NCJ Number
108994
Journal
Youth and Society Volume: 14 Issue: 3 Dated: (March 1983) Pages: 301-319
Date Published
1983
Length
19 pages
Annotation
The effect of powerlessness, perception of life chances, and prisonization on attitudes toward an institution are the main focus of this study of institutionalized teenage male inmates.
Abstract
The study of 340 institutionalized male delinquents between ages 14 and 18 assessed the consequences of confinement in a correctional setting and evaluated the applicability of a theoretical model that proved useful to those working in the sociology of corrections. The research also examined determinants of prisonization among juvenile offenders and the interrelationships between a deprivation model variable and an importation model variable. Specifically, the study focused on alienation caused by membership in an organization that relies on coercive power to achieve compliance vis a vis the extent that institutionalized juveniles have negative expectations about their postrelease life chances. The deprivation theory contends that inmate adaptations reflect problemsolving responses to shared hardships of confinement. Further, it argues that subcultural response and individual adjustment are determined by 'pains of imprisonment' which include use of coercive power; inmate isolation; and the depersonalizing effects of arrest, trial, sentencing and induction into the institution. The importation model argues that preprison, extraprison, postprison and prison-specific variables influence the content of the inmate normative system and determine the extent to which inmates will become assimilated into that system. It is suggested that the alienation felt by many juveniles is associated with variables that imply the inability of the organization in which they are involuntary participants to pursue rehabilitative goals. Evidence indicates that prisonization has a major effect on other variables that imply reinvolvement in delinquent behavior, rather than successful reintegration into the larger society for those confined in this type of institutional setting. Tabular data and 54 references.