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The prison cannot be judged by a mere look at the normative order alone. The law-in-the-books, penological monographs and internationally consented minimum rules are just one side of the coin. The other one is the prison system's social reality and structural conduciveness to recurrent crises of overcrowding, contagious diseases, and intramural violence. It is this what the law-in-action is all about, or the second code of the prison (McNaughton-Smith 1968). To discuss imprisonment only platonically - without reference to what it looks like in real terms - would not do justice to the seriousness of the matter. Our attitude towards the prison should be informed not only by the letter of the law, but also by the law in action. In other words, it is important to know what the prison is like in the real world. | The prison cannot be judged by a mere look at the normative order alone. The law-in-the-books, penological monographs and internationally consented minimum rules are just one side of the coin. The other one is the prison system's social reality and structural conduciveness to recurrent crises of overcrowding, contagious diseases, and intramural violence. It is this what the law-in-action is all about, or the second code of the prison (McNaughton-Smith 1968). To discuss imprisonment only platonically - without reference to what it looks like in real terms - would not do justice to the seriousness of the matter. Our attitude towards the prison should be informed not only by the letter of the law, but also by the law in action. In other words, it is important to know what the prison is like in the real world. | ||
One problem with a look at prisons in the real world is their enormous qualitative diversity. There are high class prisons in which inmates have space, medical attention, and a respectful social environment. But there are also locations in which imprisonment can easily be a veiled death sentence. Unfortunately, in many countries it is not a rare event for a prisoner not to return alive, be it because of disease or violence by guards or gangs (Stern 1999). | One problem with a look at prisons in the real world is their enormous qualitative diversity (Newman 2010). There are high class prisons in which inmates have space, medical attention, and a respectful social environment. But there are also locations in which imprisonment can easily be a veiled death sentence. Unfortunately, in many countries it is not a rare event for a prisoner not to return alive, be it because of disease or violence by guards or gangs (Stern 1999). | ||
A second problem is the inherent bias in the penological discourse when it comes to having an empirical look at the prisons of the world. Many researchers have either roots in the prison-industrial complex or they are dependent on the good-will of governments or private prison operators - all of which may make them lean towards the status quo. Moreover, most researchers look at their own countries and neighboring countries when it comes to prison research - and since something like an estimated 80% of all criminologists and penologists come from the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium or any of the other countries that make up the world's 36 richest countries, our knowledge about the prison system is likely to be biased in favour of generalizing conditions that are not typical for the system in general, but only for a privileged section of it. For any person to be a prisoner, though, chances are that he or she would not be imprisoned in of the 36 richest countries of the world, because their prisoners make up only a minority of all prisoners in the world (for a list of the richest and poorest countries cf. Pasquali 2015). Chances are, when you are a prisoner, that your prison is located in one of the poorer countries like, e.g., Russia (wealth-rank 51 of a list of 185 countries), Romania (rank 61), China (83) or Egypt (96). If you are less lucky, your prison might be in one of the very poor countries such as the Philippines (118), India (125), Pakistan (134), Bangladesh (140), Haiti (166) or the Democratic Republic of Congo (185 out of 185). | A second problem is the inherent bias in the penological discourse when it comes to having an empirical look at the prisons of the world. Many researchers have either roots in the prison-industrial complex or they are dependent on the good-will of governments or private prison operators - all of which may make them lean towards the status quo. Moreover, most researchers look at their own countries and neighboring countries when it comes to prison research - and since something like an estimated 80% of all criminologists and penologists come from the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium or any of the other countries that make up the world's 36 richest countries, our knowledge about the prison system is likely to be biased in favour of generalizing conditions that are not typical for the system in general, but only for a privileged section of it. For any person to be a prisoner, though, chances are that he or she would not be imprisoned in of the 36 richest countries of the world, because their prisoners make up only a minority of all prisoners in the world (for a list of the richest and poorest countries cf. Pasquali 2015). Chances are, when you are a prisoner, that your prison is located in one of the poorer countries like, e.g., Russia (wealth-rank 51 of a list of 185 countries), Romania (rank 61), China (83) or Egypt (96). If you are less lucky, your prison might be in one of the very poor countries such as the Philippines (118), India (125), Pakistan (134), Bangladesh (140), Haiti (166) or the Democratic Republic of Congo (185 out of 185). | ||