ABSTRACT
Prisons are total institutions that is, structures that in Erving Goffman's sense tend to define the totality of human agency. Space is scrupulously subdivided in prison. The way this is done reflects the hierarchies of the different sections in prison: for inmates, space is certainly a rare commodity. Prison is a place where the experience of suffering and despair is particularly intense: the tangible evidence for this is the suicide rate in prisons. Besides death, prisons increase also the probability of falling ill. Many inmates are drug addicts or HIV-positive. Several inmates told me that they actually became alcoholics while in prison. The prison institution exposes inmates to two major processes: isolation on the one hand and homogenization on the other. Although prisons are closed institutions, there are many ways to make contact with the outside world. One way is through the people who come to the prison every day: the prison officers who control and supervise inmates.
