Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T21:48:11.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Consequences of Prisoners' Micro-Resistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Ashley T. Rubin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

For more than twenty years, scholars have called for greater attention to the consequences of micro-resistance to legality. Using archival data from Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary (1829–1875), I examine the consequences of noncompliant prisoner behavior. I find that prisoners' noncompliance often entailed substantial costs to prisoners, particularly in comparison to the substantial benefits of complying with the prison regime. Despite its cost to prisoners, noncompliance did not have a single set of uniformly negative consequences for the prison regime. In fact, some forms of noncompliance may have actually protected the prison's reputation. Prison administrators, external allies, and critics used episodes of noncompliance for their own goals and to reinforce their preexisting claims about the propriety of competing prison designs, yielding this variable significance of noncompliance. As this study illustrates, connecting prisoner misconduct to power dynamics in the broader field produces a fuller understanding of micro-resistance's consequences.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , Winter 2017 , pp. 138 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Abu‐Lughod, L. 1990. The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women. American Ethnologist 17 (1): 41–55.Google Scholar
Bordt, R. L., and Musheno, M. C. 1988. Bureaucratic Co‐Optation of Informal Dispute Processing: Social Control as an Effect of Inmate Grievance Policy. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 25 (1): 7–26.Google Scholar
Bosworth, M. 1999. Engendering Resistance: Agency and Power in Women's Prisons. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth.Google Scholar
Bosworth, M., and Carrabine, E. 2001. Reassessing Resistance: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Prison. Punishment & Society 3 (4): 501–15.Google Scholar
BPDS. 1835. Tenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Boston Prison Discipline Society. Boston, MA: Perkins, Marvin, & Co.Google Scholar
Brisbin, R. A. 2010. Resistance to Legality. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 6 (1): 25–44.Google Scholar
Brown, A., and Clare, E. 2005. A History of Experience: Exploring Prisoners' Accounts of Incarceration. In The Persistent Prison: Problems, Images and Alternatives, ed. Emsley, C., 49–73. London: Francis Boutle.Google Scholar
Calavita, K., and Jenness, V. 2013. Inside the Pyramid of Disputes: Naming Problems and Filing Grievances in California Prisons. Social Problems 60 (1): 50–80.Google Scholar
Carrabine, E. 2004. Power, Discourse and Resistance. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Carrabine, E. 2005. Prison Riots, Social Order and the Problem of Legitimacy. British Journal of Criminology 45 (6): 896–913.Google Scholar
Chua, L. J. 2012. Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements in Authoritarian States: The Case of Gay Collective Action in Singapore. Law & Society Review 46 (4): 713–48.Google Scholar
Clemmer, D. 1940. The Prison Community. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Crewe, B. 2005. Prisoner Society in the Era of Hard Drugs. Punishment & Society 7 (4): 457–81.Google Scholar
Crewe, B. 2007. Power, Adaptation and Resistance in a Late‐Modern Men's Prison. British Journal of Criminology 47:256–75.Google Scholar
Crewe, B. 2009. The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation and Social Life in an English Prison. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crewe, B. 2011. Depth, Weight, Tightness: Revisiting the Pains of Imprisonment. Punishment & Society 13 (5): 509–29.Google Scholar
Crewe, B., Liebling, A., and Hulley, S. 2014. Heavy‐Light, Absent‐Present: Rethinking the “Weight” of Imprisonment. British Journal of Sociology 65 (3): 387–410.Google Scholar
Crewe, B., Liebling, A., and Hulley, S. 2015. Staff‐Prisoner Relationships, Staff Professionalism, and the Use of Authority in Public‐ and Private‐Sector Prisons. Law & Social Inquiry 40 (2): 309–344 Google Scholar
Crewe, B., Warr, J., Bennett, P., and Smith, A. 2014. The Emotional Geography of Prison Life. Theoretical Criminology 18 (1): 56–74.Google Scholar
Cummins, E. 1994. The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dalley, B. 1993. Following the Rules? Women's Responses to Incarceration, New Zealand, 1880–1920. Journal of Social History 27 (2): 309–25.Google Scholar
Edelman, L. B., Erlanger, H. S., and Lande, J. 1993. Internal Dispute Resolution: The Transformation of Civil Rights in the Workplace. Law & Society Review 27 (3): 497–534.Google Scholar
Edelman, L. B., and Suchman, M. C. 1999. When the “Haves” Hold Court: Speculations on the Organizational Internalization of Law. Law & Society Review 33 (4): 941–91.Google Scholar
