Prisoners in Prison Societies

Ulla Bondeson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412842358
• eBook ISBN: 9781351308106
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Prisoners in Prison Societies is a study of criminal career patterns over time, demonstrating specifically how and in what ways imprisonment has a positive correlation with later recidivism. The book combines original research and a ten-year follow-up study of Swedish inmates, surveying their attitudes on everything from political ideology to prison reform. The work is much more than a survey of prisoner attitudes, however; it also includes official statements and administrative staff assessments at the institutions examined. As a result, the text avoids the usual special pleading of criminological writings.Prisoners in Prison Societies analyzes thirteen correctional institutions, ranging from training schools to youth and adult prisons as well as a preventive detention facility. These four types cover representative samples of male and female, young and old offenders. In individual and group interviews, conducted with a time interval, the author finds that the form of incarceration is less significant in determining prisoner behavior than the fact of incarceration as such. Whether one looks at the data across variables or in longitudinal terms, the fact of criminalization rather than the goal of rehabilitation creates conditions of permanent incarceration.A leitmotif of the book is comparison of penal institutions and policies in the U.S. and Sweden, with an encyclopedic presentation of the sociological and criminological literature. From the American tradition, Bondeson distinguishes between program research and sanction research. Her notion of prisonization, as a special form of socialization, derives from the work of scholars from Clemmer to Goffman. Her work utilizes notions of informal social systems within formal systems, especially how the former preempt the latter. The interplay of original research at the prison level, coupled with a sweeping command of the basic literature, makes this book unique.

1

Swedish Correctional Institutions in
International and Historical Perspective

“Thus, I had arrived at Långholmen—a house of
correction for the erring; but as experience showed,
it turned out to be a university of crime.”

Master thief Djos Per Andersson in
Last Will from the Gallows (1849)

Introduction

Sweden has international fame for a highly developed social welfare and correctional system. It has had a less flattering reputation of being devoid of research showing the effectiveness of these developments. As the number of reliable evaluation studies has increased, Sweden’s fame for an advanced and efficient correctional system has been somewhat qualified.

A Swedish correctional institution for adult or youthful offenders of either gender differs materially from an average U.S. prison or youth training school in several respects. The Swedish facility is generally smaller, more open, has more staff per inmate, and especially imposes a briefer deprivation of liberty. It also, in most cases, has more so-called treatment and democracy. But all of this is relative. One probably can find U.S. correctional institutions with more or less the same characteristics as those of Sweden, especially in the federal prison system and in some states, for example Minnesota and California.

The classical U.S. prison studies, such as those by Clemmer (1940) and Sykes (1958; see Bibliography) were carried out in maximum security prisons. They coined special concepts, such as prisonization, which implied that these institutions socialized their inmates in the criminal subculture. While penal research in the United States from the 1960s was oriented toward the inmate society and the inherent conflict of punishment and treatment, usually on a theoretical level, studies in the 1970s were mostly more empirical. Often they were commissioned to investigate the staff or to assess the supposed positive effects of institution treatment. It appeared from the reports that the prison society was now broken up, the inmates were less solidary with one another, and their former antagonism to the staff had diminished or disappeared. It is difficult for an outsider to judge whether the new picture derived mainly from a new research orientation or whether the prisons had really changed.

The Study Reported Here

From my own work and research experiences at a training school for girls in Sweden in 1960, I was impressed by the great similarity of the inmate society in this small and open treatment institution compared with what could be learned from the classical descriptions of the American maximum security prisons for men. Although the objective of the confinement was treatment, it was experienced by the inmates as punishment, and diverse negative social processes could be observed (Bondeson 1963, 1968).

In this book, the study of all types of correctional institutions in Sweden is reported. It is a comparative investigation of training schools, youth prisons, prisons, and internment. It includes institutions for young and old inmates and, moreover, it includes men as well as women. This widely comparative approach makes the design of the study exceptional. Furthermore, throughout the book, comparisons are made to the United States and to other countries with related research.

