Mainstream Prisonization: Implications of the Dominant Perspective as Depicted in HBO’s “Oz”

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

In the early 20th century, Donald Clemmer introduced the concept of prisonization, which rests on the idea that upon induction into prison, a prisoner will take on the “folkways, mores, customs, and general culture of the penitentiary.” Clemmer’s perspective states that the extent to which prison behaviors are adopted is dictated by the prison environment; an idea that has come to be termed the deprivation perspective. In contrast, importation is the idea that the personality traits of an inmate determine the extent of the adaptation of prison behaviors. As dictated by prisonization theory, the prisoners in HBO’s prison drama “Oz” exhibit a range of prison adaptive behaviors. The inmates in “Oz” exemplify the different prisonization perspectives of importation and deprivation as proffered by Clemmer, Irwin and Cressey, Wheeler, Garabedian, and Thomas and Foster. Through a content analysis of “Oz”, we conclude which of the competing perspectives on prisonization is most utilized in the mainstream media. From this analysis, we extrapolate the general public’s views on prisoners and discuss possible policy implications based upon the dominant perspective.

Authors

• Joy Camacho, Old Dominion University

• Elisa Toman, University of South Florida

• Wyatt Brown, University of South Florida