NCJ Number
173997
Date Published
1996
Length
394 pages
Annotation
Based on a comparative study of two British dispersal prisons, Albany and Long Lartin, toward the end of the 1980s, this book examines how order is created, maintained, and sometimes fractured in maximum-security prisons.
Abstract
Although the prisons under study have changed in several ways since the initial study (Albany having left the dispersal system), as have many aspects of prison policy and practice, the authors draw on the wealth of data they collected to explore and illustrate some of the abiding problems of creating an ordered environment among men in long-term captivity. Data were collected from interviews with both staff and inmates as well as from thousands of hours of observation. The comparison of prisons with different reputations, disciplinary profiles, histories of conflict, and styles of approach to handling disorder provides the key to an understanding of prisons as complex institutions in which various ways of creating order emerge in response to various environments. At the heart of the empirical study is an analysis of the processes that lead to the breakdown of order and how this is reacted to by the authorities through transfers, segregation, and punishments. Special attention is paid to a Vulnerable Prisoners Unit and the vulnerability of prisoners within it. The authors' analysis not only clarifies some difficult theoretical issues that relate to the nature of prison life, but also contributes to the debate about how daily order might best be secured in prisons. The authors' discussion of the approach taken in recent reports on prison security, which they compare unfavorably to the broader social prescription laid down in the Woolf Report, shows how pertinent their research findings remain to current debates. Appended notes on the research process and evidence submitted by the authors on Lord Justice Woolf's inquiry into prison disturbances, a 300-item bibliography, and a subject index