All the inmates at thirteen Swedish correctional institutions were interviewed on two occasions with standardized questionnaires, each containing more than 100 inquiries. Special instruments were developed to study criminalization processes, in particular an argot test measuring knowledge of the criminal language. Informal interviews were also carried out with groups of inmates and with the staff, which were tape-recorded and have been transcribed verbatim. Moreover, a ten-year follow-up of interviewed inmates has been carried out with a data collection from files belonging to various authorities in order to describe the inmates’ adjustment to society after release.

My general hypothesis was that prisonization processes can be observed in all the so-called correctional institutions, irrespective of their manifest objective, formal structure, or clientele. For a sociologist familiar with Goffman’s (1961) concept of total institution, this hypothesis is probably not very provocative, but for most of those directly responsible for correctional treatment, the idea seemed—and often still seems—somewhat absurd.

After the treatment optimism within corrections faded, there was a rekindling of the belief in punishment. “Just deserts” penal thinking developed within the United States, and a corresponding neoclassical philosophy is gaining a foothold in Sweden. The question is, however, whether there is more scientific support for the new ideas of deterrence and incapacitation than for the former treatment ideals.

If my conclusion is correct that criminalization, instead of rehabilitation, predominates in our correctional institutions, the implication for criminal policy would be less use of this punishment called treatment. The conclusion Of the evaluation studies made early by Wilkins (1967), that “the least that it is possible to do with offenders, the better the outcome,” has hardly been taken into account in the planning of criminal policy.

The Objective of Criminal Policy

In a welfare state, it is assumed that the criminal policy as well as the social policy are governed by rationality. A policy may be deemed rational if it identifies the means by which a given objective is to be reached at the minimum of cost.

The objective itself cannot be determined by scientific methods, because subjective evaluations are involved. One might expect that there would be much discussion about the purpose of criminal policy, but, strangely enough, this issue is rarely analyzed within the field of jurisprudence. It is usually taken for granted that the goal is simply to reduce crime rates. Seen in this perspective, which is the most frequently expressed, criminal policy could be regarded as irrational, as criminality tends to increase rather than decrease following the application of policy. Of course, it can be claimed that, were the intended policy not implemented, crime would have risen even more, so that a relative reduction was achieved after all.

Anttila and Törnudd (1973, 140) formulate another objective when they assert that criminal policy should help to minimize the costs and suffering caused by crime, as well as by society’s ensuing control policies, and should add to the just distribution of these costs and suffering. Traditional conceptions of the aim of criminal policy differ from this view, but, for the sake of simplicity, let us state as the goal of criminal policy the reduction of both criminality and its costs, in economic as well as human terms.

Theories of Punishment

In the Scandinavian tradition of jurisprudence, the so-called relative theories of punishment constitute responses to the demand for rationality in criminal policy. Here, sanctions are regarded as means to reduce crime. According to the theory of individual or special prevention, this can be accomplished by way of treatment, deterrence, or incapacitation of criminals. As for the theory of general prevention, reduction is achieved by deterring or morally educating potential criminals.

The relative theories thus refer to a preventive function, but with the so-called absolute theories, punishment is seen as an end in itself. Revenge by “lex talionis” (an eye for an eye) is one variant of this doctrine. Other versions are “just retribution,” as formulated foremost in German philosophy, and “atonement” based on concepts from Christianity.

It is worth noting that the relative or preventive penal theories did not originate in the modern era. More than 2,400 years ago, Plato had Protagoras state:

No one punishes a criminal solely because he has done wrong, unless he wishes to punish unwisely, like an animal. He who wishes to punish wisely does not punish for a deed that has already been done—and which he cannot undo again—but with thought for the future, so that both the culprit and the others who witness the punishment may take care in the future.

Beccaria (1764), as a product of the age of enlightenment and of liberalism, claimed crime prevention is more important than punishment, and that punishment is justified only if it contributes to the prevention of criminal behavior. Since his goal of punishment is prevention and not retaliation, punishment must be certain, swift, and proportional to the crime. Similarly, Bentham (1780) developed utilitarian penal theories under which the ultimate aim of punishment is social welfare. He regarded punishment as an evil acceptable only on the ground of its social usefulness—that is, if it will prevent a greater social evil and thus increase the total happiness in society.

