Issues in the Study of the Social System Of Prison Inmates

Author(s): Sheldon L. Messinger

Source: Issues in Criminology , 1969, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1969), pp. 133-144
Published by: Social Justice/Global Options

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42909609

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 Issues in the Study of the Social System
Of Prison Inmates

Sheldon L. Messinger *

A concern with inmate social relations and culture has been a promi-
nent aspect of sociological interest in prisons over the past twenty-five
years. In part this is doubtless to be attributed to the fact that sociologists
delight in rediscovering and saying that the world is more various than
official ideologies suppose. Indeed, this delight is quite thorough; it ex-
tends, as the remarks below may suggest, both to sociological description
and also to theorizing, when description and theorizing threaten to become
imperious. But more is involved: study of inmate activities and attitudes
offers conveniences and promises a handhold on theoretical issues of wide
relevance.
As for conveniences, two are prominent. Prison inmates are in one
place, often for long periods; and, in the past, at least, they have been
willing to suffer the questions of researchers in return for the diversion
such interaction might bring or, sometimes, for the promise and hope that
the "truth" would be told. Furthermore, prison officials are generally coop-
erative so long as one is studying inmates. The "inmate system," as it is
sometimes called, is seen by officials as a constraint on their efforts to
control and reform inmates; sometimes it is seen as a potential resource.
In either case, officials seek ways of bending this "system" to their pur-
poses - and information about its structure and dynamics is thought to
be useful. Sociologists need not fully agree with these purposes, it seems
to me, to use official cooperation for their own ends.1
I shall discuss theoretical issues below. Here it may suffice to note
that study of inmate relations and culture has turned out to be that rare
sort of enterprise in which conversation among sociologists and practi-
tioners is both possible and actual. Research has been conducted with
reference to what has come before; prison officials have cooperated in
such research and, from time to time, attempted to employ findings. As a
result, there has been a notable cumulation of findings and ideas.2
There are a number of reasons, then, why study of inmate social
relations and culture has been pursued with vigor. The remarks that
follow are intended to suggest ( 1 ) some of the things we have learned
so far and (2) some of the questions now being raised. Besides providing

*Sheldon L. Messinger is Research Sociologist and Vice Chairman, Center

for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley.

133

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134 ISSUES IN criminology Vol. 4, No. 2

a summary for those with a taste for the elliptical

contain implications for future research.

I. The Road Traveled

From at least the time of Hans Reimer 's influential paper on "Social-
ization in the Prison Community" in 1937, until roughly the late 1950's,
attention focused primarily on the description of patterns of inmate inter-
action with and attitudes toward each other and the prison staff.3 A sub-
stantial literature had been produced. In late 1956, Gresham M. Sykes
and I completed a paper that attempted to codify and interpret this
literature.4
We found, on the one hand, that inmate life was portrayed as vastly
chaotic and brutal, a seething jungle of abnormality restrained, if at all, by
stern discipline imposed by prison officials. On the other hand, we found it
asserted that inmates played various roles. The range of roles depicted was
remarkably narrow, even though the observations on which descriptions
were based were made over a considerable period of time, at different
places, by observers with strikingly different orientations who showed
little evidence of having been in communication with each other. More-
over, it was not held that these roles were imposed by official discipline;
indeed, quite the contrary, the roles were held to develop in spite of such
discipline. It was an obvious, if simplistic, inference that the roles were
imposed by inmates themselves - that they were responses to inmate
expectations of each other. The nature of these expectations could be
gathered from reports about maxims for conduct extant among inmates.
Once codified, these maxims could be seen to embody what we called "one
strikingly pervasive value system" celebrating inmate solidarity and oppo-
sition to the prison staff.
We noted that up to the time of our writings such theorizing as had
appeared tended to take the form of inquiring how civilians became in-
mates, that is, how persons committed to prisons came to take on the roles
and values purported to be typical of inmates. This theoretical effort was
always implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, polemical, the argument run-
ning that inmates were made, not born. As such, the effort was of a piece
with other sociological work on criminals, most notably of course the
work of Edwin H. Sutherland5.
Sykes and I, taking a cue for argument from this work, somewhat
uncharitably proposed that the literature showed "little concerted effort
to account for the structure and functioning" of inmate roles, the inmate
code, or the value system expressed through this code. We said, the "study
of the socialization process in prison leaves a serious hiatus: it does not
illuminate the conditions determining the presence (or absence) of inmate

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1969 the social system of prison inmates 135

society. ... We want to know why inmate soc

how inmates sustain it" (Sykes and Messinge
tended message of our paper was that the time h
and that the materials for it were at hand.

