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The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the few African countries where human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission is still a silent issue. In the context of the DRC, the purpose of this paper was to investigate how HIV is transmitted among inmates within Congolese correctional facilities. It focuses on the ways certain Congolese correctional services‘ cultures facilitate the spread of HIV. The paper argues that incarceration settings allow for the importation of pre-incarceration lifestyles and risky behaviours into prisons; hence increasing the risk of HIV/AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) transmission among convicts. Methodologically, the paper followed a qualitative approach based mainly on secondary data. A content analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings of the study indicated that prisoners‘ pre-incarceration lifestyle supplemented by prison culture and settings engendered HIV high-risk behaviour among inmates in Congo‘s prisons. In addition, the paper appealed for the government to pay attention to prison cultures generated by the interaction between prison environments and a quest for a sense of psychological wellbeing inside correctional facilities.

For six decades, scholars have relied on Erving Goffman’s (1961) theory of total institutions to understand prison culture. Viewing prisons as total institutions offers insights into role performance and coercive control. However, mounting evidence suggests that prisons are not, in fact, total institutions. In this article, I first trace two credible challenges to the idea of prison as a total institution based on existing data: that prison gates open daily and that prisons operate within a context of overlapping surveillance and punishment supported by broader political and economic interests. Second, I draw on empirical findings from my own yearlong ethnographic study inside one U.S. state women’s prison to illuminate a third challenge to the total institution paradigm. Using religion in prison as a case study, I describe the process of institutional infusion, in which an outside institution proffers attitudes, practices, and resources that individuals may draw on to shape their material and interpretive experiences within a host institution. Prisons are structured to accommodate institutional infusion, further calling their totality into question. I conclude that we can learn far more about the realities and inequalities of the prison experience by viewing prisons as porous institutions.

A considerable amount of research has been directed at understanding the sources of inmate misconduct (offending within prison), whereas few studies have focused on identifying the causes and correlates of prisoner victimization. The sources of inmate victimization should be distinguished from those of offending, however, because the policy implications of each focus differ to some extent. In order to determine the predictors of inmate victimization and stimulate further research on the topic, we systematically reviewed studies of the causes/correlates of prisoner victimization published between 1980 and 2014. Our findings revealed that predictor variables reflecting inmates’ background characteristics (e.g., history of victimization), their institutional routines and experiences (e.g., history of misconduct), and prison characteristics (e.g., population size) all influence victimization.

Prison culture encompasses the unwritten rules, values, behaviors, and power structures within correctional institutions, emerges from interactions among inmates, staff, and the broader societal context. This culture encompasses social hierarchies, unwritten behavioral codes, survival mechanisms, and attitudes towards correctional systems. Its influence extends to inmates’ behavior, perceptions, psychological well-being, and the dynamics of prison management. Studying prison culture is vital for identifying institutional gaps, enhancing safety and efficiency, supporting inmate rehabilitation, safeguarding human rights, and informing evidence-based criminal justice policies. This chapter examines the historical evolution of prison culture from the 1800s to today, exploring its elements, effects, and the challenges it poses. By analyzing these aspects, the chapter aims to foster a comprehensive understanding to guide humane and effective corrections practices.   Inside-out: esplorare la cultura carceraria. La cultura carceraria comprende le regole non scritte, i valori, i comportamenti e le strutture di potere all’interno delle istituzioni correttive, e nasce dalle interazioni tra detenuti, personale e il contesto sociale più ampio. Questa cultura include gerarchie sociali, codici comportamentali non scritti, meccanismi di sopravvivenza e atteggiamenti nei confronti dei sistemi correttivi. La sua influenza si estende al comportamento dei detenuti, alle loro percezioni, al benessere psicologico e alle dinamiche della gestione carceraria. Studiare la cultura carceraria è fondamentale per identificare lacune istituzionali, migliorare la sicurezza e l’efficienza, supportare la riabilitazione dei detenuti, tutelare i diritti umani e informare politiche di giustizia penale basate su dati concreti. Questo capitolo esamina l’evoluzione storica della cultura carceraria dal 1800 a oggi, esplorandone gli elementi, gli effetti e le sfide che pone. Analizzando questi aspetti, il capitolo mira a promuovere una comprensione approfondita per guidare pratiche correttive umane ed efficaci.

