PRISON GUARDS AND “SNITCHES”
- 1 July 1985
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in The British Journal of Criminology
- Vol. 25 (3) , 217-233
- https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a047528
Abstract
This article examines how the staff in a maximum security penitentiary co-opted the dominant inmates or élites to act as informers. Previous research and popular presentations have generally portrayed “rats” as outcasts and weak prisontrs. Participant observation data reveal that the inmate-snitches in the prison undtr study were not weak but wtre the most aggrmive and feared inmates. Infoming was their actual prison work-role and the ordinary inmates lacked the influence and power to impute deviancy to the inmate-snitch role. The last section describes how the staff used inmate-snitch reports to control the inmate population.Keywords
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