Prisons and the social production of immorality

This chapter discusses the interaction among staff, inmates and the physical prison environment in different penal settings, to try to gauge what broadly makes prisons better or worse for those on the inside. It describes how the nature and quality of different styles of interaction between the groups mediate proximity in different prison and national contexts. The chapter presents the extent to which variables inside and outside the walls interact and the result of such interactions. It examines formal and informal interactions between staff and prisoners in the two countries. Particular cultural, social, historical and political variables lend support to different approaches to punishment in Norway and Australia. However, when it comes to prison practice they only represent one set of variables that influences a particular security arrangement. Importantly, when prisons as institutions become Othered, excluded from the moral responsibility of the community, it is not only prisoners who are labelled and excluded, it is also prison staff.