Table Of ContentCriminal Justice
Recent Scholarship
Edited by
Marilyn McShane and Frank P. Williams III
A Series from LFB Scholarly
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Prisonization
Individual and Institutional Factors
Affecting Inmate Conduct
Wayne Gillespie
LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC
New York 2003
Copyright © 2003 by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gillespie, Wayne.
Prisonization : individual and institutional factors affecting inmate
conduct / Wayne Gillespie.
p. cm. -- (Criminal justice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-931202-52-4 (alk. paper)
1. Prisons--United States--Case studies. 2. Prison
administration--United States--Case studies. 3. Deviant
behavior--Labeling theory--Case studies. I. Title. II. Criminal justice
(LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC)
HV9471 .G555 2002
365'.6--dc21
2002010423
ISBN 1-931202-52-4
Printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Contextual Research in Corrections 1
Chapter 2 Sociological Foundations for Correctional Research 15
Chapter 3 Life Inside Prison 35
Chapter 4 The Multilevel Research Design 67
Chapter 5 Preliminary Analyses of Correctional Context 97
Chapter 6 A Multilevel Analysis of Prisonization 127
Chapter 7 The Implications of a Multilevel Analysis of 149
Prisonization
References 161
Index 175
v
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CHAPTER 1
Contextual Research in Corrections
Prison is a context that exerts its influence upon the social relations of
those who enter its domain. Clemmer (1940) was one of the first
criminologists to recognize that the prison is a community replete with
distinctive norms and folkways. Sykes (1958) proposed that inmates form
a society of captives bound together by the extreme deprivations imposed
upon them by the dominant sociocultural order. Garabedian (1963)
suggested that inmates adopt unique social roles in order to function
within the prison counterculture. Prisonization involves the extent to
which prisoners adopt norms that are indicative of the inmate subculture,
and it is the general social process to which these different researchers
were referring. The antecedents of prisonization include both the
deprivations that inmates encounter inside prison as well as the individual
characteristics and differences imported from the outside (Thomas, 1971).
Consequently, inmates may express this prisonized normative orientation
through maladaptive behaviors such as self-mutilation, suicide, rebellion,
and resistance (Matthews, 1999).
Just as the context of a neighborhood, community, or society shapes
the interactions that develop therein, so too does the structure of a prison
influence the social processes that occur inside. In particular, the
antecedents of prisonization include both the individual traits of inmates
and the contextual features of correctional institutions. For instance,
inmates may encounter interpersonal problems inside prison that lead to
prisonization. However, the structure or administration of a prison may
present contextual or situational problems that also contribute to
prisonization. Thus, the antecedents of prisonization operate at two levels
of analysis: the individual (i.e., the micro-level) and the contextual (i.e.,
the macro-level).
The goal of the present study is to explore the social processes of
institutional life, such as prisonization and general misconduct, from a
multilevel perspective. The extent to which both the individual attributes
of prisoners and the contextual features of prisons influence social
processes on the inside is a key issue. In particular, an integrated theory of
1
2 Prisonization: Individual and Institutional Factors
prisonization is developed that incorporates individual and contextual
effects into one parsimonious design using multilevel data from over 1,000
inmates in 30 prisons across Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Akers
(1997) suggests that parsimony, scope, testability, empirical validity,
usefulness, and policy implications are all criteria that must be considered
when evaluating theory. Each of these standards is addressed by the
present study. The analysis ultimately speaks to the merit of the
prisonization hypothesis as a worthwhile orienting schema in the study of
institutional life.
The Traditional Model of Penal Consequentialism
Prisonization is a basic learning theory that involves antisocial or
maladaptive changes in normative and behavioral patterns in response to
physical or social hardships encountered during incarceration. This logic
is consistent with a traditional penal philosophy that emphasizes the
prosocial consequences of incarceration (i.e., crime prevention). The
traditional model of penal consequentialism was both the primary moral
justification and the dominant correctional philosophy during most of the
twentieth century (Von Hirsch, 1998; Von Hirsch, 1985). It was especially
influential in the 1950s and 1960s when many scientific investigations of
prison life were well underway.
Rehabilitation was the main preventive goal of penal
consequentialism. Rehabilitation involves resocializing inmates in order
to change their motives for offending. As Von Hirsch (1998) has noted
“the judge was supposed to fashion the disposition to promote the
offender’s resocialization” (p. 660). Correctional programs associated with
the rehabilitative ideal include, but are not limited to, vocational training,
academic instruction, general behavior modification, drug and alcohol
treatment, and psychological counseling. The central theme of
rehabilitation and its contemporary revisions (i.e., peacemaking) is
personal change (Braswell & Gillespie, 1998). Both rehabilitation and
prisonization entail resocialization. However, while the rehabilitative ideal
emphasizes an offender’s ability to change in a prosocial direction, the
prisonization hypothesis predicts that offenders are just as likely to change
in an antisocial manner, particularly during their imprisonment.
Contextual Research in Corrections 3
Rehabilitation and prisonization are thus flip sides of the same coin; the
logic behind each is based upon a conceptualization of human nature that
emphasizes the potential for personal transformation.
Yet, in the mid-1970s, the very logic of traditional penal philosophy
was attacked. The rehabilitative ideal withered in light of several critical
reviews that questioned the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs
(Allen, 1981). After an extensive review of correctional research,
Martinson (1974) remarked that “these data, involving over two hundred
studies and hundreds of thousands of individuals as they do, are the best
available and give us very little reason to hope that we have in fact found
a sure way of reducing recidivism through rehabilitation” (p. 49). His
analysis provided critics of rehabilitation with prized buzzwords: nothing
works.
In spite of the evidence that has mounted against the traditional model
in recent years, the tenacity of the rehabilitative ideal persists (Cullen,
Skovron, Scott, & Burton, 1990; Gendreau, 1998). For instance, Cullen et
al. (1990) examined rehabilitation, punishment, and protection as the three
main emphases of the criminal justice system. They gauged public opinion
to determine support for rehabilitative programs in prison. Cullen et al.
(1990) discovered that the public supported rehabilitation (i.e., 54.7
percent) as the main function of prisons, followed by protection (i.e., 35.3
percent) and punishment (i.e., 5.7 percent). The majority of subjects in
Cullen et al.’s sample supported rehabilitative, correctional goals.
However, a sizeable portion of their sample also favored protection as a
primary function of modern corrections.
Indeed, fear of crime and protection from dangerous criminals are
familiar rhetoric in modern politics (Caplow & Simon, 1999; Chernoff,
Kelly, & Kroger, 1996). According to Von Hirsch (1998), this law-and-
order perspective “manifested in the plethora of drastic penal responses
being enacted in the United States (and some other countries) today” (p.
660). From this perspective, imprisonment is justified because it decreases
the chances that an offender will recidivate by separating him from the
community as long as he remains a risk. In other words, incarceration
prevents crime by simply incapacitating motivated offenders.
Caplow and Simon (1999) agree that the main explanation for the
dramatic population growth in U.S. prisons during the last two decades
