Prison Life

The development of the field of sociology, combined with the continuing philosophy of rehabilitation, influences the study of life inside the prison. Researchers begin to focus on the specific societies found within correctional institutions and the effects of that atmosphere on inmates.

In 1940, Donald Clemmer publishes one of the first such studies, The Prison Community, which quickly becomes a seminal work. Clemmer coins the term "prisonization" to describe the process by which prisoners absorb and integrate the conventions, practices, and culture of the prison. He also identifies variables that can either cultivate or interrupt this process. Gresham Sykes's 1958 study, Society of Captives, focuses on the psychological impact of the correctional setting. He discusses the pains of imprisonment and pinpoints the deprivations­of liberty, heterosexual relationships, goods and services, autonomy, and security­suffered by inmates. He also studies adaptations to this stark and frustrating subculture. In 1962, John Irwin and Donald Cressey will suggest that Sykes missed an important element: Inmates bring values and identities with them into a facility. The writers develop an "importation model" to explain how offenders shape prison culture. In 1966, in her book Society of Women: A Study of a Women's Prison, sociologist Rose Giallombardo will theorize that women's experiences outside the prison inform the subculture found within.

Whatever the specific analysis, this vital approach to understanding and evaluating the lives of prisoners becomes integrated into penology during this period.

A Prisoner Dancing While another Plays the Guitar at a Prison Camp. Greene County, Georgia Jack Delano, 1941 Library of Congress