Summary
Contents
Subject index
Masculinities and Violence, the latest volume in the Research on Men and Masculinities series, takes a sobering look at men and violence. Editor Lee H. Bowker has carefully chosen essays that shed light on the causes and settings of masculine violence. The three essays in Part I lay out the ways in which men learn violence and repeat it. Part II focuses on the ways men victimize women and children. Part III turns to ways men victimize other men. Finally, Part IV looks at men and organizational violence. Understanding the masculinities-violence nexus is crucially important to finding ways to mitigate the masculine tendency to violence. This perceptive volume will be an important resource for all those interested in the field of gender roles, men's studies, and interpersonal violence.
Hypermasculinity and Prison Violence
Hypermasculinity and Prison Violence
In a recent book, Victor Hassine (1996), a long-term prison denizen, described what he called the “Inmate's Dilemma.” He writes that,
In the life of an inmate, if you catch someone stealing from you, you're compelled to deal with it physically…. If someone steals from you and you decide to report him to the guards, all that will happen is that the thief will go to the Hole for a while. Soon he'll be back in population and ready to seek revenge. Revenge in prison can take place years after its initiation. It generally occurs when you are vulnerable and the avenger happens to be around. This reality will leave you constantly looking over your shoulder. Additionally, involving the guards will get you the reputation as a “snitch,” which means you will be physically challenged by inmates seeking to make a reputation or pass their own “snitch” label onto you.
If you choose to ignore the theft, the man will steal from you again and tell his friends, who in turn will also steal from you. Eventually, you will be challenged for more than just minor belongings. (p. 23)
The passage illustrates a number of attributes of mainline prison violence. It points to the fact that male inmates subscribe to a normative system that holds that under certain circumstances a prisoner must respond with physical force. The prisoner must particularly do so if he is slighted or affronted or taken advantage of. Securing help is ruled out, as is the alternative of overlooking the slights or affronts or victimization to which one has been subjected. This fact is related to another attribute of prison violence, which is that failure to take action justifies future victimization. In prisons, vulnerability attracts predation and fear invites exploitation; such norms are accepted as givens by the prisoners.
To the extent to which a male officer subculture exists in prisons, some of its norms feature counterpart beliefs to those of inmates. One such assumption, for example, is that prisoners who assault guards must be “taught a lesson.” A 1996 report about the New York detention system, for example, suggested that “tenets of street justice—revenge, retaliation, establishing dominance—appear to guide the behavior of at least some correction officers” (Purdy, 1996, p. 29). Documents detailing retaliatory incidents in jails “[suggested] that the prisoners had been injured in accidents, such as falling over furniture” (Purdy, 1996, p. 29). A local officer union president defended such retaliatory practices:
“We just don't go in there and beat the crap out of someone just to establish control,” he said. But he said “the atmosphere is a jungle type atmosphere, it's survival” and when an officer is hit by an inmate “you have a right to defend yourself by punching him or grabbing him.”
Punching is a fairly common response. Internal jail records, written by jail officers, show that on Aug. 4, an inmate in the disciplinary area approached an officer “with clutched fists” and in response, the officer “punched the inmate several times in the face.” On Aug. 18, an inmate “verbally threatened and then pushed” an officer who then “responded with punches to the face and body.” (Purdy, 1996, p.
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