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Pat Carlen, The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation and Social Life in an English Prison. By Ben Crewe (Oxford University Press, 2009, x + 519pp. £60.00 hb), The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 50, Issue 5, September 2010, Pages 977–980, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azq007
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Extract
As its title suggests, Ben Crewe's book about life in an English prison for men (Wellingborough) is in the ethnographic tradition of prison studies. But, whereas some ethnographies do not go beyond empathetic description, The Prisoner Society is an ethnography rooted in Crewe's comprehensive and detailed knowledge of previous prison studies of all kinds, together with an acute understanding of the contemporary political and organizational conditions that presently help fashion social relations in prisons in England and (it could be argued) in many other jurisdictions, too.
The sociological perspective informing analysis of the author's observational and interview data is outlined at the beginning of the book, where the stated assumption is that the social relations of a prison are shaped by ‘prisoners’ prior lives and also by the aims, means and conditions of the institution’ (p. 3). The main themes developed thereafter relate to: institutional power, prisoners’ adaptations and survival strategies, and the minutiae of power and social relations in the prison, such as hierarchies of power, masculinities, race relations and drugs economies; and the movement from governing by welfare to governing by punishment.
