Doing Time: Everybody's Doing It

Abstract

Whenever people interact with one another over an extended period of time, they develop a social structure with divisions and strata, informal rules and meanings, and a variety of enterprises (Irwin, 1980). The spe cific social patterns that develop in a prison result from the interactions between the prison's environmental characteristics and those characteriz ing the inmate as well as correctional staff population. The culture of the prison has not been studied much in the past forty years. Not since the time of Clemmer in the 1930's, and Sykes in the 1950's, and several small studies in the 60's and 70's have there been many in-depth studies on what prison life is like, meaning the culture, daily life, and other aspects of prison life. The purpose of the present study was to generate new knowl edge about daily life and the unique cultures that comprise the prison experience as gleaned from the insights of inmates and correctional offi cers at an all-male, medium-security facility in the Southeast. The data for this study of prison culture was obtained from voluntary participants (n = 22; 28 percent of the total population of inmates; n = 16; 36 percent of the total correctional staff population) who completed the three-part question naire. Part one of the survey consisted of questions assessing the socio- demographic characteristics for each group. Part two and three of the inmate survey asked a variety of crime-related and prison-specific ques tions while the correctional officer survey was modified to assess a vari ety of occupation-related and prison-specific issues and topics. Briefly, our contention that both groups - inmates and officers - experience some form of prisonization was borne out in the final analysis. Individuals with in these groups live with role-specific restrictions. They live and work together around the clock within a circumscribed space and under a tight ly scheduled sequence of activities. As in other restrictive environments, prisons subject inmates and correctional officers to deprivations and limit their freedom. The social worlds of both inmates and correctional officers are the focus of the analysis and discussion.