Citation

Marquart JW, Roebuck JB. Br. J. Criminol. 1985; 25(3): 217-233.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1985, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article examines how the staff in a maximum security penitentiary co-opted the dominant inmates or elites to act as informers. Previous research and popular presentations have generally portrayed "rats" as outcasts and weak prisontrs. Participant observation data reveal that the inmate-snitches in the prison undtr study were not weak but wtre the most aggrmive and feared inmates. Infoming was their actual prison work-role and the ordinary inmates lacked the influence and power to impute deviancy to the inmate-snitch role. The last section describes how the staff used inmate-snitch reports to control the inmate population.