The Prisoner Society

Power, Adaptation and Social Life in an English Prison
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-965354-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 532 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 214 mm, Gewicht: 664 g

Reihe: Clarendon Studies in Criminology

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.

Zielgruppe

Academics specializing in criminology, sociology, and related fields, plus practitioners in the Prison Service. There should also be interest amongst criminal justice, criminology, and sociology students.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Crewe, Ben

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Dienste, Soziale Organisationen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1: Introduction
2: The Penal Context and History
3: Institutional Culture and Power in HMP Wellingborough
4: Power
5: Adaptation, Compliance and Resistance
6: The Prisoner Hierarchy
7: Friendship and Social Relations
8: Everyday Social Life and Culture
9: Concluding Comments
Appendix
Notes on the Research Process

Über Autor(innen)

Crewe, Ben
Ben Crewe is Deputy Director of the Prisons Research Centre, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, where he has been based since 2001. Ben has published widely on prison social life and culture, on the contemporary prison experience, and on public and private sector imprisonment. He was awarded his PhD from the University of Essex, and holds a Masters Degree from London School of Economics and a first class honours degree from the University of Cambridge.