The norms and values of the inmate code form the core of an inmate subculture, providing its members with informal means to gain power and status and, thereby, a way to mitigate their sense of social rejection and compensate for their loss of autonomy and security (Bondesson, 1989; Sykes & Messinger, 1960). According to the important theory developed by Irwin, prison subculture is brought in from the outside by offenders who developed and adopted norms and values from gangs on the outside. When an …show more content…
Looking back on the effects of prison gangs as in the early 1960’s and 1970’s, there was a more laid back approach to the formal prison system that enabled the importation of street gang characteristics into the inmate subculture. It was because of prison crowing and penal harm movement that in the 1980’s and 1990’s those trends started to be reversed and the threat of restoring the pains of imprisonment returned. It is these changes in the formal and informal structure in the prison system that results in the shaping of the informal inmate