Racial Politics in the Contemporary Prison Society: The Importance of Race and Ethnicity to Prison Social Organization

• Author: ARYNN A. INFANTE,STEPHANIE J. MORSE,CHANTAL FAHMY,KEVIN A. WRIGHT
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221143528
• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Date: 01 April 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2023, Vol. 50, No. 4, April 2023, 600 –623.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221143528

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2023 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

600

RACIAL POLITICS IN THE CONTEMPORARY

PRISON SOCIETY

The Importance of Race and Ethnicity to Prison

Social Organization

ARYNN A. INFANTE

Portland State University

STEPHANIE J. MORSE

Saint Anselm College

CHANTAL FAHMY

The University of Texas at San Antonio

KEVIN A. WRIGHT

Arizona State University

Prior research documents race and ethnicity as central to how individuals navigate the social and physical space of prisons.

Racial segregation persists as a feature of prison life, and in navigating this racialized structure, racial groups construct and

enforce a set of racialized norms to govern behavior (i.e., the “racial code”) that reinforce and reify prison racial politics.

These processes, however, have remained largely descriptive in nature. Using data from a sample of incarcerated men in

Arizona prisons (N = 251), this article extends prior work by operationalizing the concept of the racial code, assessing its

dimensionality, distinguishing it from the prison code, and differentiating how features of prison social organization influence

racial code adherence and mobilization. Results suggest that the racial code is distinct from the prison code and that racial

differences exist in the extent of adhering to versus mobilizing the racial code, net of gang status.

Keywords: race; ethnicity; incarceration; corrections; gangs; prisons

INTRODUCTION

Race and ethnicity are salient features of prison social organization. Oftentimes, the

importance of racial and ethnic identity in the social order of prisons is narrowly discussed

within the context of gang membership (e.g., Skarbek, 2014; Trammell, 2012). Research

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We thank Mike Dolny and John Squires of the Arizona Department of Corrections,

Rehabilitation and Reentry for facilitating access to the data. This study was funded by a grant from the U.S.

Department of Justice (2016-R2-CX-0115). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not

necessarily represent the official views of the respective agencies. Correspondence concerning this article

should be addressed to Arynn A. Infante, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Portland State

University, 506 SW Mill Street, Suite 550, Portland, OR 97201, USA; e-mail: infante3@pdx.edu.

1143528CJBXXX10.1177/00938548221143528Criminal Justice and BehaviorInfante et al. / SHORT TITLE

research-article2023

Infante et al. / RACE, ETHNICITY, AND PRISON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 601

has only recently begun to focus on the racialized order of prisons, in which race and ethnic-

ity are unique dimensions of the social order that dictate norms and rules organized around

race as a socially ascribed status (e.g., Bloch & Olivares-Pelayo, 2021; Furst, 2017;

Goodman, 2008, 2014; Lopez-Aguado, 2018; Walker, 2016). This is an important oversight

given the history of racialized punishment in the United States and how mass incarceration

has qualitatively changed the nature of prison organization over the last 40 years. Mass

incarceration exacerbated racial and ethnic disparities in the American prison system

(Alexander, 2010; Clear & Frost, 2015; Western, 2006), effectively centering prisons as

“race making” institutions in our society that construct, reproduce, and perpetuate inequali-

ties (Goodman, 2008, 2014; Wacquant, 2001; Walker, 2016). Consequently, as prisons

became more racially diverse, scholars began to observe changes in the way incarcerated

individuals socially organized that directly challenged traditional theories of prison order,

increased racialized violence, and presented issues for institutional safety and control

(Hemmens & Stohr, 2014; Skarbek, 2014; Wacquant, 2001).

In particular, amid the racial diversification of the prison landscape during mass incar-

ceration, a new racialized prison order emerged in which racial and ethnic identity became

the predominant organizing features of the prison society, both at the institutional and indi-

vidual level (Goodman, 2008; Walker, 2016). From the “top down,” correctional institu-

tions implemented a classification system designed to identify and segregate men (e.g.,

where they housed and with whom) according to gang status, which often meant a reliance

on race and ethnicity as a proxy for gang affiliation (Bloch & Olivares-Pelayo, 2021;

Goodman, 2008). Despite pre-existing racial, ethnic, or gang identities, upon entering the

carceral space, men were required to identify with a set of monoracial categories that dic-

tated all behavior and socialization in prison thereafter (Lopez-Aguado, 2018). This is

because the institutionalization of racial segregation encouraged the emergence of informal

codes and norms that further specified how these racial categories are performed, negoti-

ated, and enacted at the individual level (Bloch & Olivares-Pelayo, 2021). The institution

giving race meaning in this context essentially required that racial groups adapt by imple-

menting their own race-based rules to govern the intra- and inter-group dynamics of this

newly racialized space. These “bottom up” processes whereby racial groups navigate the

racialized structure of the institution by assigning rules surrounding racial group member-

ship and behavior are often referred to as racial politics (Bloch & Olivares-Pelayo, 2021).

An emerging body of research has explicitly centered race and ethnicity as key organiz-

ing features of the prison society, documenting evidence of racial group categorization and

the performance of racial politics in prison (Bloch & Olivares-Pelayo, 2021; Furst, 2017;

Goodman, 2008, 2014; Lopez-Aguado, 2018; Walker, 2016). This research, however, is

predominantly descriptive in nature and has yet to unpack how these “bottom up” processes

take shape to reinforce and reify racial politics. In particular, little is known about the infor-

mal racial code of conduct (i.e., the racial code) that arguably bridges the gap between

institutional racial classification and the enactment of racial categories to participate in the

racial politics of prison.

Using data from the Arizona Living and Working in Prison Project, the present study

builds on prior work by operationalizing the concept of the racial code, evaluating its

dimensionality, distinguishing it from the more traditional prison code,1 and examining how

features of prison social organization influence one’s adherence to and willingness to mobi-

lize the racial code. In doing so, we aim to clarify the distinctive importance of gang status