Section 4: Violence Among People in Prison

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10439862221096898

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862221096898

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2022, Vol. 38(2) 243 –244

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10439862221096898

journals.sagepub.com/home/ccj

Essay

Section 4: Violence Among

People in Prison

Essays

On the Violence of Prison, by Kenneth E. Hartman

Coming to a Roost Near You, by William Jones

Untitled, by Thomas Everette Moore

Opinions from an Inmate, by Matthew R. Hettinger

A Letter From a Michigan Prison Cell, by Westley Johnson

The Hidden Violence of the State on Prisoners: Night Checks, by Michael Irwin

In Corrections: Punitive Correction is Violent Criminal Justice, by Jarret J. Keith

Introduction

This section deals with violence in prison settings, whether it is overt or covert in

nature. Many submissions to this special issue detailed violence between incarcerated

people as they struggled to cope with the prison environment. As Novisky and Peralta

(2020) point out, researchers too often overlook the profound harms of witnessing

violence between others while incarcerated Novisky and Peralta (2020). Several

essays touch on the delicate balance of power between corrections officers (COs) and

inmates and how their interactions instrumentally shape the prison experience.

In this section, Kenneth Hartman describes the constant presence of violence in his

38 years inside California’s prison system, noting succinctly that “violence never dis-

appeared.” Even after his release, Hartman reminds us that the violence he encoun-

tered in prison profoundly shapes the way he operates in the world. William Jones

urges us to think about the root causes of incarceration as he describes how he navi-

gated the violence of Texas prisons for decades. Thomas Everette Moore provides

vivid examples for how he successfully managed and navigated the often simmering

violence between people he was incarcerated with, but carried the trauma of these

strategies through his release from prison in 2009 and through obtaining his PhD in

2020.

Matthew Hettinger reflects back on his 13 years incarcerated and observes that the

level of confinement in a prison is not only reflective of the type of inmates in the

facility but also the types of people that work in them. Hettinger notes that rehabilita-

tion-focused COs are likely to be hired in “good” prisons, and punitive employees are

1096898CCJXXX10.1177/10439862221096898Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

research-article2022