Prisons have long been used as a testing ground for social theory. This article explores the applicability of state‐centered theories of revolution to the phenomena of prison riots. Prison riots are found to have numerous features in common with revolutions, including prior administrative crises, elite (guard) alienation and divisions, and a widespread popular (prisoner) sense of injustice and grievances regarding (prison) administration actions (not just toward imprisonment per se). The state‐centered theory provides a better “fit” to prison riots than current functionalist, rising expectation, or management theories.
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Goldstone et al. (1999) studied this question.
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