Prisons have garnered attention from the social sciences for several centuries. For social sciences, especially sociology and criminology, there are two main lines of inquiry related to prisons. The first relates to studies focused on what actually happens in prisons, with topics such as: prison policy, prison management, prison violence, quality of life in prison (health, food quality, overcrowding, etc.), and prison culture. Two approaches developed in this area, first studied prisons and prison life from the structural-functional perspective, while the other forms the conflict perspective. The second line of inquiry focuses on how prisons and the sentencing policy of courts impact wider society, culture, economy, and politics.

               Structural Functional Studies of the Prison Life

The Prison Community (1940), by Donald Clemmer, and The Society of Captives (1958), by Gresham Sykes, are important early studies of prison society that use structural functional analysis to explain how prison systems influence inmate behavior and social order. Clemmer’s study, based on interviews with prison staff and inmates, examined how prison administration shapes inmate subculture. He argued that weak or inconsistent control by prison authorities allows inmates to develop their own system of values, rules, and behaviors. This inmate subculture often encouraged hostility toward authority, work, government, and even other inmate groups. Clemmer introduced the concept of “prisonization,” a socialization process in which experienced inmates teach new prisoners the norms and attitudes of prison life. As inmates become prisonized, they often develop resistant, deceptive, and obstructive behavior. Clemmer believed this inmate culture was an unintended consequence of prison control policies and that it weakened rehabilitation efforts by promoting negativity and hostility among prisoners.

Similarly, Sykes studied prison life to understand the causes of prison riots and institutional instability. He found that prisons depend on authority and control, but prison officials often lack the legitimate power needed to gain inmate obedience. As a result, correctional officers frequently make compromises with inmates, such as granting privileges to cooperative prisoners in exchange for maintaining order. Sykes argued that these informal arrangements are necessary for prison stability because strict enforcement can disrupt the balance of power and strengthen more violent inmates. He also emphasized that imprisonment affects inmate attitudes through daily experiences of rejection, deprivation, alienation, and insecurity. Inmates often react psychologically by rejecting the authority that rejects them. In addition, Sykes highlighted the stressful conditions faced by correctional officers, who worked in dangerous environments while struggling to maintain control over a large inmate population.

The Prison: Studies in Institutional Organization and Change (1961) by Donald R. Cressey and Theoretical Studies in Social Organization of the Prison (1960) by Richard Cloward and his colleagues also used a structural functional approach to analyze prison systems. Both studies portrayed prisons as authoritarian institutions organized through bureaucratic hierarchies with the authority to control inmates. They explained that prison control policies shape the institution’s power structure, which then affects communication patterns and social values within the prison. For example, staff members often focus on maintaining authority over inmates, while inmates tend to avoid communicating openly with staff.

Cressey’s study further showed that prisons operating under different policies—one centered on security and custody, and the other focused on rehabilitation and treatment—develop distinct organizational hierarchies with conflicting goals. The custody branch relied on an authoritative decision-making model, whereas the treatment branch favored a more participatory approach. Because of these opposing structures and objectives, both branches had to improve communication and cooperation to achieve institutional security while also supporting rehabilitation programs. The study also found that inmates and prison staff could cooperate effectively when group expectations and loyalties did not interfere with their interactions. However, communication and relationships between staff and inmates often weakened when pressures from their respective groups influenced their behavior and attitudes.

Webb and Morris, in Prison Guards (1978), focused on the subculture of correctional officers and found that officers viewed maintaining security as their primary responsibility. Discipline was considered the main method for achieving order, but officers believed that poor prison conditions and inexperienced administrators weakened prison safety. A major source of frustration for officers was the lack of communication from administrators and the failure to involve officers in decision-making. Officers felt that administrators distrusted them and ignored their practical knowledge about inmate behavior and security concerns. As a result, officers believed their own safety was endangered. This frustration led many officers to criticize administrators openly and resist authority by limiting their effort to only what was strictly required. The study also showed that officers developed a protective subculture. Veteran officers pressured new recruits to become emotionally hardened and suspicious of inmates. Officers who were seen as too sympathetic toward inmates were labeled “pro-inmate.” This culture encouraged emotional distance as a form of self-protection against manipulation or betrayal by inmates.

