‘A culture of sharing’: Drug exchange in a Norwegian prison

Abstract

Despite growing numbers of drug users in prisons all over the western world, drug exchange behind bars has received little scholarly attention. The few studies that exist describe the prison drug economy as mainly following market-based principles of exchange. However, ethnographic fieldwork in a closed Norwegian prison reveals something different: prisoners share their drugs, rather than selling them. In this article, I describe and try to explain this ‘culture of sharing’. Drawing on anthropological theories of exchange, drug sharing is understood as continuous gift-giving. The gift perspective allows us to see how sharing is shaped by motives of caring, compassion and solidarity, while it simultaneously emphasizes the self-interest embedded in such drug exchanges. The article argues that sharing is a highly effective form of drug exchange because there is a strong commitment to reciprocate when a prisoner receives drugs. The ‘culture of sharing’ is both contingent upon and produces social relations between prisoners. On the one hand, it offers an inclusive and solidary community for drug using prisoners; on the other hand it is upheld by strong social controls, by which deviations from accepted norms of conduct (i.e. failing to share) are sanctioned in a variety of ways.