Lecture 21 - Prison Society PDF

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Society of prisons. Lecturer: Greg Newbold...

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CRJU302 14/10 PRISON SOCIETY: History: - When the first penitentiaries were established in NY and Pennsylvania, many early observers marveled at the wonderful affects’ incarceration was supposedly having on inmates. However, it wasn’t long before the corrupted nature of the prison became apparent. English novelist Charles Dickens was horrified by the separate system he observed at Eastern Penitentiary in 1842, which he likened to mental torture, believing they were cruel and wrong. - In 1940, Donald Clemmer published The Prison Community, the first comprehensive study of prison life. It was based on his observations at Raleigh Prison, North Carolina, built in 1884. From that point on, systematic research into the world of prisons began, with Clemmer considered the founding father of prison sociology. ‘Prisonization’, a term coined by Clemmer, is defined as “the taking on, in greater or lesser degree, of the mores, customs and general culture of the penitentiary”. - The bulk of early work in prison society was focused on how the formal structure of the institutional environment effected an individual’s identity. Interactionists, who studied this behaviour, came from the University of Chicago. - Chicago sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982) coined the term ‘total institution’ to describe institutions which are independent, and more or less cut off, from the mainstream. Examples include mental hospitals, military academies, monasteries and prisons. Degradation: - The erasing of the old identity is achieved by the means of a degradation ceremony. During degradation ceremonies the inmate is subjected to a series of “abasements, degradations, humiliations, and profanations of the self”. - These procedures mortify the subject and reduce them to a base level from which a new self-concept can be created – the person is require to discard their old identity and accept their new status. - For an inmate, The degradation ceremony often commences with arrest. Many countries – in this case Brazil – routinely handcuff arrested persons. The resulting helplessness is part of the degradation process. - There is a relationship between the extremes of the degradation ceremony and the requirements of the institution. The more an institution requires total compliance, the more severe the degradation. Bullying and intimidation by staff are often part of the degradation process. - There is no alternative to the status that has been imposed upon you – you are required to submit submissive responses, eg. salutes - Marching and working in regiment, especially doing useless tasks is a way of depriving an inmate of identity and dignity – the psychology behind this suggests if you’re all useless people doing useless work under duress, you’re so worthless that the work you’re doing is useless as well. - The public strip search is often used as a means of humiliating prisoners - Wearing a distinctive, roughly-fitting uniform depersonalizes the inmate and marks him as a member of a subordinate group, such as what was worn at Buchenwald

CRJU302 14/10 concentration camp, Germany 1945. Inmates are also not referred to by name – in British and US prisons today, men are referred to by their number - Shaving the head assaults the inmate’s previous identity and underscores his new status. - Before long, the recruit begins to look, feel and behave like the person the institution wants them to be – they are recreated in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of the system. A person’s identity is completely reconstituted - “He had expected demolition but instead he had been subjected to attrition ... he had thought the prison would demand some sacrifice of his identity, but no-one had asked for any part of him – still, cell by cell, he had merged with the uniform he wore.” Malcom Braly On the Yard (1967) - “The influences of the universal factors of prisonization are sufficient to make a man characteristic of his penal community and so direct his personality that a happy adjustment in any community becomes next to impossible.” Donald Clemmer The Prison Community (1940) The Social Code: - The inmates social code is international – no different at any maximum security prison, no staring, no standing over, no talking to screws – an unwritten rulebook - Prisoners work out ways to deal with different things – eg. solitary confinement becomes easier with experience – inevitably, you become involved in the prisons society, economy, and politics, and learn how to survive and even flourish in a relatively barren, controlled environment - Within 3 years, a person is fairly well institutionalised and accepted as a part of the food chain – after 3 years, a prisoner has more in common with other prisoners than any of their old friends on the outside - The psychological and social effects of long term incarceration are obvious to anyone working with criminals – however within about 3 years on the outside an inmate is able to easily transition back into their old personality that they had before being institutionalised - The longer a person is in prison and the younger they are when they first go to prison, the more difficult it is for them to discard the personality they have acquired while institutionalised. Furthermore, a lot of inmates move back into their old criminal or gang community upon release, therefore going to prison and getting out of prison is part of a continuum of being brought up in a criminalised environment – prison is just a different version of this environment Administration: - The mode of administration adopted by prisons has a strong impact on the culture of prison inmates. From the point of view of management there are 2 basic ways of running institutions 1. Administrations have total control over the prisons 2. Co-opting inmates (formal or informal) to perform administrative tasks, such as Mt Eden 1950s – inmate trustee system. In some prison systems, all designated trustees who work for the administration are almost like staff members. Informal systems occur in the US, whereby inmates are informally recognised as leaders and get special privileges – rely on the cooperation of an untrained inmate in the business of administration – volatile operation

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In the 1920s-1930s, a number of prison sociologists commented on the powerful code of honour between prison inmates. However, Clemmer’s study was different – seeing the prison as socially incohesive and morally corrupt, saying the world of the inmate is exploited, parasitic, disruptive, impersonal, and lacking of clear objectives. This view has been supported by others. Small maximum security units with small groups of people and small privileges results in rigid inherence to inmates social code and a lack of hierarchy – a brotherhood develops. However, with a mass prison with thousands of inmates and many privileges available, there is a largely anonymous community with certain advantages resulting in a hierarchy Gresham Sykes (1922-2010), from the University of Virginia and author of The Society of Captives (1958), was one of the early leading figures in prison sociology. The Society of Captives was an ethnography of prison life at Trenton, New Jersey. The introduction of gangs into prison society disrupted inmate unity and created a power struggle for dominance – gangs run the jails Nowadays, there are a lot of privileges to be gained from sucking up to the psychologists, from cooperating with administration, from narking etc. This has changed the entire dynamic...