The Changing Social Structure of Prisons
Introduction
In one sense, prison is a microcosm of the society outside its walls: an extremely concentrated reflection of the social forces at work in the civilization that has erected it. In another sense, prison is its own world—a unique environment in which social structure is determined by the interplay of forces that outside prison would never find themselves confined together in such close quarters. Their confinement, however, in prison creates the context for a new social structure to emerge—one which today is predominantly organized by gangs. This formation is evidence of the changing social structure of prisons. In 1940, Clemmer described the prison community of the average American penitentiary in these words: “The prisoner’s world is an atomized world. Its people are atoms acting in confusion. It is dominated and it submits. Its own community is without a well-established social structure. Recognized values produce a myriad of conflicting attitudes…” (p. 1). Those words no longer ring so true. Today’s prison community does indeed have an established social structure—thanks to the gangs that perpetually occupy its cells and corridors. There is a way of life in prison that inmates are obliged to accept: it is a way that shares some similarity with the outside, at least for inmates who are familiar with the gangs there. Since 1940, prisons—like much of society—have changed substantially. This paper will explain the changing social structure of prisons, including gangs, racial tensions, contraband, and sex in prison.
Gangs
While gangs may be the custodians of crime on the streets, in today’s prisons they are actually “the unlikely custodians of order behind bars” (Wood, 2014), as many of them have a permanent residence and place in today’s prison system. In Pelican Bay State Prison, for instance, many of those incarcerated are members of one of Californias six big prison gangs: “Nuestra Familia, the Mexican Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerrilla Family, the Northern Structure, or the Nazi Lowriders (the last two are offshoots of Nuestra Familia and the Aryan Brotherhood, respectively)” (Wood, 2014). As gangs are major participants in illegal trafficking, they are highly organized and the same goes in prison, where the gangs can be viewed as competing organizations that must be,...
References
Clemmer, D. (1940). The prison community. New Braunfels, TX: Christopher Publishing House.
Colorado College. (2017). Past, present, prison. Retrieved from https://sites.coloradocollege.edu/hip/social-structures-inside/
Dryburgh, M. (2009). Policy implications of whistle-blowing: The case of Corcoran State Prison. Public Integrity, 11(2): 155-170.
Sentencing Project. (2016). Trends in U.S. corrections. Retrieved from http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf
Skarbek, D. (2014). The social order of the underworld. UK: Oxford University Press.
Wood, G. (2014). How gangs to over prisons. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/how-gangs-took-over-prisons/379330/
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