Introduction to Donald Clemmer
3. Donald Clemmer. The prison community.
FOR EXAMPLE;
Donald Cleemer was born in Morgan Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, in October 1903. He attended Morgan Park Military Academy. He then attended Cornell University, where he became interested in criminology. He worked as the director of corrections in the District of Colombia for nineteen years he served in the position. Cleemer was known for his humanity and progressiveness. (Panzarella & Vona, 2013, pp.325) The fundamental principles of the University of Chicago sociologist who played a leading role in the development of American criminology were mirrored in Cleemer’s approach to comprehending crime and rehabilitating criminals. Donald Clemmer created the term prisonization describing it as the process through which the social and structural aspects of prison life shaped prisoners’ psyches and actions. (Panzarella & Vona, 2013, pp.337)
Furthermore, according to The Prison community, Clemmer’s research, prisonization mainly undermined the social ideal at the core of the penitentiary concept since it not only hampered efforts to rehabilitate inmates but also encouraged behavior that went against recognized norms of social behavior. Clemmer wasn’t the first or the last to point out this weakness in how legal detention was conceived. In fact, for over two centuries, his analysis of the issue, if not the phrase he invented to describe it, has been a recurrent subject in the literature on criminal corrections.
