Prison Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Prison Culture - Essay Example Recommendations aimed at removing these distresses so that the inmates could become a healthy part of the free society. Key words: Prison culture, inmate subculture, free world, case studies. Introduction Culture as defined in Oxford Dictionary tells that it is â€Å"the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society†. Therefore the term Prison Culture refers to the ideas, customs and behavior of the prison community. In this world, there have always been two types of humans; either they are free to do what they desire or they are inside the bars not allowed to go their well. Culture therefore also becomes divided into two types; the culture of free humans and the culture of prisoners. The paper aims at describing the later type. Prison Culture is the net combined behavior of the inmates of a prison. The paper has attempted to analyze the prison culture after studying the ways in which the prisoners react. Prison Culture can be best understood keeping in view an expanded volume of gas where there are atoms frequently wandering here and there, with no destiny, with no desire, with no ambition. They are scattered and same is the situation with prisoners. Like the atoms, they have no ideals to abide by. There is a sort of confusion prevailing everywhere. Prison Culture is without a well defined social structure. ... The norms and values of prisons are either not seen or completely different from those of the outside society. Every day inside the prison is the Day of Judgment where everyone tries to get his share not bothering for anyone else. Prison Culture is therefore a totally different culture (Clemmer, 1958). Statement Of Problem Prison hurts the human psychologically. The fact adds to the troubles of the inmates and creates problems in the inmate-to-inmate relations. Prison encourages the institution of government to practice more and more degrading environments. Overcrowding in the prisons adds to the aggressive behavior of the inmates. This is the main cause of the prison culture being poor and weak in the sense. It has been noted that the increased is the population inside the prison, the increased is the ratio of violence and abuse between prisoners and the prison staff. It means that the larger is the number of prisoners, the more aggressive is the Prison Culture. This fact in turn in creases the volume of punishment inside the prison. Public prisons are more populated than the private and the theory is proved that in private prisons, the rate of violence and punishment is quite lower than the public prison (Steiner, 2009). The growth of privatized prisons is yet another problem. This is because of the worsening of the prison culture as regards the public prison. Also private prison is more economical for the state than the public prison. The risk of violence is in turn increased by the under-staffing. Since the increase in staff strength increases the burden on government exchequer, it hesitates to do so and the prison culture is thus influenced (Taylor, 2008). Guard-prisoner relationship is always of extreme importance for the prison