prison life, inmate rights, release, and recidivism

Introduction to Criminal Justice

Prison Life, Inmate Rights, Release, and Recidivism

In his classic book, Asylums, Erving Goffman described prisons as total institutions.

Although prisons are certainly influenced by the outside world, they are also separated and closed off from that world.

Inmate Society

Central to the inmate society of traditional men’s prisons is the convict code. ◦ A constellation of values, norms, and roles that

regulate the way inmates interact with one another and with prison staff.

Inmate Society

Two major theories of the origins of the inmate society have been advanced:◦ The deprivation model.

explains prison society as a reaction to the shared deprivation of prison life.

◦ The importation model. A theory that the inmate society is shaped by the

attributes inmates bring with them when they enter prison.

Inmate Society

There is more physical violence by inmates in today’s men’s prisons than there was in earlier periods.

Common motives for physical violence in prison are:◦ To demonstrate power and dominance.◦ To retaliate against a perceived wrong.◦ To prevent the perpetrator from being victimized

in the future.

Violence and Victimization

A good deal of prison violence—but not all—has sexual overtones.

Instances of prison sex can be further divided into three basic categories:◦ Consensual sex for gratification.◦ Prostitution.◦ Sexual assault.


Physical victimization is not the only or even the most frequent kind of victimization in prison.

Other kinds include:◦ Economic◦ Psychological◦ Social ◦ These may be perpetrated by inmates or staff.


Like all societies, the inmate society has an economy with a black-market component, known as the sub-rosa economy

Cigarettes often serve as the medium of exchange because currency is typically contraband.

The sub-rosa economy sets the stage for various kinds of economic victimization, including theft, robbery, fraud, extortion, and loan-sharking.


Prison life also encourages qualities counter to those required for functioning effectively in the free community, by:◦ Discouraging personal responsibility and

independence.◦ Creating excessive dependency on authority.◦ Diminishing personal control over life events.

Inmate Coping and Adjustment

Robert Johnson identifies two broad ways that inmates cope with imprisonment:◦ Entering the public domain. ◦ Entering the private culture.


Inmates usually develop a prison lifestyle:◦ “Doing time”—getting out as soon as possible and

avoiding hard time.◦ “Jailing”—achieving positions of influence in the

inmate society.◦ “Gleaning”—trying to take advantage of the

resources available for personal betterment.


Life in women’s prisons is similar to life in men’s prisons in some respects, but there are also important differences.

Women’s prisons are usually not characterized by the levels of violence, interpersonal conflict, and interracial tension found in men’s institutions.

Women’s prisons are often less oppressive. Psuedofamilies

Life in Women’s Prisons

Esther Heffernan identified three roles that women commonly adopt when adjusting to prison:◦ “Square”—Women who were primarily

noncriminals before imprisonment; they tend toward conventional behavior in prison.

◦ “Life”—Habitual offenders who continue to display antisocial and antiauthority behavior.

◦ “Cool”—Sophisticated professional criminals who try to do easy time by manipulating other inmates and the staff to their own advantage.

Inmate Roles

Research on prison staff remains sparse compared with research on inmates.

Most studies of prison staff have concentrated on guards or correctional officers, because:◦ They represent the majority of staff members in a

prison.◦ They are responsible for the security of the

institution.◦ They have the most frequent and closest contact

with inmates.

Correctional Officers

Efforts are under way to transform prison work from a job into a profession, but there are problems and issues with such efforts:

Low pay combined with the nature and location of the work make recruiting difficult.

Lack of competition for jobs makes it difficult to impose restrictive criteria on applicants.

Correctional Officers

Introduction to Criminal Justice

Prison Life, Inmate Rights, Release, and Recidivism

Until the middle of the 20th century, the courts followed a hands-off philosophy toward prison matters.

As a consequence, prisoners essentially had no civil rights.

With the growth of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, this changed.

Inmate Rights and Prison Reform

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted inmates:◦ Unrestricted access to the federal courts.◦ The ability to challenge in federal court not only

the fact of their confinement but also the conditions under which they are confined

◦ The conditions of confinement (Cooper v. Pate).

