Disorganization and the New Mexico Prison Riot of 1980

Breakdown theorists postulate that collective action results from social and increased levels of discontent. Data on the 1980 New Mexico prison riot provide support for certain aspects of this model. From 1970 to 1975, the State Penitentiary provided inmates with employment opportunities and recreational programs. These integrating activities were sharply curtailed after 1975. As a consequence, inmates experienced strong feelings of deprivation, and inter-inmate violence increased. The 1980 riot reflected the disintegration of the previous five years. No one element was in control of the riot, and the level of brutality surpassed that of any other U.S. prison riot. Few researchers now defend a or disorganization model of collective action, even though it dominated the field just two decades ago (Kornhauser, 1959; Smelser, 1962; Davies, 1962). According to the model, collective action arises from a breakdown in the structures of solidarity-church, family, work, and voluntary organizations-that normally channel people into conventional behavior. The fact that the model is called what it is-rather than the crisis or shock model, say-reflects an underlying presumption that in normal times social structures exist which keep people from mobilizing for conflict. Two complementary facets of the breakdown model emphasize different sets of these controlling structures. A Durkheimian (and Parsonian) facet emphasizes control over the individual's emotions, thoughts, and appetites. In normal times, the individual is integrated into the social whole; he feels a sense of commonality with other sectors of the society; his appetites are restrained to a manageable level. According to this view, then, produces collective action for two reasons. First, frees individuals from the regulatory mechanisms that inhere in social organization. Urbanization and migration, for example, uproot individuals from their social, political, and recreational activities, producing a mass of isolated, anomic individuals. These marginal individuals are then readily available for mobilization (Kornhauser, 1959; Smelser, 1962). Second, increases within a population. The isolated, anomic individual develops new, unpredictable, and potentially unfulfillable desires; he develops irrational beliefs about how they can be fulfilled; he seeks to escape and overcome his isolation and discontent through collective action