Analysis of Prisonization and Book Critique (Essay Sample)

Criminal Justice Essays:
Analysis of Prisonization and Book Critique
Name
Institution
Analysis of Prisonization
Donald Clemmer created the term prisonization when writing his book in 1940, The Prison Community, to refer to the process of assimilating into the inmate society. The exact meaning of prisonization was taking on the folkways, customs, general culture, and mores of the penitentiary by all inmates. This led to the development and stimulation of a literature of prison socialization and culture. This is based on the fact that with time, prisoners need to acquire the beliefs, values, and norms that are held and practiced by other inmates. The term therefore refers to assimilation by the new inmates of the particular constellation of beliefs, norms, and values that shape the worldview of the prisoners while undermining the reform goals (O’Connor, 2013). The prisoners do not focus on the reform goals but rather are after hardening in order to fit in the hard lives in the prisons.
Through the process of prisonization, the behaviors and psyches of the convicts are believed to be molded by the structural and social hallmarks of prison life. The term was based on the confounded social ideal underlying the penitentiary concept. This is because while prisons are geared towards rehabilitating the convicts, it is notable that in most cases the convicts behave contrary to the accepted standards of social conduct. While they should be transforming during their stay in the prison and show complete change by the time they leave prison, most of them deteriorate. This makes prisonization an influence that breeds or deepens antisociality and criminality by making the innate characteristics of the criminalistics ideology in the prison community (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010).
Upon entering in prisons, convicts have to believe and adopt the attitudes and opinions that the other convicts have regarding the police, prisons, and judges. The convicts have negative attitudes and opinions towards the government officials and the parole board, they believe that money is the major solution, and have distrust in and hate the prison guards. They do not see anything good coming out of the orisons and the prison officials. This dogmas held by the prisoners are found to be harmful to the prisoners and to the society as they hinder post-prison reintegration. The prisoners are left with worse behaviors and attitudes that the ones they had before they were taken to jails. Prisonization is therefore noted to increase criminality since the convicts are forced to adopt the negative beliefs the other prisoners have (O’Connor, 2013).
As a result of prisonization, most prisoners are returned to prison a few years after they are released. In the US for instance, around 40 and 80% of prisoners are returned to prisons soon after their release with additional offenses. It is notable that most of the prisoners do not change their antisocial behaviors after spending their term in jails while it is expected that by the time the jail term is over, the ex-convict would have transformed. Instead of changing for the better as this is the role of the prisons to rehabilitate the prisoners, the ex-convicts are noted to have changed to the worse and thus are taken back to the prisons with worse crimes (Iowa State University, 2008).
Most of the patients who are put on parole after serving the jail term are usually rearrested for violating the parole. In most cases, they are taken back to prison for committing new crimes, that are unrelated with the earlier crimes leading to the parole. The process of prisonization can be blamed for engaging in more heinous or sophisticated crimes few days after criminals are released from jail. It is evident that just like any culture plays a part in shaping the life and behavior of people living in it, so does the prison culture (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010). By spending time in prisons, the prisoners are expected to adopt and live as the prison culture dictates. The new convicts have to behave as the old ones.
It is notable that the prisons are for people of the same sex, people who have been stigmatized by the society as a result of law violation, and people who have attitudes, which are sexually or predatory assaultive or unconventional in nature. It is also worth noting that the prisons concentrate people in a restricted area without any form of privacy and are forced to interact and mingle in personal ways. The prison is therefore not a place where people who have committed the same crimes interact (Iowa State University, 2008). It is a place in which people involved in armed robberies interact with rapists, murderers, and petty thieves. This way, one has to harden in order to survive in the society by adopting the culture the other criminals have.
The prisoners live in a confused world. The prison does not have a well-established social structure and has a myriad of conflicting attitudes. Prisons do not have definite communal objectives or a common goal. The inmates are noted to conflict with opposition towards the society and officialdom. In addition, dishonesty and trickery overshadow cooperation and sympathy. The existing cooperation is largely symbiotic in nature. The implemented social controls are only partially effective (Rios, 2011). The prisoners live in a world in which the daily relationships are impersonalized with the world emphasizing on ‘I’, ‘mine’, and ‘me’ rather than ‘his’, ‘theirs’, and ‘ours’. The prison society is lived by people who are thwarted, revengeful, unhappy, hating, yearning, bitter, and resigned. The people are socially illiterate, improvident, and inefficient. The prison world is graceless, drabness, filth, and stink filled with stupor and monotony. Prisons are characterized by disinterest in work, hunger for sex, desire for love, and pain in punishment (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010).
Through prisonization, prisoners are forced to take up the cultural values of the prisons. Prisoners and prisons are what they are because of the temper and mood of the society concerning them. However, not all prisoners would adopt and be shaped by the cultures of the prisons they have been detained. This is because of the different personalities people have. It is notable that different prisoners are pushed into crimes by different circumstances and reasons. As a result, while some are willing to change with little help, others are angered when they end up in jails and are ready to revenge any time they get the chance. As a result, while some would be involved in crime immediately after they live prison, others would easily transform. As a result of the differences in personalities, prisonization does not affect prisoners in a similar way. While some prisoners are hardened, others have very rough periods in prison and thus would not wish to find themselves back there anymore. This is the reason out of 100% of the released prisoners, around 80% would go back to prison with more serious crimes while the remaining 20% would never see the prison gates anymore (O’Connor, 2013).
References
Blomberg, T. G., & Lucken, K. (2010). American penology: A history of control. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers.
Iowa State University. (2008). The effect of prisonization on female criminality. London: ProQuest.
O’Connor, T. P. (2013). Religion, the community, and the rehabilitation of criminal offenders. New York: Routledge.
Rios, V. M. (2011). Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino boys. New York: New York University Press.
Book Critique
According to Rios (2011), the lives of Latino and African American boys are very hard in the midst of crime and intense policing. The young boys from these racial groups face punitive policies in their communities, schools, and the world where they are repeatedly stigmatized and policed. The book is written Victor M. Rios, who is a former gang member. He was raised in Oakland ghetto in California between the years 1980 and 1990. Even though he was a juvenile delinquent, he managed to escape from the bleak consequences faced by many of his friends and earned a PhD in Berkeley. After his doctorate degree, he returned to his hometown to study how the inner city Latino and African American boys developed their sense of self.
The study involves 40 young boys as they struggle with punitive social control and stigma exerted on their lives by the society. Rios followed the young boys for three years. In order to complete his study and come with conclusive findings, he used various qualitative methods including interviews, review of official records and academic scholarship, and observations. This implies that Rio (2011) does not rely on a single method of data collection making the analyzed data and hence the findings valid and credible. He relies on both primary and secondary data as he interviews the young boys and also considers earlier studies on similar topics to substantiate his findings. He compared his findings from earlier studies and this makes the drawn conclusion reliable.
In order to prove the data collected from the young boys through interviews, Rio (2011) observes the manner in which they are treated. He does so by following the forty delinquent Latino and Black boys for three years. As he watches, he finds the boys in vicious cycles in which they are involved in spiral incarceration and punishment in which they are harassed, disciplined at young ages, profiled, watched, and even punished for crimes they have not committed. This way, many of them are forced to fulfill the expected destiny of them. Since the society and the ...