Power, Alienation, and Prison Theory

• In Event: Prison Adjustment and Social Order

Abstract

Prisons are managed institutions and impact prisoners and prison workers. The Bureau of Prisons employs close to 40,000 individuals to manage a prisoner population that exceeds 200,000 (Samuels 2012; USDOJ 2014). Extant literature has not attempted to generate an effective criminal justice theory that specifically addresses the unavoidable nature of prisons and prison management. I propose that prisons are necessarily alienating institutions but prison managers are able to effectively manipulate alienation levels through power strategies. Using data from the Prison Social Climate Survey from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, I demonstrate that management that empowers also reduces the isolation, powerlessness, normlessness, meaninglessness, and self-estrangement of prison workers. Understanding that coercive institutions are able to mitigate necessary alienation practices through enhanced and personal oversight reveals the nuance and complexity of prison institutions. Effective criminal justice theory must understand the essential role of management strategies that target security and order maintenance and also understand the consequences of such strategies. Although a degree of alienation may be inevitable (and often beneficial) it is also malleable. Ultimately, I argue that alienation is the key element in the prison environment and it is intimately related to institutional commitment and to emotional and physical exhaustion.

Author

• Stephen C. McGuinn, Quinnipiac University