The volume of papers in which our own was published in I960

contained just such an effort to account for, as well as give an account of,
patterns of inmate life (Cloward et al ., I960).6 Some of the central
themes of that effort contain the seeds of questions now being raised, as
I shall later attempt to show. Here I shall enumerate what in retrospect
seem to have been these central themes.

It was held, first of all, that the literature portrayed a culture and net-
work of relations among inmates that formed a more or less coherent
and interdependent whole. Indeed, Sykes and I used the term "system" in
the title of our paper to express just this point. We intended to suggest
that the inmate world was meaningful to participants - that it was no
more (or less) mysterious, incomprehensible, or irrational than any other
social world. And we intended to suggest that, to some extent, relational
forms were tied together: to change one element was to chance changing
others. Of course we did not know then, and I doubt we know now, the
extent of "some extent," although the general point still seems sound.
It was proposed, secondly, that inmate culture and social relations
were notably similar from prison to prison. In assessing this assertion, it
is germane to understand that it was meant to encourage a research strat-
egy which would not attempt to discover and account for everything that
went on in prisons, even among inmates, but, rather, one which would
seek to discover and explain whatever was distinctive that went on in
prisons, especially among inmates. The best of the earlier literature on
prisons, insofar as it concerned itself with inmates, had implicitly formu-
lated the task in this way, and we wanted to encourage such a focus. We
were not advising a lack of concern with the prison staff but trying to
formulate a sociological interest in inmates. Nor were we unconscious of
variations in inmate culture and relations from prison to prison. But it
seemed to us then, as it seems to me now, that the variations are less
impressive than the similarities - and less important to the extent that
they mask the effects of those conditions, if any exist, which are essential
to "prisons" as a type of social organization.
Thirdly, it was suggested that the way of life distinctive of inmates
could be understood as a creative adaptation to the conditions of inmate
existence. This was intended to imply that inmate conduct, like anybody's
conduct, was responsive and problem-solving in intent, if sometimes not
in effect, a contention not then widely accepted. It was also intended to
focus attention on the social conditions which the development of the

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136 ISSUES IN CRIMINOLOGY VoL4, No.2

inmate way of life required. One might say that th

recommended: under what social conditions woul
duct, belief, and affect distinctive of inmates be app
The answer to this question constituted the fo
proposed that the inmate way of life functioned to
the integrity of the self, a self severely threatened
prisonment. This, too, represented an element in a s
for the study of inmate culture and social relations
that research should attempt to establish connection
tions of inmate existence (elliptically conceived as la
prison staff), the inmate system, and inmate selves.
that these connections were mainly symbolic.
The details of the connections that were hypo
interest, for they suggest that more roads were ope
effort than was clearly seen at the time. I shall attem
below; here I shall offer an abbreviated interpretati
themselves.

It was proposed that the problems posed to the i

of the inmate were a consequence of the inmate's in
identities embedded in the core statuses he had o
world. The inmate system, in important part, consis
problems - ways of life that served to reestablish a
ing within which inmates could validate themselves
characteristics. Thus the inmate's connections to m
outside the prison were attenuated. This situation w
by identification with the inmate system, a system
nistic distance from the staff. The inmate's basic tru
tioned, and this was compensated by the elaboration
for "rightness" and solidarity. Other aspects of the
well. The inmate's status as a person of a particular
the uni-sexual composition of the inmate population
tunity to validate his worthiness through accumulat
was threatened by the policy of even-handed dist
lowed by prison staffs. His status as a mature indiv
status, was threatened by the elaboration and en
directions for conduct. In these respects and others
inmate as a person was challenged; in these respects
collectively responded by converting the situatio
which integrity could be defended and recouped, at
It is worth noting, finally, that not only was it ass
was consequential for inmate self-esteem, it was
system functioned, on the one hand, by encourag

