Here is something I found on prison culture... Hierarchy.
http://web4.uwindsor.ca/users/s/soulli6/main.nsf/9d019077a3c4f6768525698a00593654/255e75720be1221985256bcf00508f4d/$FILE/DoingTime.doc
DOING TIME: THE PRISON EXPERIENCE
Prisonization
Chuck Terry (2003, p. 99) writes about adapting to the prison culture:
In the Los Angeles County jail, we washed our clothes in toilets because they contained the best source of running water. We made wine out of water, fruit, sugar, and yeast. We drank hot chocolate brewed by mixing melted Hershey bars and water. Using matchlit, tightly rolled toilet paper as fuel, we cooked grilled cheese sandwiches on the steel slabs we slept on. We also gambled, bought and sold cigarettes and candy bars for profit, and did everything we could to obtain drugs whenever possible. As I become more comfortable in jail, my fear and anxiety about living among the rabble of society became almost nonexistent. Over time, what once seemed like the caverns of hell became more like home.
Source: J.I. Ross & S.C. Richards. (2003). Convict Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/ Thomson Learning.
Barry: (Some cons) - theyre really institutionalized, theyll be back. Its like a big family, theyre always coming back. They go out for a while, experience the street, and then come back scared: I couldnt make it so I ****ed up again and came back to three square meals a day. (p. 48)
Source: P.J. Murphy & L. Johnsen. (1997). Life-25. Vancouver, BC: New Star Books.
Prison/Inmate Code
Melnitzer (1995, p. 117) highlights the existence and relative strength of the Prison Code in Canadian prisons:
After encountering an angry younger fellow inmate while serving up breakfast, a verbal exchange occurs in which the inmate calls Melnitzer a goof and challenges him to fight later in the yard. Another inmate explains to Melnitzer his obligations based on a strict adherence to the Code.
What happens now? Melnitzer asks.
No choice, chimes Fred, the grill man and self-professed keeper of the Code. A guy calls you a goof, you kill him or he kills you.
Three fellow inmates decide that the younger inmate needs to be taken care of based on an assessment of lack of respect.
The kids got no respect for us, says one of the prison veterans.
Melnitzer writes: Respect is a magic word in prison, ringing a bell with the other old cons in the kitchen, particularly Fred though his interpretation of the Code wavered with the exigencies of the day.
Melnitzer (1995, p. 118-119) also emphasizes the influence of the Code on many prisoners, describing the case of one prisoner who refused to implicate his drug-trafficking cellmate when drugs were found in their cell. As a result, the prisoner, despite having no history of substance abuse and having been a model inmate for five years of 20-year sentence, was denied a temporary absence pass by the NPB, his wife subsequently left him, and his children essentially stopped visiting him. When asked if it was worth it, the prisoner simply responded that the Code demanded that you dont rat out fellow inmates.
Source: J. Melnitzer. (1995). Maximum, Minimum, Medium. Toronto, ON: Key Porter Books.
Caron (1985, p. 58) talks about the Inmate Code in relation to the Code of Silence expected:
But prison walls rarely disclose their secrets. The code of silence was so strictly enforced that any individual who infringed on it was doomed to a macabre death at the hands of his fellow cons.
Also, Caron emphasizes the way in which the Inmate Code governs social relations within the prison:
One thing the inmate code demands is absolute deference from the diddlers and stool pigeons.
Source: R. Caron. (1985). Bingo! Toronto, ON: Methuen.
Prisoner Roles and Prison Status Hierarchy
Anderson (1993, p. 140) emphasizes the rules of social status found within most prisons:
On the criminal social ladder, those imprisoned for murder and serious crimes, or those who have survived years in the violent world of the penitentiary system, cling to the top rung and are considered the institutions heavies. Much lower on the status ladder are inmates who are serving relatively short sentences or are young and inexperienced in prison. The bottom rung is saved for sex offenders and finks or rats. They require protective custody, apart from the general population.
