NCJ Number
223200
Journal
Journal of Crime and Justice Volume: 31 Issue: 1 Dated: 2008 Pages: 59-80
Date Published
2008
Length
22 pages
Annotation
By describing the daily live of inmates currently serving time in prison, this paper attempts to better understand how widespread changes in the correctional system, from a rehabilitation ideology to a punitive ideology, have influenced how inmates experience imprisonment.
Abstract
Findings show that past accounts of doing time show striking similarity to modern day explanations of everyday life in prison. These results lead one to question the impact of penal ideology on the experience of doing time in United States prisons. A dramatic shift in penal philosophy over the past 30 years has replaced rehabilitation with incapacitation and punishment. In addition to the shift in penal ideology came the expansion in the prison population that continues today. Ethnographic accounts of prison society and the interpretations of the lived experience of those confined in the United States penal institutions have the ability to shed light on the impact of documented changes in correctional philosophy. This study conducted face-to-face interviews with men currently incarcerated in a maximum security Missouri prison, as well as historical accounts of “doing time” to assess how this change has affected the day-to-day lives of inmates. Notes, references