The ‘Screw Boys’ and the ‘Businessmen’: Re-Negotiating Penal Power, Governance and Legitimate Authority Through a Prison Violence Reduction Scheme

Kate Gooch and James Treadwell

The British Journal of Criminology, 2023, vol. 63, issue 5, 1219-1236

Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative research, this article explores how both prisoners and staff wield authority in prison and with what effects. It combines legitimacy theory and governance theory to consider the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate governance by prisoners and officers, as well as establishing the limits of prisoner governance in remedying the deficits in State illegitimacy. It is argued that legitimate governance by prisoners (in the form of peer-support roles) must be coupled with the legitimate use of authority by prison officers to avoid the emergence, or expansion, of illegitimate prisoner governance. When this does not exist, such peer-support roles can distort the system of power and stimulate, rather than arrest, greater decline in social and moral order.

Keywords: prison power; legitimacy; peer support; prison order; ethnography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azac081 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:crimin:v:63:y:2023:i:5:p:1219-1236.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The British Journal of Criminology is currently edited by Eamonn Carrabine

More articles in The British Journal of Criminology from Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().