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1969 the social system of prison inmates 137

the inmates, thus helping curb a drift to anomie. On

cushioning pressures to revolt, the system helped
regime. The tools of stability were said to be inte
collusion between officials and an inmate elite. The cost of collusion was
held to be the subversion of the values of rehabilitation.
The portrait and interpretation that emerged from this work, then,
tended to suggest that the inmate system formed a coherent whole and
that this system was a network of adaptive solutions to problems distinc-
tively confronted by inmates; that these problems were created by the
prison staff; that these problems were principally symbolic - problems
of maintaining or re-establishing the integrity of the self; and, finally, that
the inmate system was maintained, in part, through antagonistic distance
from the staff and, in part, through connivance with the staff which, in
turn, helped solve problems of control and undermined rehabilitative
values.

II. Where We Are Now

All of these themes and others are summarized and generalized in

Erving Goffman's paper "On the Characteristics of Total Institutions,"
first published in 1957, and achieving wide circulation among sociologists
interested in prisons when republished in expanded form in 1961. 7 Goff-
man proposed that both the problems experienced by prison inmates and
the solutions found for these problems were common to inmates of all
kinds, and that in all cases, as well, the major conditions of inmate exist-
ence, with their freight of assaults on the self, were quite similar. Thus,
although Goffman widened the ambit of description and interpretation,
the central thrust of his work was quite similar to the work already dis-
cussed; his emphasis was on the inmate system as a distinctive way of life
and on the features of institutional existence presumed to condition the
development of this way of life.
Now unfortunately for those who would describe and interpret the
history of theoretical developments, such developments seem forever to
spill over the categories one invents to encompass them. I must admit,
therefore, but I shall then go on to disregard, the fact that some of the
issues I am now going to discuss were raised contemporaneously, or almost
contemporaneously, with statement of the themes already outlined.8 My
comments were originally stimulated by a paper by John Irwin and Don-
ald R. Cressey (1962) and a critique of this paper by Julian Roebuck
(1963). Other work, some earlier, some later, has contributed to my
questioning as well.9
Current work on the inmate system is moving ahead, as does much
work in sociology, by pointing to weaknesses in the descriptive and inter-
pretive endeavors that preceded it. What are these weaknesses?

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138 ISSUES IN criminology VoL4, No. 2

First, it is proposed that the inmate system fo

whole than has been asserted. More particular
prison inmates are less disposed to antisocial att
the prison staff than was suggested, even in priso
cratically managed.
I believe that there is no doubt that a more
drawn of the inmate system as it exists within an
be justified on the basis of the facts at hand, even
But if the portrait presented cannot be fully just
partially explained. The thrust of the work of the
iate the distinctive features of inmate life suggeste
were at hand. These observations, especially th
made it quite clear that there were other, even co
also made it clear - and recent observations mak
have changed much - that the drift and thrust
move inmates to a position of opposition to the
regardless of the value position from which inma
It is worth noting that recent work, often usi
suggests that the private attitudes of inmates tow
typically less antagonistic than staff and even inm
also implies that the public posture of inmates tow
tional. I think that findings of this order are quit
they suggest that one task of a prison staff may b
their own private attitudes. Theoretically, they
feature of social organization, perhaps exacerbated
tends to drive a wedge between feeling and con
whether such a wedge can long endure or whether
come to conform to conduct. Whatever one's conc
and interesting problem, current theorists might
about the risk of confusing private attitudes with
fusion from which earlier writers may have suffer
It is proposed, second, that the character of th
from prison to prison, sometimes dramatically. For
the antagonism of inmates as a collectivity to staff
prison to prison.
Again, I believe it cannot be doubted that the e
a portrait that was overly monolithic. In doing so
some of the tools for examining the variation in
prison to prison that is now asserted. The major t
the literature of the late 1950's was perhaps th
inmate existence change, so will the nature of the
held that inmate culture was a response to sym

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19 69 the social system of prison inmates 139

means that as such deprivation is increased or dec

will change. In assessing the forces of deprivation, o
estimate the possibility that prison staffs, substitutin
ipulation for force, will to some extent succeed in re
experience so that it becomes less depriving - ev
material conditions.

