Theoretical Perspectives on Prisonization: A Comparison of the Importation and Deprivation Models

Abstract

Criminological research has identified at least three general types of variables which influence adaptations to and, presumably, the consequences of confinement: (1) preprison socialization and experience; (2) characteristics of the prison organization and the problems it creates for inmates; and (3) extraprison influences associated with the quality of contacts which inmates maintain with the larger society and their expectations about postrelease life-chances.The preponderance of research, however, has concentrated on adaptations to confinement in the type of coercive organization that prisons typically represent.These studies show that the probability of assimilation into a subcultural system that is oppositional to the prison organization and its goals increases when a custodially-oriented organizational structure is adopted.Under such conditions, the saliency of what Sykes' has termed the "pains of imprisonment," the impact of structurally-generated alienation, the influence of sentence length and other related factors have been linked to high levels of prisonization. 2 An equally important