Abstract Research on legal mobilisation in cases of prison violence is rare as it is positioned at the intersection of two separate strands of investigation: Whereas studies on legal mobilisation in prison hardly differentiate between distinctive types of problems or conflicts and thus neglect the particularities victims of violence are confronted with, research on violence in prison focuses on prevalence, prevention, procedural justice or the prison climate without integrating insights from the literature of legal mobilisation. In reconsidering the findings of an empirical study on violence in Austrian prisons, the authors argue that responses to violence in prison follow different rules to those used in complaint procedures, making official reporting more unlikely. To fully understand the barriers to legal claims procedures and the impact of extra-legal conflict resolution in the case of violent victimisation, a broad understanding of legal mobilisation that considers the complex and vivid dynamics of conflict resolution is helpful. Analysing the empirical data from this perspective allows not only to better understand the phenomenon of prison violence and the victims’ reluctance to use official reporting mechanisms, but also points to ways of dealing with violence to not feed the spiral of violence in prison.
Fritsche et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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