Why People Break the Rules?

In the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Benjamin Steiner an John Wooldrege examine the qualities of deviance by women in prison within the article; Individual and Environmental Effects on Assaults and Nonviolent Rule Breaking by Women in prison. The purpose of this article is to understand why women break rules while in prison through both violent and non-violent means. These researchers found that inmates who often choose to reject social controls within prison have fewer connections to people outside of the prison. Also they found that individuals who were younger were more likely to commit misconduct due to a lower level of social commitment and studies showed that these individuals were "less invested in more conformist activities such as education or work" (439). There is also a strong connection between an inmate's ethnicity and socioeconomic status and their respect for the rules in prison. Inmates with a lower socioeconomic status were found to "question the legitimacy of rules" within the prisons. This questioning of rules brings to question why inmates question the rules in prisons and choose to break them instead of follow them. Deviance within prisons is created by social systems outside of prisons and those managing our prison systems often overlook this connection. This article even states, although from a very mathematical perspective, how relationships and jobs affect the level of deviance within prisons; "employment prior to incarceration, higher levels of education, and having children might constitute informal controls over an individual." These informal controls are found to govern those in prison and reduce the likely hood of these individuals acting out.
This article reinforces the idea that the problem with prisoner's nonconformity is not due solely to factors in prisons. There is a clear connection between the socioeconomic history of an inmate and their respect of social rules. If people are subject to poverty and oppression within society, then their respect for the rules of society is little to nonexistent. We cannot look to rule enforcement within prisons to 'rehabilitate' people for society when they are given no reason to respect social rules in the first place. In order to reconnect the 'rule breakers' of society we need to give them a reason to buy into social modes of conduct. If a society does not provide adequately the ability for people to gain the most basic necessities for life, then there is little preventing them from following social rules.