Prisonization or Resocialization?

This report focuses on data obtained from 276 adult male felons who were inmates in a maximum-security penitentiary in 1971. The general intent of the larger study of which this essay is a part was to test the viability of two available explanations of the impact of confinement. One of these models, often referred to as the "deprivation model," provides a restrictive perspective by virtue of its unusually heavy emphasis on intra-institutional processes and influences. A more recent approach, the "importa tion model," accepts the importance of such intra-institutional variables, but also points to the importance of variables that originate outside the context of the prison and, in many cases, cannot be directly manipulated by correctional officials. The specific variables reported in this pa per include measures of social class of origin, social class of attainment, preprison involvement in criminality, extent of contact with the larger society during confinement, and the inmates' perceptions of their post-prison life-chances. These independent variables were correlated with a measure of prisonization. The findings provide evidence in sup port of the more inclusive conceptualization provided by the im portation model. The obvious implication is that overemphasis on intra-institutional factors will only prove to be misleading.