Institutional change and interaction in prison. The case of the Santa Fe Prison Service (2005-2015)

WALDEMAR CLAUS

Ciudad de México

Encuentro; Law and Society Anual Meeting; 2017

Law and Society Association

The following paper aims to develop a research in advance on the theme of thelinks between institutional change and prisoner-staff interactions.First, we analyze the way in which security prison officers working in two prisons in the city of Santa Fe define the situations of interaction with prisoners. We focus on one element that emerged as central in these definitions, the agents' use of the idea of respect as condensation of a series of obligations and expectations of conduct for participants in the interaction. We will describe how prison officers defined these obligations and expectations and the elements through which they sought to support these claims, understanding the former as rules of behavior (Goffman, 1956) and the elements from which agents seek to guarantee them as bases of power (French and Raven, 1959; Hepburn, 1985; Stinchman, 2006).Second, we advance the hypothesis that the difficulty that agents in subordinatepositions experience to sustain this particular mode of structuring the interaction is linked to modifications operated in their power bases. These changes are, in turn and in the accounts of the agents interviewed, the result of recent changes in the control strategies operated by the administration of the Prison Service of Santa Fe. Finally, we make a first approximation to the effects of this difficulty to ensure respect in the assessment of the role and identity of the prison officers.