Prisoners In Prison Societies

Prisoners in Prison Societies is a study of criminal career patterns over time, demonstrating specifically how and in what ways imprisonment has a positive correlation with later recidivism. The book combines original research and a ten-year follow-up study of Swedish inmates, surveying their attitudes on everything from political ideology to prison reform. The work is much more than a survey of prisoner attitudes, however; it also includes official statements and administrative staff assessments at the institutions examined. As a result, the text avoids the usual special pleading of criminological writings.Prisoners in Prison Societies analyzes thirteen correctional institutions, ranging from training schools to youth and adult prisons as well as a preventive detention facility. These four types cover representative samples of male and female, young and old offenders. In individual and group interviews, conducted with a time interval, the author finds that the form of incarceration is less significant in determining prisoner behavior than the fact of incarceration as such. Whether one looks at the data across variables or in longitudinal terms, the fact of criminalization rather than the goal of rehabilitation creates conditions of permanent incarceration.A leitmotif of the book is comparison of penal institutions and policies in the U.S. and Sweden, with an encyclopedic presentation of the sociological and criminological literature. From the American tradition, Bondeson distinguishes between program research and sanction research. Her notion of prisonization, as a special form of socialization, derives from the work of scholars from Clemmer to Goffman. Her work utilizes notions of informal social systems within formal systems, especially how the former preempt the latter. The interplay of original research at the prison level, coupled with a sweeping command of the basic literature, makes this book unique.

The Society of Captives, first published in 1958, is a classic of modern criminology and one of the most important books ever written about prison. Gresham Sykes wrote the book at the height of the Cold War, motivated by the world's experience of fascism and communism to study the closest thing to a totalitarian system in American life: a maximum security prison. His analysis calls into question the extent to which prisons can succeed in their attempts to control every facet of life--or whether the strong bonds between prisoners make it impossible to run a prison without finding ways of "accommodating" the prisoners. Re-released now with a new introduction by Bruce Western and a new epilogue by the author, The Society of Captives will continue to serve as an indispensable text for coming to terms with the nature of modern power.

Ranging from ancient times to the present, a survey of the evolution of the prison explores its relationship to the history of Western criminal law and offers a look at the social world of prisoners over the centuries.

While the use of imprisonment continues to rise in developed nations, we have little sociological knowledge of the prison's inner world. Based on extensive fieldwork in a medium-security prison, The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation and Social Life in an English Prison provides an in-depth analysis of the prison's social anatomy. It explains how power is exercised by the institution, individualizing the prisoner community and demanding particular forms of compliance and engagement. Drawing on prisoners' life stories, it supplies a detailed typology of adaptive styles, showing how different prisoners experience and respond to the new range of penal practices and frustrations. It then explains how the prisoner society - its norms, hierarchy and social relationships - is shaped both by these conditions of confinement and by the different backgrounds, values and identities that prisoners bring into the prison environment. Through this analysis, this meticulously researched book aims to revive and update the dormant tradition of prison ethnography. It provides an empirical snapshot of a modern prison, documenting the aims and techniques of contemporary imprisonment and illuminating the social structures and behaviours that they generate. Through a penetrating account of power relations throughout the institution, the author documents the pains of modern imprisonment, the new techniques of survival, and the prison's distinctive forms of trade, friendship and everyday culture.

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States has increased fivefold during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines policy changes that created an increasingly punitive political climate and offers specific policy advice in sentencing policy, prison policy, and social policy. The report also identifies important research questions that must be answered to provide a firmer basis for policy. This report is a call for change in the way society views criminals, punishment, and prison. This landmark study assesses the evidence and its implications for public policy to inform an extensive and thoughtful public debate about and reconsideration of policies.

This social history analyses a period in which the modern prison faced serious challenges both on practical & philosophical grounds. These included the use of prison to victimise the poor, the disaffected & political activists, & the failure to establish the prison as a satisfactory means of punishment.

Prison is seen by most people as an inevitable part of the penal system, but there is a growing awareness that its effects on offenders are rarely beneficial and may be positively harmful. In Prisoners of Society, originally published in 1974, Martin Davies argued that there was still the need in society for a commitment, not to reform its deviant members, but to provide a compassionate service in those situations where it was most needed. He looks at the increasingly important role of the probation service in prisons and borstals, and discusses the likelihood of radical changes occurring within the system at the time. Dr Davies focuses on the concepts of welfare, training, rehabilitation and after-care, and places them in the context of sentencing policy. He asks whether society is deluding itself in expecting imprisonment to be at the same time punishment and the springboard for personal reform. Using case examples, material from prisoners’ autobiographies, official documents and a wide range of research papers, he presents a rounded view of a crucial aspect of the contemporary penal system, and compels the reader to face up to the question: What does society expect of its prisons and its prisoners?

This textbook examines prisons and imprisonment. Historically, prisons and prisoners have been a source of interest to the general public. However, despite near universal acceptance of imprisonment as a feature of society, we know relatively little about the reality of prison life, or the effects it has on individuals and communities. Using academic scholarship, empirical research, government papers, policy reports, and accounts from lived experiences of the institution, this book analyses the complexities and contradictions of prison life, the place of the prison in twenty-first century society, and its prospects for the future. This book will introduce readers to key debates surrounding the use of imprisonment, and challenge readers to interrogate conventional perspectives on an institution that reflects the society in which it is situated.