Donald Clemmer Biography
Donald Clemmer Prisonization Case

People also search for. Sentence of Donald Clemmer 1940 p. 299 on his definition of prisonization quoted in almost every work concerning the prisonization phenomena.1 Moreover, the “uni-versal factors” of prisonization have also been mentioned by most authors that quote Clemmer. At the same time, Clemmer’s work is about a lot more than the issue of prisonization.

Dissertation Archive

Title

Insaniquarium deluxe 1.1 trainer download. An Examination of Donald Clemmer's Concept of Prisonization and Its Role in the Future Development of Penal Policy in the United States

Author

Date of Award

2002

Degree Type

The pride of taern hack. Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Criminal Justice

First Advisor

Stephen L. Mallory

Advisor Department

Criminal Justice

Abstract

In The Prison Community (1940; 1958), Donald Clemmer coined the word 'prisonization' and defined it as the process by which the psyches and behaviors of convicts were molded by the social and structural hallmarks of prison life. Clemmer's research, moreover, led him to suggest that prisonization largely confounded the social ideal underlying the penitentiary concept: it not only thwarted attempts to rehabilitate convicts but also inspired behavior that was contrary to accepted standards of social conduct. Clemmer was neither the first nor the last to describe this philosophical flaw in the concept of legal incarceration. Indeed, his assessment of the problem, if not the word he coined to express it, has been a recurring theme in the literature of criminal corrections for well over two hundred years. This dissertation examines that theme, advances the theme that what Clemmer termed 'prisonization' has been the nexus of the problems that have plagued legal incarceration as well as the seed of a majority of modern penal reforms, and argues that the struggle of ex-inmates to 'deprisonize' poses a dire and worsening threat to American society.

Donald Clemmer Biography

Recommended Citation

Brown, Jack William, 'An Examination of Donald Clemmer's Concept of Prisonization and Its Role in the Future Development of Penal Policy in the United States' (2002). Dissertation Archive. 1824.
https://aquila.usm.edu/theses_dissertations/1824

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Donald Clemmer Prisonization Case

Prison Culture: Prisonization & Assimilation in the U.S.
Shanequa Ricketts
John Jay College
CRJ 425
Prof. Cheloukhine
Summer 2015
Abstract
Prisonization is a concept first introduced in 1940 by Clemmer. He defined it as the process of assimilation in prisons, where new inmates take on a less or greater degree of the customs, folkways, and the general culture in a penitentiary. Prisonization can be described in similar terms to those used by sociologists in capturing the processes of assimilation and socialization of communities at large. In the same manner people are assimilated to the customs and norms of a society, inmates must also assimilate themselves into the self-contained community they find in prison. They need to re-adjust from their normal lives and learn the new norms and rules, as well as the implied expected patterns of behavior since they are discordant from the societal values of a free world. Also referred to as the “inmate code”, this is the kind of behavior that is considered to be unacceptable in the free world but is encouraged, and rewarded within the prison walls.
In the United States of America, the jail culture has been referred to as out of control and unruly in most cases. There have been instances of gang control of prison activities through member inmates. There are also patterns of assimilation in the jails, especially bearing in mind that most of the people incarcerated are from different cultures most and countries. In essence, the