Abstract

The starting point for the content of this article is the assumption that penalty and imprisonment constitute an important element of a criminal career. Time in prison has been considered firstly to promote the development of a career, and secondly as a chance for the inmate to give up crime by taking conscious action. The aim of the article is to find answers to the following questions: How does recidivist imprisonment influence a criminal’s career at its various stages? What functions does imprisonment serve for beginner criminals and for those who are experienced inmates? The empirical material consisted of records of autobiographical narrative interviews. Additional data came from an analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews with inmates and personnel. The adoption of a perspective of cognition that goes beyond the biographies of individuals and enables the discovery of general formulas and mechanisms which shape the understanding of recidivists’ behaviour in prison conditions was possible thanks to Grounded Theory methodology.

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