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This chapter reviews the social and political context in which English and Welsh prisons now operate, the effect of successive reforms of management and reorganisation, and the culture and attitudes of prison staff. It examines the implications of the latest proposals for reform and considers the factors on which their success will depend, including influences on prisoners' own behaviour and the effect of wider public attitudes towards prisoners and imprisonment. Prisons are to become ‘places of hard work and industry’ along with offending-behaviour, drug-treatment and violence-reduction programmes, followed by integrated offender management after release. It is anticipated that, with the cooperation expected from the private sector, the work done in prisons will generate an income to pay for prison programmes, support prisoners' families and help compensate victims. The Prison Service has had similar aspirations in the past, but the disciplines needed for productive and profitable industry have always demanded a significant change in a prison's priorities and character. The chapter compares and contrasts public and private sector prisons and argues for a parallel agenda to accompany current proposals for prison reform, one which focuses on relationships and on legitimacy, responsibility, rehabilitation, citizenship and community.

This chapter further examines former prisoners’ experiences in the early phase of their imprisonment. With the example of the prison culture of ‘initiation ceremonies’, it argues that prison officers’ concern of maintaining control and order in the prison goes beyond producing the form of structural hypocrisy discussed in the previous chapter and actually forces former prisoners to act in hypocritical ways themselves. What should have been a process of learning and rehabilitation through education turns instead into a veritable culture of hypocrisy.

This introductory chapter discusses the process through which relatively small-scale media activism, based on prisoners' rights, came to be an intrinsic part of prison culture in the UK, playing a central role in institutional operations. It considers prison radio growth within the context of political and economic change, and argues that the successful development of an independent, prisoner-led service represents resistance against the forces of corporatisation and managerialism that have redefined the organisation and function of broadcasting, punishment, and social welfare. Against a backdrop of public service privatisation and media commercialisation, the growth of the Prison Radio Association (PRA) illustrates the complex processes of working in partnership with institutions and agencies to give a voice to people in prison.

This chapter examines former drug detainees’ experiences of everyday life in the prisons. I look specifically at the power relationship between the detention officers and the powerful inmates (whom I referred to as the ‘inmate elites’) in laojiao/qiangge. On the basis of their power relations, this chapter argues that the prison officers’ concerns for maintaining control and the pressure on making profit had far superseded the concerns for drug rehabilitation. This further added to the former prisoners’ feelings of unfairness and injustice and more deeply entrenched the systematic hypocrisy.

Women’s prison culture reflects gendered inequalities inside, mediating these inequities by mapping cultural routes toward survival and safety. At same time, this culture (the mix) creating the potential for risk and danger. Inequality within prison—with staff and among the confined women—is expressed in all relations in the prison community. This chapter outlines the strategies and tactics women deploy in their search for safety. Even in the face of risk and trouble, women do survive, endure, and sometimes thrive, as they learn how to protect themselves from the obvious and subtle threats to safety and well-being in the prison community. The search for safety is embedded in forms of prison capital—human, social and cultural capital women marshal to counter the myriad threats to their safety and well-being. These gendered strategies for navigating forms of violence and conflict specific to women’s incarceration can prevail over the gendered inequality that jeopardizes their search for safety.

This chapter traces the emergence and political role of Islam in American prisons, as well as the intersections between race and religion, beginning with Noble Drew Ali's revolutionary Moorish Science doctrine. From thence arose the Nation of Islam, which spread among prison inmates when its proponents were jailed and later grew into a stabilizing force in many prisons. As Muslim identities intensified among black prisoners in the years ahead, the trend spilled over into the massive racial ghettos of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, affecting a symbiosis between prison and street culture. Meanwhile a different story was unfolding on the West Coast, one that would ultimately reverse the achievements of Islam behind bars and create a form of prison-based terrorism.

This chapter presents new perspectives on the role of inmate leadership in radicalizing prisoners. Central to this notion is the process of prisonization—or “the taking on in greater or less degree the folkways, mores, and customs, and general culture of the penitentiary.” Prisonization reinforces the inmate's criminal status as a social “outlaw,” further deepening his commitment to the convict code, which represents a set of values and beliefs distinct to prisons. Those most committed to the convict code, the ones who actively celebrate it, are known in prison argot as “right guys.” Right guys remain loyal to fellow inmates and never let others down, no matter how rough things get. Right guys are dependable and always keep their promises. As such, right guys often become leaders within the inmate society.

This chapter discusses how Gresham Sykes, a pioneer in criminology, recognized most of what was wrong with the language of punishment. Many applauded his insights, and his book The Society of Captives (1958) became a classic on prison culture. Sykes exposed a language of punishment that did not reach the punished. Three glib theoretical terms—retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation—gave a beguiling neatness and simplicity to theories of incarceration. But “this three-pronged aim” existed in such conflict with itself that it could not answer the crucial question of whether the convicted is placed in prison for punishment, or as punishment. Instead of answering that question, the three prongs held the distinction permanently aloft.

This chapter illustrates how theater helps imprisoned men explore new modes of self-actualization. Recognizing that “bad masculinity” drives much of the violence in the American prison culture, it argues that imprisoned performers can draw upon Jungian archetypes, Buddhist meditation techniques, and collaborative theater to help craft new selves free from the habitual violence that lingers within typical male roles. The chapter also examines the Theater of Empowerment, a performance-based course emphasizing personal and social development. The perspective offered in the course incorporates both the feminist critique of a sexist, patriarchal model of manhood, and the Jungian vision of a male identity that evolves toward wholeness, embracing both masculine and feminine characteristics.

I started the research by spending two weeks inside of prison in Brazil as an “inmate.” I ate the same food, lived in the same cells, and participated in the same daily routines as the rest of the men in the cellblocks. Those two weeks shaped the methodology for the rest of the project, which was built on ethnography and interviews inside of a jail, a prison, and dozens of churches in Rio de Janeiro over the course of a year. I could not have completed the research without the hospitality and respect that were shown to me by the incarcerated men I met during this project.