimed at regulating the orderly coexistence in prisons, is one of the key elements of prisons’ social order. But female and male inmates show differences in prevalence and types of misconduct and rule breaking. Extensive studies have shown that women's prisons have their own characteristics and it is necessary to study them specifically. Therefore, it is relevant to study these differences in rule-breaking and the application of the disciplinary regime. Data on misconduct and sanctions from the Catalan prison population has been analysed. The descriptive analysis shows a greater proportion of disciplinary proceedings intuited to women, both in ratio per 100 inmates and in ratio per person. Correlation analysis are done to test for significant differences in types of misconduct and sanctions received for female and male inmates. This data rises concern as women in the general population commit much less criminal behavior than men. Therefore, the fact that in prison they commit more "criminal" behaviors is a reality that must be explained. For that, two possible hypotheses are considered: a) in the unique characteristic of female incarceration and the female prison population we find factors that contribute to higher levels of misconduct; b) gender roles attributed to female offenders leads to a rule-enforcement in greater proportion of minor behaviours.