Variation in the inmate system from prison to prison points to an-

other criticism of earlier formulations. It is held that the extent to which a
controlling inmate elite develops has been exaggerated, that the devel-
opment of such an elite must be seen as a variable, and that earlier formu-
lations seemed to imply that such an elite always developed. I believe the
criticism is well taken, although it must be taken with due caution. The
criticism suggests that students of inmate life might well concern them-
selves with the general conditions for the emergence of effective elites, that
is, persons maximizing the central values of a culture and able to influence
the way of life of the groups of which they are members. It may be that
the decided increase in prison staff resources for control permits the staff
to stem the development of any elite structure among inmates. As states
move from one prison to a congeries of prisons, for example, the resource
of transfer is increased. And as prison work gains the gloss of professional-
ization, legislatures seem more willing to increase prison staffs, thereby re-
ducing the dependence of such staffs on inmates and, perhaps, reducing
inmate leverage. The prevention of development of an inmate elite may
or may not be possible, and it may or may not be desirable given the
rehabilitative aims of some modern prison staffs. At any rate, another
question is raised: how can rehabilitative elites be developed among in-
mates? Current work sets forth a number of ideas on this topic.
The final criticism I shall discuss, stated most forcefully by Irwin and
Cressey (1962:145), holds that the work of the late 1950's drew the
connections between prison conditions and inmate culture too tightly, that
not every inmate or group of inmates interprets and responds to these con-
ditions similarly, and that, in general, the "indigenous origin" of inmate
culture patterns has been "overemphasized" and the "dramatic effect that
external behavior patterns [sic} have on the conduct of inmates" has been
"overlooked."

The major idea of the Irwin and Cressey paper, as I understand it, is
that the culture of inmates is an amalgam of three broad subcultures,
"legitimate," "thief," and "convict." Only the latter subculture is indige-
nous to prisons, the others developing and flourishing outside prison walls.
It is this subculture, then, which is distinctive of the prison, and it is this,
I have suggested, which the theorists of the late 195 O's sought to describe
and explain. If I am correct, the Irwin-Cressey formulation is somewhat

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140 ISSUES IN CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 4, No.2

confusing when viewed as a criticism, which is the w

it, for it accepts the earlier formulation as an account
vict subculture."
But one may take another view. In this other view
propose that the culture distinctive of the prison is
tinuous with the culture of the environing system o
with the culture and subcultures of the society of
a part. Put more strongly, inmate culture is less
more continuous with the environing culture than p
posed. Moreover, Irwin and Cressey seem to imply th
more closely connected with a particular subculture, t
than has been supposed.
Irwin and Cressey suggest that citizens, especia
"solutions" with them to the kinds of problems pose
solutions having been invented and institutionalized o
should like to reinterpret this point slightly. I believ
that persons bring to prison varying "capacities" for
ditions of imprisonment as problems and that these c
atically with the pre-prison social statuses of inmate
the matter retains, but I believe expands, the cutting
developed by earlier theorists. Earlier work proposed
was a response to symbolic deprivation. Irwin and
effect, that not all inmates are equally deprived, nor
in the same way, and that deprivation depends on th
conception of self as well as the conditions of impris
is the product of both.
Put this way, we are led to see the relevance of
addition to those of "thief" and "do right" for an un
culture. Thus, the recent works of David A. Ward
(1964) and of Rose Giallombardo (1966) help us
from the community deprives women in a different
in turn, the kind of inmate system developed in wom
from that developed in men's prisons. Unsystemat
made suggest that members of different ethnic grou
different set of problems in prison and develop an in
cial features. And Wheeler's report (1963), howeve
clear that national differences deserve exploration.
Obviously the list could be expanded. The poin
for the forms and conditions of organization of hum
extended now by turning to the difference it makes
onment inmates come from different sectors of socie
societies. The research task is formidable but does no
accomplish.

