Reducing the Intra-Institutional Effects of “Prisonization”

“Prisonization,” or prison socialization, has long been recognized as a process with goals that are antithetical to the reintegration of ex-offenders. That is, it deemphasizes and even denigrates legitimate authority and middle-class values. Prison-based therapeutic communities, on the other hand, are intended to improve the attitudes and orientations of participants. This research examines three groups within a single-prison community — general-population inmates, therapeutic-community participants (TC inmates), and inmates eligible for the TC (“wannabes”)—in order to determine the extent to which levels of prisonization can be used to predict group membership.