Access to the Courts and Legal Services

To get their cases to court, prisoners need access to legal materials, and many of them need legal assistance from persons skilled in the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that jailhouse lawyers must be permitted to assist other inmates, and that inmates are entitled to either an adequate law library or adequate legal assistance.

Access to the Courts and Legal Services

The United States Supreme Court has held that they are entitled to due process, including:◦ A disciplinary hearing by an impartial body.◦ 24 hours written notice of the charges.◦ A written statement of the evidence relied on and

the reasons for the disciplinary action.◦ An opportunity to call witnesses and present

documentary evidence, provided this does not jeopardize institutional security.

Procedural Due Process in Prison

The Supreme Court ruled that censorship (such as of a prisoner’s outgoing mail) is legal only if it furthers one or more of the following substantial government interests:◦ Security◦ Order◦ Rehabilitation

First Amendment Rights

Inmates are free to practice either conventional or unconventional religions in prison, and prison officials are obligated to provide accommodations.

Restrictions may be imposed where prison officials can demonstrate convincingly that religious practices compromise security or are unreasonably expensive.

First Amendment Rights

In 1976, the Supreme Court decided Estelle v. Gamble and ruled that inmates have a right to adequate medical care.

However, inmates claiming Eighth Amendment violations on medical grounds must demonstrate that prison officials have shown deliberate indifference to serious medical problems.

Eighth Amendment Rights

Brutality is normally considered a tort rather than a constitutional issue.

However, whipping and related forms of corporal punishment have been prohibited under this amendment.

Staff Brutality

Totality-of-conditions cases involve claims that some combination of prison practices and conditions makes the prison, as a whole, unconstitutional.

In the case of Holt v. Sarver, the entire Arkansas prison system was declared unconstitutional on grounds of totality of conditions and was ordered to implement a variety of changes.

Total Prison Conditions

Prisons have long had the right to provide only the minimal conditions necessary for human survival:◦ Food◦ Shelter◦ Clothing◦ Medical care to sustain life

Total Prison Conditions

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees due process of law and equal protection under law.

The equal-protection clause protects against racial discrimination and gender discrimination.

However, the rights of female inmates remain underdeveloped.

Fourteenth Amendment Rights

Court litigation is an expensive way to reform prisons.

It is also very slow and piecemeal. Transformation of prison systems can be

chaotic and unstable. Reforms may take years. Successful cases usually have limited

impact.

Limits of Litigation

Inmates may be released from prison in a number of ways, including:

Expiration of the maximum sentence. Commutation.

◦ Reduction of the original sentence given by executive authority, usually a state’s governor.

Release at the discretion of a parole authority.

Mandatory release.

Release and Recidivism

One of the most common ways of release is parole.◦ The conditional release of prisoners before they

have served their full sentences. In jurisdictions that permit parole release,

eligibility for parole normally requires that inmates have served a given portion of their terms, minus time served in jail prior to imprisonment, and minus good time.◦ Time subtracted from an inmate’s sentence for

good behavior and other meritorious activities in prison.


The other common release measure is mandatory release. ◦ A method of prison release under which an

inmate is released after serving a legally required portion of his or her sentence, minus good-time credits.

Mandatory release is similar to parole in that persons let out under either arrangement ordinarily receive a period of community supervision by a parole officer.


When inmates are released from correctional institutions, the hope is that they will not experience recidivism.◦ The return to illegal activity after release.

In 2009, the American Correctional Association (ACA) reported that recidivism rates may be declining.

The average recidivism rate for the 37 states that separated rates by gender was 37.6% for males and 29.3% for females.


Lynne Goodstein demonstrated that the inmates who adjusted most successfully to prison had the most difficulty adjusting to life in the free community upon release.

In the end, imprisonment is a reactive response to the social problem of crime, and crime is interwoven with other social problems such as poverty, inequality, and racism.


prison life, inmate rights, release, and recidivism

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