Using Inmate Survey Data in Assessing Prison Performance a Case Study Comparing Private and Public Prisons

Abstract

The public sector needs to monitor the performance of the private prisons, and it is necessary to conduct the monitoring as objectively as possible. This article demonstrates that an often overlooked source of data, surveys of inmates, can be used to differentiate prisons on such Was a gag activity, and security, sanitation, and food service delivery. Hierarchical line models were used to generate the prison performance measures. We also show that inmates and staff largely agreed in in their assessments of conditions at the prison. Finally, we demonstrate that although there is considerable consistency for different measures within the topical areas that we examined, there is no necessary correspondence in performance across the different topical areas of gang management, safety and security, sanitation, and food service delivery. Although survey will never and should never replace operational reviews and audits, we demonstrate that they can be effectively used to obtain information about operational differences between prisons.