Collective Behavior in Total Institutions: The Case of the Mental Hospital and the Prison

Abstract

The analyses of incidents of collective behavior or collective disturbances in the mental hospital and the prison have yielded apparently contradictory and inconclusive findings. The conceptual framework employed by Turner and Killian for analysis of collective behavior in civil society is applied to the reported cases of collective disturbances in mental hospitals and to the prison riots discussed by McCleery, Schrag, Hartung and Floch, and Sykes. The argument is made that a consideration of the complex inter-relationship between the division of labor, channels of communication, and the normative and cultural systems of the mental hospital and the prison provides a useful framework for systematizing and organizing prior research findings. Similarly, it is argued that these concepts have more than heuristic value, and if systematically explored in future investigations could lead to a profitable theory of collective behavior as it occurs within the walls of total institutions.