Michael L. Walker

Marshaling ethnographic data from a county jail, this study introduces “autonomy”—a novel concept and measurement of the degree to which an actor's exchange initiations are regulated by other exchange relations. This study rearticulates mutual dependence arguments about the social order of penological living in terms of social exchange theory and offers several innovations: 1) the structural forms of exchange relations in a penal housing unit stratify “carceral autonomy” across members of a social order; 2) diminished carceral autonomy contributes to the buildup of “exchange frustration”—the mixture of discontent and sadness experienced when goals cannot be achieved due the structure of an exchange network; 3) deprivations, inefficacies, and imported cultural standards contribute to what is exchanged and with whom in a penological setting; 4) caretaking in penological housing units is as much about maintaining social order through a form of generalized exchange as it is about network members helping each other; and 5) the emotional landscape of penological living can be mapped, in part, by examining the distribution of carceral autonomy and exchange frustration.

Criminology, Volume 61, Issue 4 November 2023, Pages 1022-1044

By David Garland

This analysis of the punishment of offenders argues that the social meaning of punishment is poorly understood and needs to be explored if we are to discover ways of punishing that match our social ideals better than current punishments do.

The analysis emphasizes that the institutional framework of modern penology tends to narrow our perceptions of punishment and also to obscure its social ramifications. Thus, it is crucial to understand the major theoretical perspectives on punishment. These include Durkheim's emphasis on punishment's moral effects, Foucault's view that disciplinary punishments operate as power-knowledge mechanisms within broader strategies of domination, the cultural approach of Robert Elias, and the Marxist perspective. The analysis concludes that each approach represents an incomplete, but useful perspective on different aspects of punishment and that future discussions should consider punishment to be a complex social institution that should be analyzed as part of mainstream sociology.

Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 1990. 308p.