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The Myth of Inmate Lawlessness: The Perceived Contradiction between Self and Other in Inmates' Support for Criminal Justice Sanctioning Norms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Lucia Benaquisto  and
Peter J. Freed
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Abstract

The authors set out two key hypotheses. To address these hypotheses, (1) that inmates (deviants) reject the rules of the conventional order and (2) that they consciously do so as part of a subcultural group, the authors examine offenders' ideals about sanctions for rule breaking. The prison culture literature emphasizes the existence, most prevalent in custodial-oriented institutions, of an inmate subculture characterized by opposition and solidarity. These generalizations are primarily sustained by examining inmates' conformity with staff rules and expectations. This leaves open the question whether this solidary opposition and rejection of conventional norms extends beyond prison walls to broader societal norms regulating deviance. To measure the overall pattern and the relative importance of legally relevant and irrelevant criteria, the researchers obtained responses from a random sample of incarcerated offenders to vignettes describing criminal acts and other potential determinants of sanctions. Neither hypothesis was supported. Inmate sanctioning ideals most nearly resemble, in quality and quantity, those that they individually attribute to the contemporary judiciary. Yet most inmates believe that the other inmates, in contrast with themselves, would reject a coherent system of legal sanctions. The authors discuss the implications of the resulting (collectively self-contradictory) myth of inmate lawlessness.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , 1996 , pp. 481 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

We would like to thank the Ford Foundation, Education for Action, the McGill Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, and the McGill Computer Policy Sub-committee for grants that assisted us in the research and writing of this article. An earlier version was presented at the American Sociological Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug. 1991. We thank Harold Benenson, Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Mark Chaves, Pierre Tremblay, Steve Rytina, Mary Waters, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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