Scott, DG (2015) Eating your insides out: cultural, physical and institutionally-structured violence in the prison place. Prison Service Journal (221). pp. 58-62. ISSN 0300-3558

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Abstract

This article explores three forms of violence in the prison place: physical, cultural and structural. The article starts with an overview of the nature and extent of 'everyday mundane' physical violence in the prison place, drawing upon but also problematising official data. The article then looks at 'cultures of violence' and the role that they perform in legitimating everyday prison violence. Finally, and most importantly, the article then explores the problem of 'structural violence' (Galtung, 1969) in the prison place and the manner in which it underscores both physical and cultural violence. Making connections with the 'deprivation' thesis in the sociology of imprisonment literature and detailing harmful outcomes and consequences of structural violence, such as the generation of suicidal ideation and self inflicted deaths in prison, the article concludes by arguing that prisons are inevitably places of violence, iatrogenic harm, injury and death. Any successful anti-violence and harm reduction strategies must therefore be directly tied to broader radical reductionist and penal abolitionist agendas.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology > HV8301 Penology. Prisons. Corrections
Divisions:	Humanities & Social Science
Publisher:	HM Prison Service
Date Deposited:	21 Apr 2016 07:48
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 13:00
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/3486

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