Melnitzer (1995, p. 308, 310) summarizes the prison social hierarchy as follows:
Cop killers are at the top of the social order, the most solid of criminals, followed by lifers whose crimes do not involved women or children; then armed robbers, drug dealers, and other violent non-sexual offenders. Property offenders and white-collar criminals are a class of their own, their standing determined by the nature of the offence: stealing from banks is solid, very solid; stealing from small investors, widows and children and friends, is not
Hounds and diddlers are never solid: as PCs, they are perceived as rats, beholden to the Man to protect them
Prisons fine social order goes on to divide hounds and diddlers into sub-classes. Hounds are condemned relatively to the social status of their victims
Diddlers rate inversely to the age of their victims: the younger the victim, the more reprehensible the perpetrator...Clifford Olson occupies the bottom rung by himself.
Melnitizer further explains why the hierarchy exists:
Low on self-esteem, tossed out of society, cons create a ladder so that they have somebody to look down upon.
Source: J. Melnitzer. (1995). Maximum, Minimum, Medium. Toronto, ON: Key Porter Books.
Caron (1985, p. 50) also highlights the way in which the prison social hierarchyworks:
Very quickly the prisoners developed their own brand of justice, labeling and condemning one another in a kind of barnyard pecking order. You just had to stop out of order and a calloused fist would come crashing out of nowhere to put you back in line. Or you might even end up with a homemade shiv between your shoulder blades.
Source: R. Caron. (1985). Bingo! Toronto, ON: Methuen.
Ria further points out the existence of a status hierarchy in womens prisons:
When I was living down on the wing, they wanted to integrate the PCs (protective custody inmates) with us, because in the new joint, in Kitchener, theres no maxi (maximum security unit) or PC unit. They thought they could bring in Karla Homolka and Turner, the ones that did the nasty things. They thought we could have lunch and integrate them with us so they could get used to being in population
But I told them in the wing, If you bring them down for meals, theyre going to be leaving in body bags.
How can you integrate them with us? Like Karla Homolka, the ones that are in segregation or protective custody, how can you put them in with us?
As for Karla Homolka, Ill kill the *****. Thats what I told them. I dont care who you are. You put them in when Im in. Who wants to eat supper with f---n Karla Homolka after what she did to those kids. You know shes wearing a fork right in the eye.
Source: P. Tadman. (2001). Fallen Angels: Inside Canadas Toughest Womens Prison. Calgary, AB: Detselig Enterprises.
Hopper (1990) also discusses the sexual hierarchy found especially in prisons for men:
In prisons for men, homosexual sex is often viewed as a commodity which must be forced, bought, or traded. New inmates have to find their place in the sexual order by developing a sexual identity and establishing a reputation into the prisoner sex pressure game which is designed to determine who is weak and who is strong.
Doing Time
Life-25 (1997)
Barry: Im trapped in time. Sure, the times going to go by. Im losing fifteen to twenty-five years of my life, but I dont have to lose that time. I can actually use that time to be productive. I can get all sorts of things accomplished
Its just a matter of whether Im going to let myself evolve finally or if Im going to walk out and try to be a twenty-one-year-old again on the street.
Barry: I dont know what doing time does to a person maybe it mellows them out a bit. Because I find that after this here, Ive been more of a mellow person. I dont know what happened to me, or whatever, but all of a sudden I lost all the aggression thats in me.
Carlson (1998)
Today, doing time is like being buried up to the neck in the middle of the street. We can see life flow around us but we cant get up to take part in it.
Miceli (2003)
For some prisoners, the sorrow, pain, loss of freedom, and separation from loved ones, is unbearable. No one wants to spend his life living in fear, or suffer the interminable pain and heartache associated with being incarcerated.
Jones (2003)
Doing time reflects a creative process through which inmates must invent or learn a repertoire of adaptation tactics that address the varying problems they confront during particular phases of their prison careers. (Doing time) is an active effort by prisoners to interpret prison rather than simply a passive response to prison culture and involves an interplay and continuous influence of both the outside world and the prison world.