Elwell, E. V. 1862. Elizabeth Velora Elwell Correspondence. Series III, State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Records. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Ewick, P., and Silbey, S. S. 1992. Conformity, Contestation, and Resistance: An Account of Legal Consciousness. New England Law Review 26:731–49.Google Scholar
Ewick, P., and Silbey, S. S. 1998. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Feeley, M., and Rubin, E. 2000. Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America's Prisons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fligstein, N., and McAdam, D. 2011. Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields. Sociological Theory 29 (1): 1–26.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foulke, W. 1846−1852. Notebooks Concerning Prisons and Prisoners. Box 7, William Parker Foulke Papers. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Geffen, E. M. 1982. Industrial Reform and Social Crisis, 1841–1854. In Philadelphia: A 300‐Year History, ed. Weigley, R. F., 307–62. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Gilliom, J. 2001. Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, I. 1961. Asylums. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, P. 2008. “It's Just Black, White, or Hispanic”: An Observational Study of Racializing Moves in California's Segregated Prison Reception Centers. Law & Society Review 42 (4): 735–70.Google Scholar
Goodman, P., Page, J., and Phelps, M. 2015. The Long Struggle: An Agonistic Perspective on Penal Development. Theoretical Criminology 19 (3): 315–35.Google Scholar
Gottschalk, M. 2011. The Past, Present, and Future of Mass Incarceration in the United States. Criminology & Public Policy 10 (3): 483–504.Google Scholar
Grassian, S. 2006. Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement. Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 22:325–83.Google Scholar
Handler, J. F. 1992. Postmodernism, Protest, and the New Social Movements. Law & Society Review 26 (4): 697–732.Google Scholar
Haney, C. 2003. Mental Health Issues in Long‐Term Solitary and “Supermax” Confinement. Crime and Delinquency 49 (1): 124–56.Google Scholar
Haney, C., and Lynch, M. 1997. Regulating Prisons of the Future: A Psychological Analysis of Supermax and Solitary Confinement. New York University Review of Law & Social Change 23:477–570.Google Scholar
Haslam, S. A., and Reicher, S. D. 2012. When Prisoners Take Over the Prison: A Social Psychology of Resistance. Personality and Social Psychology Review 16 (2): 154–79.Google Scholar
Hayden, E. 2013. “She Keeps the Place in Continual Excitement”: Female Inmates' Reactions to Incarceration in Antebellum Pennsylvania's Prisons. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid‐Atlantic Studies 80 (1): 51–84.Google Scholar
Ignatieff, M. 1978. A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Janofsky, J. L. 2004. ‘There Is No Hope For the Likes of Me’: Eastern State Penitentiary, 1829–1856. PhD thesis, Temple University.Google Scholar
Janofsky, J. L. 2012. Hopelessly Hardened: The Complexities of Penitentiary Discipline at Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary. In Buried Lives: Incarcerated in Early America, ed. Tarter, M. L. and Bell, R., 106–23. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Jewkes, Y. 2005. Men Behind Bars: “Doing” Masculinity as an Adaptation to Imprisonment. Men and Masculinities 8 (1): 44–63.Google Scholar
Kruttschnitt, C., and Gartner, R. 2005. Marking Time in the Golden State: Women's Imprisonment in California. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liebling, A. 2004. Prisons and Their Moral Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Liebling, A. 2011. Moral Performance, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Prison Pain. Punishment & Society 13 (5): 530–50.Google Scholar
Lynch, M. 2010. Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Maynard‐Moody, S., and Musheno, M. 2003. Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Service. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
McCann, M. W. 1992. Resistance, Reconstruction, and Romance in Legal Scholarship. Law & Society Review 26 (4): 733–50.Google Scholar
McCann, M. W. 1994. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCann, M. W., and March, T. 1996. Law and Everyday Forms of Resistance: A Socio‐Political Assessment. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 15:207–36.Google Scholar
McLennan, R. M. 2008. The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776–1941. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meranze, M. 1996. Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760–1835. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Merry, S. E. 1995. Resistance and the Cultural Power of Law. Law & Society Review 29 (1): 11–26.Google Scholar
Milovanovic, D., and Thomas, J. 1989. Overcoming the Absurd: Prisoner Litigation as Primitive Rebellion. Social Problems 36 (1): 48–60.Google Scholar
Minute Books of the Board of Inspectors and Board of Trustees of the Eastern State Penitentiary. 1829–1885. Volumes 1–4. Eastern State Penitentiary Collection, Record Group 15 (#15.44). Pennsylvania State Archives.Google Scholar
Morrill, C., Zald, M. N., and Rao, H. 2003. Covert Political Conflict in Organizations: Challenges from Below. Annual Review of Sociology 29:391–415.Google Scholar
