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) - they’re really institutionalized, they’ll be back. It’s like a big
family, they’re always coming back. They go out for a while, experience the street, and
then come back scared: I couldn’t make it so I fucked 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.”
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Three fellow inmates decide that the younger inmate needs to be taken care of based on
an assessment of lack of respect.
“The kid’s 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 drugtrafficking 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 don’t “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.
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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 institution’s ‘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…Prison’s 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 hierarchy
works:
“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.
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Ria further points out the existence of a status hierarchy in women’s 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, there’s 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, they’re 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, ‘I’ll kill the bitch.’ That’s what I told them. I don’t care who you are. You put
them in when I’m in. Who wants to eat supper with f---n’ Karla Homolka after what she
did to those kids. You know she’s wearing a fork right in the eye.
Source: P. Tadman. (2001). Fallen Angels: Inside Canada’s Toughest Women’s 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: “I’m trapped in time. Sure, the time’s going to go by. I’m losing fifteen to
twenty-five years of my life, but I don’t have to lose that time. I can actually use
that time to be productive. I can get all sorts of things accomplished…It’s just a
matter of whether I’m going to let myself evolve finally or if I’m going to walk out
and try to be a twenty-one-year-old again on the street.
Barry: “I don’t know what doing time does to a person – maybe it mellows them
out a bit. Because I find that after this here, I’ve been more of a mellow person.
I don’t know what happened to me, or whatever, but all of a sudden I lost all the
aggression that’s in me.”
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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 can’t 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.
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