Code Grey: How Prison Leaders Frame, Navigate and Enforce Rules/Policy Within Six U.S. Prisons

• In Event: Corrections Administration and Penal Change

Abstract

Prison administrators and managers oversee and implement prison policy and rules within the institutional environment. However, despite their crucial place in the organizational hierarchy and for institutional supervision, the scholarly literature on prison managers is largely silent regarding culture at the top. This is particularly true of leadership within U.S. prisons (see Bennett, 2016 and Crew & Liebling, 2011 for related work in England and Wales). The present study, includes analysis of in-depth, qualitative data from interviews with 97 prison managers in 2015 (24 administrators, 73 middle managers) in six U.S. prisons (four male and two female adult facilities of varying custody levels in one state). Preliminary findings suggest prison managers formally and informally frame, navigate and enforce rules and policy for subordinates in ambiguous (grey) ways including: minimizing, skirting, directing, intensifying and misguiding. In turn, the message delivery mechanism weighs heavily on subordinates’ understanding and use of particular rules/policy with their supervisees (i.e., line level staff and/or inmates). This endogenous rule-making and rule-enforcing process within and between prisons within the same statewide system creates an organizational subculture that often misaligns with broad agency goals and is regularly undetected. There are both theoretical and practical implications of this latent process for prison work and institutional life.

Authors

• Danielle S. Rudes, George Mason University

• Shannon Magnuson, George Mason University

• Brandy L. Blasko, Sam Houston State University