Resocialization Within Walls

Abstract

it? A necessary starting point for this inquiry would appear to be an examination of the prison community as a functional social unit. A prison is a physical structure in a geographical location where a number of people, living under highly specialized conditions, utilize the resources and adjust to the alternatives presented to them by a unique kind of social environment. The people creating and enmeshed in this environment include administrative, custodial, and professional employees, habitual petty thieves, one-time offenders, gangsters, professional racketeers, psychotics, prepsychotics, neurotics, and psychopaths, all living under extreme conditions of physical and psychological compression. The formal administrative structure of the prison may be comprehended in a brief glance at its table of organization. This table reveals a series of bureau-