Subcultural Ties in Prison as a Function of Outside Contacts

Abstract

Donald Clerruner identified the process of prisonization, a summarizing concept, which reveals the consequences of exposure to inmate society and is believed to exist in ill prisons. According to Clenuner, prisonizatian denotes the taking on in greater or lesser degree, of folkways, mores, customs and general culture of the penitentiary. He proposed a munber of determinants of the degree and speed of prisanizatian. This study is concerned with reexamining some of the hypotheses pertaining to the process of prisonization as originally advanced by Clennner (1 %0) and later raodified by Wheeler (1961). The major purpose of this study is to determine if there is any causal linkage between the amount of outside contacts of an inmate and the extent of his subcultural ties in the prison. Inmate attachment to prison contraculture is equated to his becoming prisonized. It is assuned that in the absence of the outside supportive and meaningful relationships, inmates are forced to seek personal gratification and acceptance among his fellow inmates. Their association and interaction patterns with other inmates and their membership in the inmate subculture are believed to be the principal factors responsible for antisocial attitudes and behavior among inmates. If this assumption holds true it will make a strone case for a more generous policy toward outside contacts of the inmate through family visitation and written correspondance. Furthermore, such retention of outside ties would, no doubt, help the inmate to achieve a smooth and successful reentry into the outside community after his release from the penal institution.