In Prison Officers and Their World (1988), Kauffman explored correctional officer subculture in Massachusetts prisons during the 1970s. Through interviews with officers, she described how new recruits were often placed in dangerous, high-contact positions with inmates and received little support from administrators or experienced staff. Inmates would aggressively test the recruits, leading many officers to become emotionally hardened and more accepting of violence as a method of control. Kauffman argued that this harsh initiation process was not simply caused by individual officers but resulted from the absence of a clear administrative policy for maintaining prison order. Rather than addressing the ongoing violence and disorder within the prison system, administrators focused on blaming officers for prison unrest.

DiIulio, in Governing Prisons (1987), examined how different prison systems in Texas, California, and Michigan addressed prison management. Texas followed a strict “control” model with centralized authority and inmate enforcers known as “building tenders,” though this practice was later declared illegal. California adopted a “consensus” approach that emphasized inmate cooperation, staff training, and rehabilitation programs. Michigan used a “responsibility” model that rewarded inmate accountability through a bureaucratic system. DiIulio found that Michigan prisons offered inmates a better quality of life, although staff members struggled to adapt to the responsibility-based approach.

            Conflict Approach in the Study of Prison Life

The conflict theory perspective on prisons criticized strict inmate control as unjust and argued that power should be shared more equally between prison authorities and inmates. The Politics of Punishment (1973), by Erik Olin Wright, represents this critical approach to prison analysis. Unlike structural functionalists, Wright strongly criticized prison rehabilitation programs, arguing that they manipulated prisoners into conforming to authority and then used obedience as a requirement for parole. He believed prisoners were largely powerless against the dehumanizing effects of prison systems, which he viewed as forms of “liberal” totalitarian control.

The Prison: Policy and Practice (1976), by Keith Hawkins, offered another critical analysis of prison management. Hawkins argued that correctional officers had been oversimplified in earlier sociological studies and that they actually faced serious role conflicts between maintaining security and supporting rehabilitation. Because officers lacked clear job descriptions and proper training, many developed negative attitudes toward administrators and engaged in obstructive behavior. Hawkins believed these tensions, combined with the conflicting goals of punishment and rehabilitation, made prison reform difficult. He also criticized overly positive prison evaluations that ignored deeper institutional problems. In his analysis of the Attica Prison Riot, Hawkins argued that poor staff-inmate relationships were a major cause of the violence. Officers supervised large inmate populations with little opportunity to build trust or mutual respect. He also criticized recruitment policies that prioritized physical strength over communication and leadership skills.

Prisons in Turmoil (1980), by John Irwin, also reflected the conflict perspective. Irwin argued that prison policies are shaped by broader economic and political conditions rather than only internal prison dynamics. He criticized earlier prison sociologists for ignoring the fact that inmates bring outside social values into prison. Irwin believed prisons could become safer and less authoritarian if both staff and inmates were given greater involvement in policy decisions and grievance procedures. Together, these conflict theorists emphasized that prison problems are rooted not only in prison organization but also in wider social inequalities and power structures.

Prisons as an Expression of the State’s Control over Society and Individuals

Foucault's book Discipline and Punish (1975) depicts a great transformation in the way society monitors and punishes criminals. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the punishment of criminals was public and very brutal - public torture, humiliation, and the death penalty using the cruelest methods. In the nineteenth century, the element of the public spectacle of punishing criminals disappeared. Instead, states started building prisons in which, far away from the eyes of the public, criminals are locked and isolated. The expression of social (state) power is no longer done through a direct and open spectacle of punishing criminals, but power starts being expressed through strict supervision and isolation of criminals. Jeremy Bentham's proposal to build a perfect prison, which Bentham called a "panopticon", is, for Foucault, the best example of such a change concerning punishing criminals. In the panopticon, the surveillance of criminals was supposed to be constant and total. Although imprisoning criminals is considered a more rational and humane procedure today, Foucault believes that both ways of treating criminals are arbitrary and cruel, and are not proof of any progress. The key change that has taken place is in the techniques that the state uses to express and consolidate its power. Instead of spreading the public message with brutal public punishment, the state now emphasizes surveilling and disciplining citizens. 