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1969 the social system of prison inmates 141

I should like to conclude by pointing to one o

the Irwin-Cressey argument. By stressing the contin
with what Erving Gofïman has called the "presenting
mate, by stressing that inmate culture is at most
presenting culture, and, most of all, by suggestin
inmate culture may be temporary and weak, Irwin an
take us full circle. Once again, the question of sociali
and Cressey suggest, in effect, that modern prisons h
on the orientations of their unwilling guests. So lo
retains its special affinity for the "thief subculture"
ciety, little of value would seem to be lost. But, if the
is reorientation, and if it is the case, as now seems p
system in some times and places is less antisocial than
may well wonder how to increase its impact. Work d
ing may well tell us this.

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142 ISSUES IN criminology Vol. 4, No. 2

FOOTNOTES

1This raises one of the most difficult issues of our time, which I cannot p
tend to resolve here. Is study of inmates but another example of "counterinsur
gency" research? Perhaps, but my own sense is that similar information prove
be relevant for both "counter insurgents" and "insurgents." At least I have had t
treat of hearing knowledgeable inmates using information about inmates draw
from my work, and that of my colleagues, to challenge prison policies. It could
argued, of course, that "insurgents" need information about the structure
dynamics of official actions more than they need to know more about their ow
actions. I think this is arguable, but information about both seems relevant. Furth
officials know less about what they are doing and why than most suppose, and co
also use information about themselves for their own purposes.
2My colleague, David Matza, has recently qualified a claim to show theoreti
development in this way: "Since the allegation of intellectual evolution or grow
runs an especially high risk of forgery, the reader is forewarned. Except that
posited growth is slight, I would not entertain so remote a possibility." (Becom
ing Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969, 1.) T
felicitously expresses my feeling in the present case.
8Donald Clemmer's The Prison Community (New York: Rinehart and C
Inc., 1958), originally issued in 1940, was the first full-scale study of an Amer
prison in recent times, and probably was (and is) better known than Reime
short work. Clemmer cites both Reimer s paper and Norman S. Hayner and Ell
Ash, "The Prison Community as a Social Group," American Sociological Review
(June 1939) : 362-369. These and many other descriptions of inmate life publis
before 1957 are listed in the first footnote of Gresham M. Sykes and Sheldon L
Messinger, "The Inmate Social System," in Richard A. Cloward, et al., Theoretic
Studies in Social Organization of the Prison. New York: Social Science Resea
Council, I960.
Those curious about continuity and change in inmate activities and attitude
might consult Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, On the Penitent
System in the United States and Its Application in France. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1964.
4Some of the ideas set forth in this paper are more fully developed in Gresha
M. Sykes, Society of Captives. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.
5See Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald R. Cressey, Principles of Criminology
(Seventh Edition). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1966, esp. Chapter 4. Earlie
versions of this text (it was first published in 1924) are more insistent about t
relevance of social factors in the etiology of criminal conduct.
6Another volume containing papers bearing on inmate life, published a yea
later, is Donald R. Cressey (editor), The Prison. New York: Holt, Rinehart
Winston, 1961. More recently, another collection has appeared: Lawrence Hazel-
rigg (editor), Prison Within Society. New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 19
The overlap in authorship among the three volumes is considerable, and Ha
rigg's collection contains papers drawn from the I960 collection, among others
7The shorter version of this paper appeared in the Symposium on Prevent
and Social Psychiatry. Washington, D. C: Walter Reed Army Institute of R
search, 1957:43-84. It is worth consulting to see the development of Goffm
ideas and also, and not least, to get a sense of early responses to Goffman's por
trait of the essential business of mental hospitals ( some of the conference dialo
is reported). The longer and best-known version of the paper appears in Cresse

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1969 the social system of prison inmates 143

