Room Color and Aggression in A Criminal Detention Holding Cell: A Test of the "Tranquilizing Pink" Hypothesis

Incidence of aggressive officer-arrestee encounters was compared for the twelve months before and after changing the color of a county jail 13'4" by 15'6" strip search room from pale blue to hot pink. This size of holding room is much larger than those other jail or prison holding rooms which have reported success in curbing aggressive behavior among inmates. Relative frequency of such incidents did decrease for the first month following the color change, but subsequently increased, reaching peak levels during the last half of the pink year. Overall, little or no difference was found in incident rate for the preand post-pink months. The initial decline is seen as an intrinsically interesting artifact of the intervention, itself indicative of an economical approach to reducing aggression in volatile detention situations. 'Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert J. Pellegrini, Department of Psychology, San Jose State University, San Jose, California 96192. 2 Director, American Institute for Biosocial Research, Tacoma, Washington 98402. 3 Captain, Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, and Detention Division Commander. This study was supported in part by a grant from the John Leslie