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50 How. J. Crim. Just. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/hjcj50 and id is 1 raw text is: The Howard journal Vol 50 No 1. February 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2311.2010.00645.x ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 1-16 Understanding Violence in the 'Society of Captives': Sykes Meets Bourdieu in Prison ANKE NEUBER Senior Research Fellow, University of Kassel, Germany Abstract: Looking at violence in prison from a sociological perspective, Sykes's Society of Captives remains a classic in penology. Influenced by structural-functionalism, he describes the great influence of the prison structure on its inmates and emphasises the importance of violence for the stabilisation of the prison social order This article will re-examine Sykes's assumptions about the relationship between structure and action, referring to Bourdieu and a biographical approach using a case example from a qualitative longitudinal study with male inmates in young offenders' institutions in Germany. It concludes by asking how the meaning of violence in prison changes, looked at from these different theoretical perspectives. Keywords: violence; prison; structural functionalism; habitus; biography Classical, as well as current, prison studies emphasise the major importance of violence or the threat of violence (Bereswill 1999, 2001, 2002b; Butler 2008; Edgar and O'Donnell 1998; Edgar, O'Donnell and Martin 2003; Kersten and von Wolffersdorff-Ehlert 1980; Neuber 2009; Sim 1994; Sykes 1958/1999). Looking at the sociological explanations for this phenomenon one will find considerable continuity across three theoretical models (cf. Grapendaal 1990): The deprivation model (for example, McCorkle and Korn 1954; Sykes 1958/1999), the importa- tion model (Giallombardo 1966; Irwin and Cressey 1962; Ward and Kassebaum 1965) and the integration model (for example, Thomas and Petersen 1977; Thomas, Petersen and Zingraff 1978). They deal with the question of why violent behaviour exists in the prison subculture. Does it grow out of the structure of the closed institution (as assumed in the deprivation model) or is the inmates' readiness to use violence imported from the outside world (as in the importation model)? It becomes apparent that in research, the reasons for violence in prison are neither seen solely on the part of the institution nor on the part of the subject. This exclusiveness was abrogated in the integration model by relating 1 0 2010 The Author The Howard Journal of CriminalJustice © 2010 The Howard League and Blackwell Publishing Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ UK

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