The Prison, op. cit., and in Erving Goffman, Asylums

Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1961.
8Some additional remarks may be justified. The the
add up, roughly, to a "paradigm" in use among sociolo
particularly among those interested in inmate life. I u
sense akin, or perhaps identical, to that suggested by
ture of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of
to a frame of reference that is, on the one hand, articu
further sociological inquiry, and ,on the other hand, "
leave all sorts of problems" and puzzles for further in
tation is from p. 10 of the Phoenix [paperback] Edi
discuss may be conceived, in large part, to be raised b
life made under the aegis of the frame of reference o
adopted by sociologists. Identifications of these issues, a
constitute what Kuhn calls "normal" science. He contra
of inventing and recommending new paradigms, whic
It should be understood that I use such terms as "pa
"revolution" with some hesi tance: I am by no means ce
deserves such glorification. This said, I should add that
first emerged around the end of the 195 O's. It did not
much as it replaced confusion. Some of the issues I dis
a new paradigm should be adopted - or they may sugg
tionary: further articulation of the extant paradigm. It is
9What follows is not a list of all work bearing on th
years, but rather some of the work I have consulted. A
inmate system will want to consult these papers and bo
Bernard B. Berk, "Organizational Goals and Inmate O
Journal of Sociology 71 (March 1966): 522-534; Ulla
edge as an Indicator of Criminal Socialization," Nils Ch
Studies in Criminology, Volume 2, London: Tavisto
73-107. Hugh F. Cline, with Stanton Wheeler, "The
Patterns in Correctional Institutions," ibid., 173-184; S
ganization in a Correctional Community," Pacific
1961): 87-93; Peter G. Garabedian, "Social Roles in a
Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Scie
338-347; Peter G. Garbedian, "Social Roles and Proce
Prison Community," Social Problems 11 (Fall 1963) : 13
Society of Women: A Study of a Women's Prison. N
Sons, Inc., 1966; Daniel Glaser, The Effectiveness of a P
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1964; Oscar Gr
and the Behavior of Informal Leaders," American Jour
1959) : 59-67; Gene G. Kassebaum and David A. Ward
Revisited," Mimeographed : 1964; Thomas Mathiesen, T
A Sociological Study of a Norwegian Correctional Insti
Publications, 1965; Terence and Pauline Morris, Penton
of an English Prison. London: Routledge and Kegan Pau
donse, "Organizational Goals and Structural Change: A S
a Prison System," Social Forces 41 (March 1963) : 283-2
and Frank R. Scarpitti, "Argot in a Therapeutic M
(Winter 1968) : 384-395; David Street, "The Inmate
Treatment Settings," American Sociological Review

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144 ISSUES IN criminology Vol.4, No. 2

David Street, Robert D. Vintner, and Charles Perrow, O

A Comparative Study of Institutions for Delinquents. N
1966; Eliot Studt, Sheldon L. Messinger, and Thomas
for Community in Prison. New York: Russell Sage Foun
R. Tittle, "Inmate Organization: Sex Differentiation and
Subcultures," American Sociological Review 34 (Au
Tittle and D. P. Tittle, "Social Organization of Priso
Social Forces 43 (December 1964) : 2 16-221; David A
baum, Women's Prison: Sex and Social Structure. Chicag
1965; Charles Wellford, "Factors Associated with Adopt
Study of Normative Socialization," Journal of Crimi
Police Science 58 (June 1967) : 197-203; Stanton Whe
rectional Communities," American Socological Revie
711; Stanton Wheeler, "A Preliminary Report on a S
Mimeographed: n.d. (probably 1963. A monograph em
ported in this paper is in preparation) ; Thomas P. Wils
Correctional Institutions: The Development of a Problem
Roland Wulbert, "Inmate Pride in Total Institutions," A
ology 71 (July 1965): 1-9.

REFERENCES

Cloward, Richard A. et al.

I960 Theoretical Studies in Social Organization of the Prison. New York:
Social Science Research Council
Giallombardo, Rose
1966 Society of Women: A Study of a Women's Prison. New York: John
Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Irwin, John and Donald R. Cressey
1962 "Thieves, Convicts and the Inmate Culture." Social Problems 10 (Fall):
142-155.
Kassenbaum, Gene G. and David A. Ward
1964 "The Prison Community Revisited." Mimeographed.
Reimer, Hans
1937 "Socialization in the Prison Community." Proceedings of the American
Prison Association, 1937:151-155.
Roebuck, Julian
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