Challenging Prison Officers' Discretion

"Good Reasons" to Treat Courteously Mafiosi in Custody in Italy

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2365565
AutoresLuigi Gariglio (0000-0002-6970-3885, University of Turin, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen48
Número1
Páginas80-102
Fecha de publicación2019-02-01
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Contemporary Ethnography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0891-2416 • E-ISSN: 1552-5414
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0891241617749012
OpenAlexW2783835524
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas24

Prison ethnography has long touched on the central role of prison officers' discretion. Nowadays, a large number of sociologists and criminologists share the assumption that prison officers have de facto to resort to discretional decisions continuously to be able to translate the law into practice as they go about their job. This paper addresses the topic of prison officers' discretion differently by adopting analytic autoethnography and Carolyn Ellis' emotional recall. It outlines four officers' "good reasons" for cooperating with mafiosi in custody-treating them with good manner-rather than showing neutrality as they would do with "ordinary" prisoners. The main good reasons that ground mafiosi-officers relationships are (1) reciprocal institutional recognition that Italian criminal justice and high-ranking mafia prisoners recognize one another; (2) mafioso capacity to help officers to "govern" fellow prisoners in practice; (3) the social embeddedness of the mafia both inside and outside prison; and, lastly, (4) prison officers' fear of retaliation

Criminal justice · Criminology · Discretion · Economic Justice · Embeddedness · Neutrality · Political science · Prison · Sociology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Psychology