READING PRISONS

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2000)0000002012
• Date: 20 December 2000
• Published date: 20 December 2000
• Pages: 191-231
• Author: Bruce A. Arrigo,Christopher R. Williams

READING PRISONS: A METAPHORIC-

ORGANIZATIONAL APPROACH

Bruce A. Arrigo and Christopher R. Williams

ABSTRACT

Current research on prison organizations has not developed a compre-

hensive framework for how to interpret these complex networks. This is

surprising given that learning how to ‘read’ the behavior of correctional

facilities can have an enormous impact on program development and

policy formation. The present study endeavors to fill this gap in the

literature. The authors utilize Morgan’s (1997) organizational template on

metaphorical analysis and apply it to the configuration of modern prisons.

To facilitate this investigation, the authors rely upon an eclectic mix of

existing corrections literature to demonstrate how the particular metaphor

in question can be used to analyze the prison as an organization. This

perspective offers a more systematic explanation of how these metaphors

routinely shape correctional research, practice, and policy. Eight images

are identified and examined, including the prison as: (1) culture, (2)

organism, (3) brain, (4) instrument of domination, (5) political system, (6)

machine, (7) psychic confinement, and (8) flux and transformation. The

authors conclude by commenting on the viability of adopting the proposed

organizational model for future prison studies.

INTRODUCTION

Understanding how prisons behave requires a comprehensive examination of

the diversity of underlying operational practices which are present in most

Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume 2, pages 191–231.

Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISBN: 0-7623-0680-7

191

correctional facilities across the country. This analysis of ‘reading’ prison

organizations allows for an assessment of both strengths and weaknesses

existing within the system. Modifications based on such assessments are

fervently pursued by the public, government, and law enforcement, and are

necessary for the evolution of this complex network.

Identifying how decisions and relationships internal and external to the

prison are affected by confinement philosophy and practice is the first step in

the process. Organizational theory facilitates this process by suggesting the

method and means. The existing prison literature can further contribute to the

analysis by consolidating organizational principles with sociological, crimino-

logical, legal, and psychological perspectives. This collaboration fosters an

integrated and comprehensive understanding of organizational theory which

shapes the daily behaviors of correctional facilities.

Accordingly, the following analysis will attempt to examine the more

common practices and behaviors in the prison system from an organizational

perspective, informed by the traditional theoretical and applied prison

literature. The study will approach such behaviors in the context of eight

metaphors as outlined by Gareth Morgan (1997). The use of metaphor in

assessing organizational behavior enables us to appreciate more systematically

the prominent features of the prison milieu. Through metaphoric inquiry, we

are able to acknowledge a number of themes which present themselves in the

day-to-day operation of a prison. Though the metaphors are treated largely

independently for the purpose of this assessment, it is not difficult to

understand how correctional facilities assume properties of many of these eight

metaphors in practice.

On The Meaning of Metaphors in Organizations and Some Comments on

Method

Morgan (1997) establishes a template, or framework for addressing organiza-

tional issues through the use of metaphor (see also, e.g. Morgan, 1980, 1981,

1983, 1993, 1996). While the suitability and applicability of his model has not

been tested in the prison context, Morgan (1997: 3–8) contends that his model

is useful for understanding all managed networks. He concedes that the

selected metaphors are by no means exhaustive, though, they adequately

represent the broad range of ideas and perspectives that exist regarding

organizational theory and practice.

According to Morgan (1997: 8), the metaphor is ‘central to the way we read,

understand, and shape organizational life’. The use of metaphor establishes a

“way of thinking” about and a “way of seeing” through our everyday

192 BRUCE A. ARRIGO

experiences (Ibid.: 4). In this context, metaphor implies a certain limited

perspective in which understanding unfolds. This is not so much a criticism of

metaphorical analysis as much as it is a recognition that the process both

reveals something quite unique about the world in which we live while, at the

same time, concealing several of its distinctive characteristics.

Central to Morgan’s (1980) analytic scheme is a conviction that it is possible

to uncover and interpret the core assumptions that ‘characterize and define any

given world view’ regarding the behavior of an organization (p. 607). Typically,

these core assumptions are situated within a paradigm (Kuhn, 1970) that

inform how reality is constructed for the organization or institution in question.

Morgan (1980) identifies four such paradigms: the functionalist; the inter-

pretive; the radical-humanist; and the radical-structuralist.1What is important

about these paradigms or world views in relation to Morgan’s theoretical

approach is that each one embodies certain precepts about the nature of science

and the nature of society (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). Moreover, each paradigm

is linked to favored metaphors in accord with preferred views of reality,

demonstrating how ‘puzzle solving’ activities in organizational analysis are

fundamentally a product of the social construction of scientific knowledge

(Morgan, 1980: 607).

Morgan’s conceptual scheme on paradigms is a framework or ‘blueprint’ for

metaphorical analysis. Where the individual paradigms represent preferred

ways of approaching and assessing a shared reality (e.g. the organization and

behavior of prisons), metaphor is the foundation upon which social inquiry in

organizational analysis unfolds. Metaphor is what makes the paradigm in use

concrete by giving it identifiable form (Ibid.: 610). Indeed, the naming of

‘concepts, ideas, facts, observations, etc., do not so much denote external

‘things’, as conceptions of things activated in the mind by a selective and

meaningful form of noticing the world which may be shared with others’

(Ibid.).

Methodologically, the application of metaphorical analysis to reading the

behavior of an organization (including the modern prison) entails a series of

intellectual steps. The approach begins by accepting the premise that metaphor

is a basic mode of symbolism and that all theory is constructed as a symbolic

form. In this regard, the use of metaphor in organizational analysis requires one

to interactively cross images (e.g. the prison as a machine; the prison as culture,

the prison as an organism); that is, to selectively create comparisons or

substitutions for the purpose of assessing how such linkages generate new

understandings or interpretations (Black, 1962). In this process of crossing

images, it is important that there be some degree of difference between the

subjects involved in the metaphorical process. This difference is important

193Reading Prisons: A Metaphoric-Organizational Approach