You Have to Cut it off at the Knee

Dangerous Masculinity and Security inside a Men’s Prison

Bibliographic Data

ID2388103
AuthorsAnna Curtis (0000-0001-9182-2840, Sociology-Anthropology Department, SUNY College at Cortland, Moffett Center, Cortland, NY, USA, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume17
Issue2
Pages120-146
Publication date2014-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMen and Masculinities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1097-184X • E-ISSN: 1552-6828
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1097184x14533641
OpenAlexW2136769130
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited65

This article focuses on the prison as a gendered organization and examines the consequences for treating the male prisoner as the generic prisoner. In order to simplify security protocols and manage outsiders, prison staff and correctional officers use a 'commonsense' approach that draws on long-standing and structurally embedded assumptions about the uncontrollable masculinity of minority men. In a 'postracial' and 'color-blind' modern America, however, the assumption that prisoners are hyperviolent, hypersexual, and dangerously masculine is applied to all prisoners regardless of race. Drawing on two-and-a-half years of ethnographic fieldwork inside a high-security prison, this article discusses the ways that the assumed dangerous masculinity of prisoners facilitates security protocols and isolates male prisoners from their children and families

Business · Criminology · Ethnography · Masculinity · Maximum security · Prison · Sociology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology · Social Psychology