The Prison Officer by Alison Liebling David Price Guy Shefer

Author:Alison Liebling, David Price, Guy Shefer [Alison Liebling, David Price, Guy Shefer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9781136840227
Google: 24usAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-12-22T03:39:18+00:00

Prison officers and the ‘defects of total power’

As Gresham Sykes argued, in his 1958 study of a maximum security prison in New Jersey:

The rulers of this society of captives nominally hold in their hands the sole right of granting rewards and inflicting punishments and it would seem that no prisoner could afford to ignore their demands for conformity … The custodians have the right not only to issue and administer the orders and regulations which are to guide the life of the prisoner, but also the right to detain, try, and punish any individual accused of disobedience – a merging of legislative, executive and judicial functions which has long been regarded as the earmark of complete domination. The officials of the prison, in short, appear to be the possessors of almost infinite power within their realm; and, at least on the surface, the bureaucratic staff should experience no great difficulty in converting their rules and regulations – their blueprint for behaviour – into a reality. (Sykes 1958: 41–2)

Prison officers cannot enforce every applicable rule if the prison day is to maintain any kind of worthwhile flow:

If the rulers of any social system could secure compliance within their rules and regulations … it might be expected that the officials of the maximum security prison would be able to do so. (Sykes 1958: 41–2)

However, despite the rules, officers constantly have to work at the maintenance of order. Officers know that the use of physical coercion has severe limits on a day-to-day basis, and in seeking compliance from prisoners they have no very effective system of rewards or punishments (although arguably IEP has helped a little). Rule-breaking and non-compliance is common among prisoners, but there is more to enforcement than the rules:

Systems of power may also fail because those who are supposed to rule are unwilling to do so … The ‘corruption’ of the rules may be far less dramatic than the insurrection of the rules, for power unexercised is seldom as visible as power which is challenged, but the system of power still falters. (Sykes 1958: 53)1

This observation is now something of a penological commonplace. To the newcomer, the prison seems a place of rules, limits, uneven power and clear standards. As we illustrated in Chapter 2, prison officers constitute a substantial ‘custodial force’ and about two-thirds of the officers employed in an establishment will be directly involved in the supervision and control of prisoners. Prison officers have a monopoly on the use of legitimate force. There is a clear pyramid of authority – with prison officers ‘at the coalface’ responsible for the translation of policy into everyday practice. The problem is:

The objectives which the officials pursue are not completely of their own choosing and the means which they can use to achieve their objectives are far from limitless. The custodians are not total despots, able to exercise their power at whim, and thus they lack the essential mark of infinite power, the unchallenged right of being capricious in their own rule.

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