Prison Food Chain
Michella Abel
ANTH4113-001
10/16/12
Professor Dowell & Hirschfeld
Capstone Anthropology
Prison Food Chain The United States has had reform after reform of their prison systems in an attempt to better them and in hopes of making them not only a punishment, but a rehabilitating system. The prisons of today are not what these reforms hoped to achieve, they are over populated, dangerous, and under-funded. Gangs have taken over the positions that wardens are supposed to fill and they rule by survival of the fittest or at least survival of the better connections. In order to achieve the reforms’ goals, data collected from ethnographic and statistical studies must be put to better use. Prison gangs have become a huge contributing factor to the overcrowding within the prisons due to its positive correlation to repeat offending and high recruitment efforts.
The word Penitentiary comes from the Greek word that means to be penitent. The reality of what it is like to be in a prison may not be what most people believe it to be. There are different levels in the prison system that offenders, pending on their crime and record, will be assigned to.(Marchese,45) Super-max Prisons are for the worst of the worst offenders. Maximum security houses a variety of violent offenders. Minimum security and halfway houses restrict the comings and goings of the lowest menace threat in the system and help to make an offender ready to rejoin the outside world.
The prison society is based upon a set of social rules and boundaries built and based upon respect and fear. Each kind of prisoner has a different way of obtaining this respect and attempting to claim the prison food chain. A prisoner that was transferred would need to fight another prisoner to establish his place among the hierarchy. Prisons are a society unto themselves and outsiders are not welcome as scientists and journalist have discovered.(Fleisher,1989) To be a prisoner and be at the top of the hierarchy
ANTH4113-001
10/16/12
Professor Dowell & Hirschfeld
Capstone Anthropology
Prison Food Chain The United States has had reform after reform of their prison systems in an attempt to better them and in hopes of making them not only a punishment, but a rehabilitating system. The prisons of today are not what these reforms hoped to achieve, they are over populated, dangerous, and under-funded. Gangs have taken over the positions that wardens are supposed to fill and they rule by survival of the fittest or at least survival of the better connections. In order to achieve the reforms’ goals, data collected from ethnographic and statistical studies must be put to better use. Prison gangs have become a huge contributing factor to the overcrowding within the prisons due to its positive correlation to repeat offending and high recruitment efforts.
The word Penitentiary comes from the Greek word that means to be penitent. The reality of what it is like to be in a prison may not be what most people believe it to be. There are different levels in the prison system that offenders, pending on their crime and record, will be assigned to.(Marchese,45) Super-max Prisons are for the worst of the worst offenders. Maximum security houses a variety of violent offenders. Minimum security and halfway houses restrict the comings and goings of the lowest menace threat in the system and help to make an offender ready to rejoin the outside world.
The prison society is based upon a set of social rules and boundaries built and based upon respect and fear. Each kind of prisoner has a different way of obtaining this respect and attempting to claim the prison food chain. A prisoner that was transferred would need to fight another prisoner to establish his place among the hierarchy. Prisons are a society unto themselves and outsiders are not welcome as scientists and journalist have discovered.(Fleisher,1989) To be a prisoner and be at the top of the hierarchy
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