Similarly, Gramsci argued that the state creates institutions - police, army, prisons, psychiatric institutions - that carry out repressive measures against those who do not accept the state’s hegemony, while, in his book Asylums (1961), Goffman defined prison as a „total institution“, where a person spends all their time and experiences a reduced sense of self. 

In his article “Towards a Political Economy of Crime” (1975), Chambliss identifies two key mechanisms of capitalist production: generating demand for unnecessary goods and maintaining a “reserve army” of unemployed workers. He presents criminal law as inherently class-based and argues that crime serves several social functions: it reduces excess labor (by incarcerating some individuals and employing others in control institutions), diverts the lower classes’ attention from their exploitation, and persists because it benefits those whose interests depend on its existence.

In his well-known book Crime and the Legal Process (1969), and even more prominently in the article  “The Saints and Roughnecks” (1976), Chambliss examines how lower-class individuals and Black Americans are treated within U.S. society, explaining why they are disproportionately represented in crime statistics compared to their share of the population. In “The Saints and the Roughnecks,” he analyzes two groups of high school students. The first group, which he labels the “Saints,” consisted of white, upper-middle-class boys from stable and affluent families. They were active in school activities and performed well academically. Despite engaging in various delinquent behaviors—such as drinking in public, reckless driving, minor theft, and vandalism—none of them acquired a criminal record or were arrested during the two years of observation.

The second group, referred to as the “Roughnecks,” included boys from lower-class, working-class families. They were involved in similar activities, including fighting, theft, and drinking. However, unlike the “Saints,” they frequently encountered trouble with both the police and their local community. This disparity occurred even though the level of delinquency in both groups was roughly the same.

Wright, in The Politics of Punishment, argued that crime was not mainly caused by individual failings but by broader structural problems in capitalist society, such as unemployment and inequality. According to him, prisons and crime could only truly be reformed through major social and economic changes, including a shift toward socialism. He advocated decentralized prisons, greater public oversight, and prison systems that served the interests of ordinary people rather than powerful elites. Wright also believed traditional prison control methods created oppressive and inhumane conditions.

In Globalization: The Human Consequences (1998), Bauman explores how the process of economic globalization brought increasing independence of capital, which, freed from central control, becomes autonomous, but also increasingly chaotic, which leads to the creation of a "new world chaos" (as a counterpart to the "new world order")

To manage this chaos, all states are obliged to build surveillance and punishment complexes, almost completely aimed at the poor, while going to prison is a punishment for the very fact that they are poor. The state and the media are making a spectacle of criminal acts, and the desire of the state and the public to punish criminals is becoming more important than the crime rate and the effectiveness of prison sanctions.

                  Anarchist Critique of Laws and Prisons

Anarchist authors have been, from the start, some of the fiercest critics of the prison system. Feminist-anarchist Emma Goldman argued that laws are unnecessary because crime is just a misdirected negative energy, while prisons are a real social crime that only reproduces anti-social behavior. Russian anarchist Kropotkin also claimed that most criminal acts are the product of those very laws and the authority behind them. Prisons are the worst product of government and law, because they not only do not reduce crime, but also serve to destroy the will of individuals, and it is not possible to improve them. He believes that the abolition of all types of laws, as well as prisons, will eliminate the causes of criminal acts. People who continue to behave anti-socially will be exposed to public pressure, so they will be forced, but also supported by society, to reform their behavior.

           Prisons and the Racial Inequality in the USA

Sociologist and activist Angela Davis is a great opponent of the US penal system. She argues that the prison system in America serves to maintain the racist capitalist system, but also to appropriate the products of the free labor of prisoners. Of the more than two million prisoners in the United States, most are African American (although they make up 12% of the population), and most have been convicted of crimes that are a direct consequence of poverty. Similarly, in the book The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), William Julius Wilson emphasizes the importance of race for the life chances of urban poor African Americans. The deterioration in the situation of a large number of African Americans occurred in the early 1960s due to several structural factors. The decrease in the number of well-paid jobs in the manufacturing sector in cities, and at the same time the increase in low-paid service jobs, contributed to the reduction of employment, but also to the reduction of real wages of those who were employed. This led to impoverishment, so there was an increase in crime among the male population, as well as an increase in the number of people sentenced to prison terms. The consequence of that was an increased number of single-parent families, in which only the mother was present.

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