Since 2008, numerous Argentine documentary films have explored the complexities of prison education. Prison education documentaries from other countries usually focus overwhelmingly on the possible success of “rehabilitation.” In contrast, this article argues that contemporary Argentine prison education documentaries encourage critical, at times quasi-abolitionist, perspectives on imprisonment by challenging both punitive attitudes and liberal beliefs in the reinserción (reintegration) of prisoners into society. Analyzing the documentaries El almafuerte (dir. Roberto Sebastián Persano, Santiago Nacif Cabrera, and Andrés Martínez Cantó, Argentina, 2009), 13 puertas (dir. David Rubio, Argentina, 2014), Lunas cautivas (dir. Marcia Paradiso, Argentina, 2012), and Pabellón 4 (dir. Diego Gachassin, Argentina, 2017), it draws on insights from film studies and criminology to show how these films provide intersectional and structural critiques of imprisonment. “Touristic” and affective encounters between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people serve to challenge comfortable viewing positions predicated on internal-external carceral and cinematic divides. These films teach spectators that outside spaces, people, and institutions are all central to the meaning, problems, and incoherence of incarceration in Argentina. Desde 2008 se han producido numerosos documentales que abordan las complejidades de la educación en contextos de encierro en Argentina. En otros países, los documentales sobre la educación en contextos de encierro suelen centrarse en el posible éxito de la “rehabilitación.” Por el contrario, arguyo que los documentales argentinos contemporáneos desarrollan perspectivas críticas y a veces cuasi abolicionistas sobre la cárcel, desafiando tanto el punitivismo como la fe liberal en la reinserción de los presos en la sociedad. Analizando El almafuerte (Roberto Sebastián Persano, Santiago Nacif Cabrera y Andrés Martínez Cantó, dirs., Argentina, 2009), 13 puertas (David Rubio, dir., Argentina, 2014), Lunas cautivas (Marcia Paradiso, dir., Argentina, 2012) y Pabellón 4 (Diego Gachassin, dir., Argentina, 2017), combino teorías cinematográficas y criminológicas para demostrar cómo estos documentales ofrecen críticas interseccionales y estructurales sobre el encarcelamiento. Los encuentros “turísticos” y afectivos entre sujetos carcelarios y no carcelarios sirven para desestabilizar las formas dominantes de mirar la cárcel, estructuradas por divisiones rígidas entre lo interno y lo externo. Estos documentales demuestran que los espacios, las personas y las instituciones fuera de la cárcel son centrales al significado, los problemas y la incoherencia de la cárcel en Argentina.

Purpose Prison officers face severe work-related stressors stemming from their interactions with detained people and the professional attitudes they enact, both of which are shaped by the prison culture’s social norms. However, research neglected to investigate the role of prison social norms on officers’ behaviors and well-being. This study aims to test whether promoting prisoner-supportive norms can improve officers’ relationships with and attitudes toward detained people, in turn promoting their professional and psychological well-being. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted on 1,080 Italian prison officers and adopted a mixed correlational-experimental approach. The first correlational part of the study tested the hypothesized processes linking social norms to officers’ well-being. The second part of the study adopted a two-level between-subject experimental design to manipulate supportive vs. punitive norms toward detained people using a priming procedure. Findings The correlational results indicated that supportive norms were associated with higher supportive attitudes and emotional closeness with detained people, in turn sustaining officers’ well-being. However, emotional closeness with incarcerated people also contributed to higher burnout. The experimental results confirmed that priming prisoner-supportive norms increased officers’ supportive behavioral intentions toward detained people, in turn predicting greater anticipated psychological and professional well-being. Originality/value The research provides correlation and experimental evidence of how prosocial norms can influence officers’ well-being by shaping their attitudes and relationships with prisoners, offering practical implications for interventions in prisons and contributing to improving correctional environments and officers’ mental health.

Prison privatization has generally been associated with developments in neoliberal punishment. However, relatively little is known about the specific impact of privatization on the daily life of prisoners, including areas that are particularly salient not just to debates about neoliberal penality, but the wider reconfiguration of public service provision and frontline work. Drawing on a study of values, practices, and quality of life in five private-sector and two public-sector prisons in England and Wales, this article seeks to compare and explain three key domains of prison culture and quality: relationships between frontline staff and prisoners, levels of staff professionalism (or jailcraft), and prisoners' experience of state authority. The study identifies some of the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of the public and private prison sectors, particularly in relation to staff professionalism and its impact on the prisoner experience. These findings have relevance beyond the sphere of prisons and punishment.

In France, women can be incarcerated during pregnancy and can keep their babies with them in prison up to the age of 18 months. The small number of nurseries in France and their unequal geographic distribution as well as the high percentage of foreign prisoners often result in women's isolation from their usual cultural environment. Family members and cultural community play a crucial role in the process of mothering. The aim of this study is to explore through these mothers’ narratives how they experience the cultural aspects of this process in the prison environment. We conducted semi-structured interviews to collect the experience of 25 mothers and 5 pregnant women in 13 different prison nurseries in France and used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the data. Four different themes emerged: prison: repression of cultural practices, prison: a culture of its own, loss of traditional culture, and cultural hybridization. The specific environmental architecture and operating rules in prison nurseries may induce acute repression regarding cultural ways of mothering. Considering both cultural permeability specific to the peripartum period during which women tend to more easily embrace cultural aspects from their environment, and family distance which restrains cultural transmission, these mothers gather multiple factors of vulnerability for full prisonization, as a form of forced assimilation to prison culture. But a sort of specific hybrid prison culture around motherhood seems to emerge instead, in a process similar to creolization.

The United States incarcerates more persons than any other country in the world, both at federal and state levels. Over the past 30 years, problems within the U.S. prison system-specifically, increasing violence and victimization-have presented a unique opportunity for organization development researchers and practitioners to contribute to positively changing prison culture. Driven by a call for action by Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Mark Inch, this research addresses the process by which the Peacemaking in Prison Conflict Management System (PIP CMS), a participative training intervention program incorporating the use of self, has been developed and implemented. The article explains the process for teaching prisoners soft skills such as interpersonal communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution and how these skills prepare parole-eligible prisoners for life outside prison. It also reveals initial specific results of the pilot program, which was interrupted by the COVID pandemic, and opportunities for future research.

In 1974, when health care administrator Seth B. Goldsmith published his review of prison health are in Public Health Reports, 400,000 people were incarcerated in the prisons and jails of the US, a number that would jump 5.5 times during the next 40 years. His views reflected careful consideration of the vast neglect and deliberately imposed suffering in what passed for carceral health care. Prison health care, as one of the key manifestations of the dehumanizing of incarcerated people, became a central focus of outcries and lawsuits.