The presentation of self in everyday prison life

Abstract

Today, Italian prisons are reporting the highest level of overcrowding ever recorded. In reference to this situation, this article proposes an ethnographic study carried out inside the prison of Padua as a voluntary 2 years’ experience. It documents the values and conventions that convicts share in prison and details the ways in which prisoners constantly construct and adapt to an informal conduct’s rule system, the inmate code. It also illustrates the interactions among fellow prisoners as scenes or plays enacted by various teams. The prisoners’ words reveal a complex universe based upon three basic conditions: loyalty, discipline and circumspection. Finally, we argue about the fading of the distinction between the prison front stage and the back stage and we analyse the possible consequences.