The Pains of Imprisonment and Contemporary Prisoner Culture in Canada

• Author: Rosemary Ricciardelli,Laura McKendy
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/00328855211048166
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Pains of

Imprisonment and

Contemporary Prisoner

Culture in Canada

Laura McKendy

1

and Rosemary Ricciardelli

1

Abstract

Drawing on interviews conducted with former federal and provincial prison-

ers in Ontario, Canada, we consider how the unique social conditions in

these two institutional contexts shape interpersonal dynamics and the pris-

oner experience. Despite notable differences in federal versus provincial

prisoner culture, we suggest that prisoners in both contexts lived in environ-

ments marked by uncertainties and risk; in response, they tended to adapt to

a highly individualistic orientation toward doing time. Based on our analysis,

we complicate the conceptualization of prisoner culture as primarily serving

an adaptive function, suggesting the prison social climate may actually drive

the most salient pains of imprisonment.

Keywords

prison culture, pains of imprisonment, prisoner experiences, comparative

prison research, carceral habitus

1

Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Rosemary Ricciardelli, Sociology Department, Memorial University, AA 4066 HSS, 230 Elizabeth

Ave., St. John’s, NL, A1E 4L6, Canada.

Email: rricciardell@mun.ca

Research Article

The Prison Journal

2021, Vol. 101(5) 528–552

© 2021 SAGE Publications

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00328855211048166

journals.sagepub.com/home/tpj

Introduction

Well over half a century ago, prison scholars drew attention to the inf‌luence of

a“prison society”in fundamentally shaping prisoners’experiences of incar-

ceration (Clemmer, 1940; Goffman, 1961b; Sykes & Messinger, 1960). The

prison social world continues to encompass an array of norms that govern

daily living; each norm structured around a distinct set of values and

beliefs that, in turn, became a key focus of early penal scholarship (see for

select examples: Akers et al., 1977; McCorkle et al., 1995). A central

insight about prison living, arguably emerging from this work, is that prison-

ers respond to the fundamental deprivations of prison life through collective

modes of adaptation (Clemmer, 1940; McCorkle et al., 1995; Sykes, 1958). In

other words, given the limited set of tools and resources available, prisoners

work together to make incarceration less painful than it might otherwise be

through creative strategies of adaptation and/or resistance. The prison social

world served the purpose, albeit unoff‌icial, of buffering the psychological

harms of imprisonment, primarily by providing prisoners with a sense of

structure, social identities, as well as common meanings and goals; in

essence, a society of their own.

Given that carceral realities are shaped both by the events and workings in

greater society (Crewe, 2009; Irwin & Cressey, 1977), as well as the condi-

tions of prison life (Clemmer, 1940; Sykes, 1958), prison research is

needed, as Crewe (2015) argues, to shed light on such ‘blind spots’of

penal theory and to provide insights on the lived realities of incarceration

within a particular time and place. Within the Canadian context, key historical

developments affecting all correctional systems (e.g., the federal governed by

Correctional Services Canada, and the 13 provincial and territorial systems)

include changes in: sentencing practices; prison population management strat-

egies, and infrastructural changes and prison closures (Off‌ice of the Auditor

General, 2014; Ricciardelli & Moir, 2013). Moreover, Canadian federal

prisons, which hold prisoners serving sentences of two years or more &

nbsp; (Correctional Service Canada, 2016), witnessed changes in prisoner

demographics. Such changes include more racialized prisoners (Gottschall,

2012), Indigenous and women prisoners (Sapers, 2015), older prisoners

(Beaudette & Stewart, 2014; Greiner & Allenby, 2010), and prisoners

serving life and indeterminate sentences (Ruddell et al., 2010).

Population-specif‌ic approaches to correctional interventions, such as

culturally-sensitive programming for federal Indigenous prisoners (Derkzen

et al., 2017) have emerged. In addition, new federal policies regarding the

use of segregation, placement of transgender prisoners, and prison needle

exchange have been and continue to be introduced (CSC, 2018a; Motiuk &

McKendy and Ricciardelli 529