A Neo-institutional Account of Prisonization

Extant literature documents the inherent culture of correctional institutions, as well as the ways individuals adjust to life during incarceration—coined prisonization. This chapter examines how and why individuals become prisonized using a neo-institutional organizational framework. Neo-institutional theory, introduced by Meyer and Rowan (1977), seeks to understand why and how organizations become isomorphic (similar in form or relations) with one another and posits that a desire for legitimacy as the reasoning behind this. Neo-institutional theory traditionally operates at a macro-level, but the principles of the theory are still applicable from an individual, micro-level perspective.