Street Wisdom on the Inside: How Correctional Officers use Informal Knowledge in the Everyday Management of Prison Routines

• In Event: Navigating Risky Spaces: Tacit Knowledge in the Neighborhood, Prison, on the Beat and Online

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have begun to re-examine the role of street knowledge and street codes in the lives of disadvantaged residents (Anderson, 1990; Stuart, 2016). Berardi (2016, forthcoming) has recently added to these concepts through the idea ‘neighbourhood wisdom,’ an explicitly local and place-based form of street knowledge. Although ‘neighbourhood wisdom’ largely focuses on survival strategies in violent neighbourhoods with low collective efficacy, I argue this concept is equally adept in explaining how correctional officers (CO’s) develop unofficial management strategies inside prison. Drawing on semi-structured qualitative interviews with over 60 Albertan Correctional Peace Officers (CO’s) from three separate prisons, I show how a distinct version of ‘neighbourhood wisdom’ has emerged among CO’s to help them govern the unpredictability and violence of prison life. This interpretive lens owes much to stories, shared history, rumor, and past experience. Unlike ‘neighbourhood wisdom,’ ‘CO wisdom’ is also strongly bound by legal considerations, which uniquely shapes how it functions. However, the distinctly local and geographically bounded nature of ‘neighbourhood wisdom’ allows me to examine how physical and architectural differences change the way this interpretive lens is applied in different prisons—and even between living units within a single, maximum-security prison.

Author

• Will Schultz, University of Alberta