Conversely, Kant presented his foundation of the metaphysics and criticism of practical rationality (1785, 1788), where he stated that retaliative punishment is a categorical imperative. The criminal must be punished because he has committed a crime, for the guilt he has brought upon himself; all other justifications for punishment were said to be immoral, if not directly criminal.

But despite their differing philosophical approaches, both the German idealists and the French Enlightenment writers concluded that crime and punishment must be proportional to the seriousness of the crime.

The committee that formulated the 1864 Swedish Penal Code strongly endorsed the theory of general prevention but was opposed in this by supporters of the theory of retribution. In line with Swedish custom, the adversaries saw a way around their differences and agreed upon a wording for the code that was acceptable in practice. The principles of humanity and proportionality led to the abolition of corporal punishment, disgrace punishments, and banishment. For misdemeanors, the punishment became fines, and for felonies, deprivation of liberty. Both fines and imprisonment were well suited to the proportionality principle.

Sweden was one of the first European countries to adopt the form of imprisonment introduced by the Quakers in Philadelphia around 1800. When the Swedish Crown Prince, the future Oscar I, in 1840 ordered the implementation of the Philadelphia system in an essay, the Swedish Parliament appropriated large sums of money for prison construction. Supporters hoped for the reformation of prisoners, but prisons were also devised as a means for making the deprivation of liberty more harshly felt.

The weaknesses of the classical penal system are related to the fact that it is not based on observations of the crime or the criminal, but is solely a schematic construction built on legal and philosophical principles. Criticism of the classical philosophy emerged when criminality was regarded as a social phenomenon, encouraged largely by the compiling of criminal statistics begun in France in 1825 and Sweden in 1830, as well as later in the century by the gathering of information on offenders inspired by Lombroso and the Italian positivist school. Ferri’s proposal for a new penal code in 1921, based on the theory of the prevention of crime and rejecting all considerations of retribution as well as the guilt of the offender, eliminated the concept of punishment. This proposal was never adopted in Italy, but it influenced legislation in some other countries.

The International Association of Criminalists, founded in 1889 by von Liszt, promoted more moderate positivist theories and individualized sanctions. Attempts were made to reduce imprisonment by creating special categories of criminals—for example, the young and the dangerous—who were to be treated, not punished. In addition, the Anglo-Saxon model of sentencing occasional offenders to conditional sanctions was adopted.

The new Swedish Criminal Code of 1965 was clearly influenced by the International Association of Criminalists and by the Social Defense Movement, but it also contained a number of national innovations. The code is based on the principles that the objective of sanctions is prevention and that the ideas of retribution have been totally eliminated.

According to several Scandinavian professors of criminal law, retribution should no longer be a justification for punishment (Andenæs 1956; Strahl 1967; Hurwitz and Waaben 1971). However, a neoclassical movement has emerged in recent years, both in the United States and in some Nordic countries, that reintroduces concepts such as “just deserts” and “just retribution” to legitimize punishment.

The Treatment Ideology and its Downfall

Contrary to popular belief and recurring assertions, treatment ideas within corrections are neither new nor particularly characteristic of our penal system. Without delving into history, let me remind the reader of the tuchthuisen in Holland and les hôpitaux généraux in France of the seventeenth century. From the excellent, though quite dissimilar, descriptions of these total institutions by Sellin (1944) and Foucault (1961), one can safely state that our Swedish correctional administrators have not invented many new reforms, and that some old ones still await implementation.

Historically, skepticism about corrections dates back as far as the Enlightenment. Most concern with the demoralizing effects of prisons can be traced back to the penal reformers of the eighteenth century. In 1777, John Howard said prisons were “seats and seminaries of idleness and every vice” (p. 21) and Bentham asserted:

In a moral point of view, an ordinary prison is a school in which wickedness is taught by surer means than can ever be employed for the inculcation of virtue. Weariness, revenge, and want preside over these academies of crime. All the inmates raise themselves to the level of the worst.…(Bentham 1891, 351–52).

