NCJ Number
85087
Date Published
1981
Length
23 pages
Annotation
A utilitarian ethic which seeks the greatest good for the greatest number is not served by the prison system, whose effects benefit neither inmates nor society, largely because prison influences further condition deviant behavior that puts society and the offender into mutually painful conflict.
Abstract
Sociological concepts such as 'we groups' and 'they groups,' 'socialization' and resocialization,' 'subculture and contraculture' have contributed to understanding how criminal behavior develops and persists. Prisons house a resocialization process called 'prisonization,' which encourages inmates to adapt to the characteristic forces of prison life by adopting inmate codes of behavior that ill equip inmates to engage in socially acceptable behavior upon release. Prison inmate codes set inmates against their 'keepers' and against the norms and values of society's laws and codes of ethics. It is clear that the American prison system does not 'work' in the utilitarian sense of that word, because few if any people benefit from it. Inmates suffer the abuse of prison and a lessening of the chances that they will experience a better life after release, and society suffers, because after release, the ex-inmate conditioned by prison life is likely to inflict further and perhaps greater harm on some members of society. Overall, prison contradicts the moral principles and intentions of a society's comprehensive code of ethics. Nineteen bibliographic entries are provided.