ABSTRACT
Gresham Sykes's The Society of Captives is a foundational text for prison scholars. However, the book has had mixed influence, with its discussion of the pains of imprisonment generating far more theoretical and empirical scholarship than its still well-known discussion of penal power. As a field, we have overlooked some of Sykes's important insights into power in prison. This chapter offers a close read of Sykes's text, focusing on his discussion of penal power as a multivalent concept, to illustrate the additional contributions Sykes still holds for prison sociology. Sykes conceptualized power in four distinct ways, noting that the prison's structural circumstances limited all but one of these forms. This chapter closes by reflecting on Sykes's discussion of penal power in the context of 21st-century prisons and what Sykes's discussion still offers prison scholars theorizing penal power.