This perception of the promiscuous conditions in prisons led to the adoption of the Benthamite idea of “classified association.” In the opinion of some critics, though, this merely resulted in “specialized contamination.” Not even the principle of separate confinement and the solitary system led to the elimination of corruption in the prisons, according to several reformers.

In their classical depiction of autocratic prisons in a democratic society, the French political scientists, de Beaumont and de Tocqueville (1833), expressed skepticism about the notion of reformation as the “radical change of a wicked person into an honest man.” The U.S. invention of solitary confinement under the religious ideas of the Quakers in the Philadelphia and Auburn systems, was inspired by blind faith in the reformation of prisoners. However, confinement under such conditions was later proclaimed to be one of the greatest mistakes in the history of penology (see also Rothman 1971).

The Russian scientist Kropotkin, who, in part involuntarily, had rich opportunity to study Siberian, English, and French prisons from the inside, documented his experiences in Memoirs of a Revolutionist and In Russian and French Prisons. He wrote: “Our model and modern penitentiaries (are) a hundred times more corrupting than the dungeons of the Middle Ages” (Webb and Webb 1922, 219). He further described prisons as “universities of crime, maintained by the state” (1899, 468).

Kropotkin supported his observations with statistics related to recidivism: “Figures tell us loudly enough that the supposed double influence of prisons—the deterring and the moralizing—exists only in the imagination of lawyers.”

He refers to the French criminal statistics, which show that almost half of all persons convicted by the courts are released prisoners. Approvingly, he quotes Lombroso, “If those who die after liberation and those whose récidive crimes are not discovered be taken into account, it remains an open question whether the number of récidivistes is not equal to that of the liberated prisoners” (1887, 305–6).

Are these assertions by the Russian anarchist gross exaggerations according to the findings of later research? Hawkins (1976, 59) feels that the Russian’s arguments were based on poor logic and were unsupported. We will later see, though, that the insights of these classics were not that far astray.

Not many penologists have had the chance to experience prison environments from within. Irwin (1970) is one of the few exceptions in modern times. It is thus surprising that sociologists have not made better use of documentary descriptions of prison conditions by prisoners. Biographical documents were published by the Chicago school, such as The Jack-Roller by Shaw (1930), and The Professional Thief which Sutherland (1937) annotated. In most countries, there are also many other “I was in prison” biographies, plus realistic accounts of prisoner experiences in literary fiction. In Russia, this extends from Dostoevski to Solzhenitsyn and Medvedev, in France from Villon and Vidocque to Carco and Genet, in Great Britain from Wilde to Norman and Behan, and in the United States Chessman, Cleaver, and Jackson can be mentioned.

It is uncertain how representative these articulate prisoners are, or how well they succeed in describing the everyday life of an average prisoner. However, most scientific theories about prisons are documented in these firsthand accounts. Scientific studies on prison communities have been published in very few countries—first and foremost the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries. There are, however, many works of fiction with which comparisons can be made between different types of societies over long periods of time. The similarities in the biographical documents on the respective national systems are striking ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword and Acknowledgments
• 1. Swedish Correctional Institutions in International and Historical Perspective
• 2. Theory and Methodology
• 3. The Informal Social System
• 4. General Assessment of the Effects of Institutional Life
• 5. Criminalization at the Institution Measured by Criminal Attitudes and Solidarity
• 6. Argot Knowledge as an Indicator of Criminalization
• 7. Indirect Criminalization
• 8. Psychological and Social Harm at the Institutions
• 9. Deteriorated Social Conditions Outside the Institution and Reconfinements
• 10. Positive Impact Processes
• 11. Institutional Socialization
• 12. Prisonization and Recidivism
• 13. Impediments to Reform
• Appendix A. Selection of Institutions and the Field Work
• Appendix B. Description of the Institutions
• Appendix C. Description of the Inmates
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index