A total institution os a place where many people in the same situation live, but everything they do their is predetermined by someone else. The best example of a total institution would be a jail or a prison. All the people there except the guards are in there because they committed a crime, and everything from what they eat and when they is determined by the warden. The Stanford prison experiment and the events that occurred in Abu Ghraib are quite similar events when looked at as a whole. Both events placed inexperienced people as people of authority, and in both events those people of authority ended up committing unspeakable things to the prisoners below them. I think the best explanation of why normal people changed when put in power
