Real prison dynamics contradict the violent TV-prison stereotype

Evidence

The prison makes possible, even encourages, the organization of a milieu of delinquents, loyal to one another, hierarchized, ready to aid and abet any future criminal act: ‘Society prohibits associations of more than twenty persons … and it constitutes for itself associations of 200, 500, 1,200 convicts in the maisons centrales, which are constructed for them ad hoc, and which it divides up for their greater convenience into workshops, courtyards, dormitories, refectories, where they can all meet together … And it multiplies them across France in such a way that, where there is a prison, there is an association … and as many anti-social clubs’ (Moreau-Christophe, 7). — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 405 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Prison imagery in media makes incarceration seem natural and permanent; Prisons function as schools of crime and organized delinquency — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 405; Sexual abuse of prisoners is reframed as prisoner deviance

Broader Connections

• Prisons function as schools of crime and organized delinquency #complicates (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 405