The Prison Community and Prison Transformations

Based on research conducted in one of the most significant penal institutions in northern Italy, the article seeks to actualize concepts such as the « prison community » and the « inmate code », both considered central to theory and to sociological and ethnographic research in the field. Looking at the processes of socialization into prison, at the transformations related to internal hierarchies and at negotiation of the social order, two hypotheses are tested. The first is that the changes that have occurred, since the early nineties, to the social composition of the prison population, may have had a major impact on the prison community and the codes of conduct of inmates. The second is that an equally important change in the behavioral attitudes of prisoners may be due to the new methods of internal prison management, launched in the same years, with their emphasis on good behavior and individualized treatment.