The presentation of self in everyday prison life

Abstract

Today, Italian prisons are reporting the highest level of overcrowding ever recorded. In reference to this situation, this article proposes an ethnographic study carried out inside the prison of Padua as a voluntary 2 years’ experience. It documents the values and conventions that convicts share in prison and details the ways in which prisoners constantly construct and adapt to an informal conduct’s rule system, the inmate code. It also illustrates the interactions among fellow prisoners as scenes or plays enacted by various teams. The prisoners’ words reveal a complex universe based upon three basic conditions: loyalty, discipline and circumspection. Finally, we argue about the fading of the distinction between the prison front stage and the back stage and we analyse the possible consequences.

Keywords:

• ethnography
• dramaturgy
• convict
• code
• prison

Notes

1. 1. On the critical use of the word ‘inmate,’ see Richards and Ross, “A Convict Perspective,” 244. As we acknowledge that using the word ‘inmate’ may be considered offensive by prisoners, we followed Trammel’s distinction by using the word ‘convict’ to indicate those that use the code identity, and ‘inmate’ to indicate those that do not (Trammel, “Values, Rules,” 747). ‘Prisoners’ was used when talking in general terms.

2. 2. Cloward, “Social Control in Prison”; Irwin and Cressey, “Thieves, Convicts”; Jacobs, Stateville: The Penitentiary; Ohlin, Sociology and the Field; Terry, “The Function of Humour”; and Trammel, Enforcing the Convict Code.

3. 3. Irwin and Cressey, “Thieves, Convicts”; and Jacobs, Stateville: The Penitentiary.

4. 4. Sykes, The Society of Captives; Sykes and Messinger, “The Inmate Social System”; Cloward, “Social Control in Prison”; and Goffman, Asylums.

5. 5. Clemmer, The Prison Community; and Wheeler, “Socialization in Correctional Communities”.

6. 6. Crewe, “Codes and Conventions”; and Trammel, Enforcing the Convict Code.

7. 7. Bandyopadhyay, Jefferson, and Ugelvik, “Prison Spaces and Beyond”.

8. 8. Pollock: Prison, Today and Tomorrow.

9. 9. Moran, Pallot, and Piacentini, “Privacy in Penal Spaces”.

10. 10. Goffman, Encounters.

11. 11. Berger, Invitation to Sociology.

12. 12. Ibid., 137.

13. 13. Kivisto and Pittman, “Goffman’s Dramaturgical Sociology”.

14. 14. Goffman, The Presentation of Self, 114–15.

15. 15. Sampson and Bean, “Cultural Mechanisms”.

16. 16. Trammel, Enforcing the Convict Code.

17. 17. Faccio, Mininni, and Rocelli, “What It is Like to Be ‘Ex?’”; Faccio, Bordin, and Cipolletta, “Transsexual Parenthood”; and Faccio et al., “Auditory Hallucinations”.

18. 18. Salvini et al., “Change in Psychotherapy”; Cipolletta and Faccio, “Time Experience”; and Romaioli and Faccio, “When Therapists Do Not Know”.

19. 19. Goffman, The Presentation of Self, 254; and Denzin, “Much Ado about Goffman”.

20. 20. This number is fairly optimistic. People who attend school courses are also working. Anyway, these overlaps are not easily documented, so we preferred to count the activities separately.

21. 21. In Italy, the ‘correctional officers’ are organised in a special police unit called ‘penitentiary police.’ In the text, we and the prisoners interviewed may then refer to the correctional officers using the term ‘agent.’

22. 22. Wacquant, “The Curious Eclipse,” 386.

23. 23. Bandyopadhyay, Jefferson, and Ugelvik, “Prison Spaces and Beyond”; and Jewkes, “What has Prison Ethnography”.

24. 24. Rhodes, “Ethnographic Imagination”.

25. 25. Rhodes, “Ethnography in Sites,” 6.

26. 26. Degenhardt and Vianello, “Convict Criminology”.

27. 27. Bosworth et al., “Doing Prison Research”.

28. 28. Philips and Earle, “Reading Difference Differently?”

29. 29. Denzin and Lincoln, Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry.

30. 30. Flick, Introduction to Qualitative Research.

31. 31. Trammel, Enforcing the Convict Code.

32. 32. In a district prison, there are individuals waiting for the definitive sentence or that are serving short-term sentences, usually less than 3 years.

33. 33. Goffman, Asylums.

34. 34. Cemented boxes of 8 × 4 metres where they can enjoy their right of 4 hours of fresh air every day under visual surveillance.

35. 35. Many prisoners reported, as particularly humiliating, the moment when they return from meetings with their relations and the police agents have the faculty of ordering them to strip completely and bend forwards on their arms for a sort of rectal control.

36. 36. Trammel, “Values, Rules”.

37. 37. Moran, Pallot, and Piacentini, “Privacy in Penal Spaces”.

38. 38. Chauvenet, Rostaing, and Orlic, La violence carcéral.

39. 39. Goffman, The Presentation of Self, 85.

40. 40. Jimerson and Oware, “Telling the Code”; and Brookman, Copes, and Hochstetler, “Street Codes”.

41. 41. Anderson, Code of the Street.

42. 42. Crewe, “Codes and Conventions”.

43. 43. This has been literally translated from Italian. To ‘sing’ is the equivalent of to ‘grass’ in the UK (Clemmer, The Prison Community and Irwin, The Felon), or to ‘snitch’ in the US (Topalli, “When Being Good”).

44. 44. Crewe, “Codes and Conventions,” 405.

45. 45. There are also other articles present in the code that were not adequately explored during the study because they were not paramount to the aims of the research. For example, convicts pointed out that a mate must not ‘look’ to the woman of another inmate.

46. 46. Goffman, The Presentation of Self, 211.

47. 47. Trammel, “Values, Rules”.

48. 48. Trammel, Enforcing the Convict Code.

49. 49. Chauvenet, Rostaing, and Orlic, La violence carcéral; and Trammel, Enforcing the Convict Code.

50. 50. Earle, “Enforcing the Convict Code – Review”.

51. 51. Goffman, The Presentation of Self.

52. 52. Moran, Pallot, and Piacentini, “Privacy in Penal Spaces”.

53. 53. Van Hoven and Sibley, “‘Just Duck’”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elena Faccio

Dr Elena Faccio ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education & Applied Psychology (FISPPA), Padua University. As clinical researcher and as psychotherapist she is interested in identity and change processes, both from a theoretical and clinical point of view, in everyday life as well as in institutional context, in prison and in clinical practice. Starting from the perspective of Symbolic Interactionism and Socio-constructionism her research focuses on the link between Diversity and Deviance. She is also interested in the theme of language and its importance in the process of meaning negotiation. Dr Faccio has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these topics. Her work appeared in numerous prominent scientific journals, including Journal of Constructivist Psychology, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour and Culture, Health & Sexuality.

Norberto Costa

Norberto Costa ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Padua. His main interests are about the exploration of the ways identities are generated in everyday interactions through rituals and linguistic performance. He is also interested in studying the meaning-making process in specific communities, such as convicts, children and workplaces. At the moment, he is engaged in exploring the development of embodied selves through dramaturgic metaphors and techniques.