The Prisoner Community as a Social Group

Abstract

CLEAR distinction should be made between the prison community and the prisoner community. To the casual visitor, the only community at a prison is the one maintained by the administration. Closer acquaintance with any American prison reveals a sub-rosa organization composed entirely of inmates. The major common interest in this prisoner group is release, but there are also, as in a normal community, distinctive mores, attitudes, activities, and gradations of status. It is to the prisoner community that attention is directed in this paper. Most convicts identify the research man with the administration and are dishonest in dealing with him because they consider him a screw (guard). Ordinary statistical or case methods are obviously inadequate to reveal the customs of the prisoner community. The more informal technique of the participant observer seems to be required. The basic method employed in gathering the data for this study was that of recording at the earliest opportune moment significant social situations in the daily lives of the inmates during a four months' residence at the Washington State Reformatory at Monroe. Frequent short visits over a period of one year supplemented the original observations. Pertinent overt behavior, enlightening casual conversations, and subsequent contact with men released from the institution contributed to the fund of information accumulated. This study is in no sense an expose of conditions at Monroe. As a matter of fact, the administration is progressive and an objective rating would probably place this institution in a better than average position among the reformatories of the United Staes. It is the typical characteristics of the prisoner community at Monroe that are being emphasized, rather than what is unique or peculiar. To secure accurate information, it was necessary for the junior author to be accepted by both inmates and officers. To begin with, both groups were suspicious and both resented the investigator's presence. To obtain the information desired from the prisoners, it was necessary to convince them of his honorable intentions. He had to go through a proving process at the hands of the inmate body. This consisted of being placed in situations of their choosing so that they could observe his reactions. He was subjected to cat calls, boos, and hisses; he dodged missiles propelled from unknown and unseen experimenters; he was present during an evident infraction of minor regulations to get his ratting (reporting to authorities) response.