Mumby, D. K. 2005. Theorizing Resistance in Organization Studies: A Dialectical Approach. Management Communication Quarterly 19 (1): 19–44.Google Scholar
Newman, S. P., and Smith, B. G. 2012. Incarcerated Innocents: Inmates, Conditions, and Survival Strategies in Philadelphia's Almshouse and Jail. In Buried Lives: Incarcerated in Early America, ed. Tarter, M. L. and Bell, R., 60–84. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
O'Brien, P. 1982. The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth‐Century France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Page, J. 2011. The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pennsylvania. 1835a. Report of the Joint Committee of the Legislature of Pennsylvania Relative to the Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadelphia (Mar. 26, 1835). Harrisburg, PA: Welsh and Patterson.Google Scholar
Pennsylvania. 1835b. Testimony from Legislative Committee to Investigate State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Partial Transcript. Series II, State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Records. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Pennsylvania. 1845. Sixteenth Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Eastern State Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, PA: Ed. Barrington and Geo. D. Haswell.Google Scholar
Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy. 1859. A Day in the Eastern State Penitentiary. Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy 14 (4): 145–61.Google Scholar
Piacentini, L. 2004. Penal Identities in Russian Prison Colonies. Punishment & Society 6 (2): 131–47.Google Scholar
Pisciotta, A. 1994. Benevolent Repression: Social Control and the American Reformatory‐Prison Movement. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Regev‐Messalem, S. 2014. Trapped in Resistance: Collective Struggle Through Welfare Fraud in Israel. Law & Society Review 48 (4): 741–72.Google Scholar
Reiter, K. A. 2014. The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Resistance Within the Structural Constraints of a U.S. Supermax Prison. South Atlantic Quarterly 113 (3): 579–611.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, G. 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, A. T. 2015a. A Neo‐Institutional Account of Prison Diffusion. Law & Society Review 49 (2): 365–99.Google Scholar
Rubin, A. T. 2015b. Resistance or Friction: Understanding the Significance of Secondary Adjustments. Theoretical Criminology 19 (1): 23–42.Google Scholar
Sarat, A. 1990. “… The Law Is All Over”: Power, Resistance and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor. Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 2 (2): 343–79.Google Scholar
Schoenfeld, H. 2010. Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation. Law & Society Review 44 (3–4): 731–68.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. 1992. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shammas, V. L. 2014. The Pains of Freedom: Assessing the Ambiguity of Scandinavian Penal Exceptionalism on Norway's Prison Island. Punishment & Society 16 (1): 104–23.Google Scholar
Simon, J. 2000. The “Society of Captives” in the Era of Hyper‐Incarceration. Theoretical Criminology 4 (3): 285–308.Google Scholar
Simon, J. 2014. Mass Incarceration on Trial. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Sparks, J. R., and Bottoms, A. E. 1995. Legitimacy and Order in Prisons. British Journal of Sociology 46 (1): 45–62.Google Scholar
Sparks, R., Bottoms, A. E., and Hay, W. 1996. Prisons and the Problem of Order. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Spierenburg, P. 1991. The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Sykes, G. M. 1958. The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sykes, G. M., and Messinger, S. 1960. The Inmate Social System. In Theoretical Studies in Social Organization of the Prison, ed. Cloward, R. A., Cressey, D. R., Grosser, G. H., McCleery, R., Ohlin, L. E., Sykes, G. M., and Messinger, S. L., 5–19. New York: Social Science Research Council.Google Scholar
Trammell, R. 2011. Enforcing the Convict Code: Violence and Prison Culture. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Ugelvik, T. 2011. The Hidden Food: Mealtime Resistance and Identity Work in a Norwegian Prison. Punishment & Society 13 (1): 47–63.Google Scholar
Ugelvik, T. 2014. Paternal Pains of Imprisonment: Incarcerated Fathers, Ethnic Minority Masculinity and Resistance Narratives. Punishment & Society 16 (2): 152–68.Google Scholar
Wacquant, L. 2002. The Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography in the Age of Mass Incarceration. Ethnography 3 (4): 371–97.Google Scholar
Warden's Daily Journal. 1829−1877. Volumes 1–2. Eastern State Penitentiary Collection, Record Group 15 (#15.50). Pennsylvania State Archives.Google Scholar
White, L. E. 1990. Subordination, Rhetorical Survival Skills, and Sunday Shoes: Notes on the Hearing of Mrs. G. Buffalo Law Review 38:1–58.Google Scholar
Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway, 42 Pa. 446 (1862).Google Scholar
Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway, 42 Pa. 446 (1862).Google Scholar