Inequality and Discipline in a Women's Prison

The case-study of a women's prison in Hungary explores the relationship between in-prison inequalities and the prison’s strong emphasis on discipline. This project sets out to test Charles Tilly’s hypotheses about organizations (re)producing durable inequalities; their tendency to take over categorical inequalities out of convenience, which helps them accomplish other organizational work (Tilly 1998). The analysis demonstrates that a robust inmate hierarchy is in place: members of the elite are the extended arm of prison administration, a group of women are stigmatized as bad girls and warehoused until the day of their release; and the great majority of women are made disciplined workers. This work introduces the sorting mechanisms - e.g. job placement; or placement to cell - and the categories the prison uses - e.g. reliability, presentability - to distribute women in the various subgroups. The analysis uncovers the often direct translation between these internal categories and external social inequalities related to ethnicity or sexual orientation.