Fångsamhället som inte skulle finnas : Överlevnad och anpassning i fängelse under åren 1890–1920

This dissertation studies how prisoners could affect and influence their life in two different prison systems and what it meant for how the systems worked in practice. The systems in question are the Philadelphia system (the separate system) and the Auburn system (the congregate system). To a large extent, these are studied from the example of the central prison at Långholmen, which used both systems. Other Swedish prisons also form a part of the study, mainly through prison biographies. The research period is 1890–1920. This was when the separation system peaked in Sweden with the longest isolation penalties. The main question of the thesis is: in what ways did prisoners try to manage and influence their life in prison, how did those actions affect their everyday situation in prison, and how does the importance of those effects appear for the prisoner? In earlier research we can, to some extent, observe a hidden world behind the prison walls where it is obvious that things differed significantly from how they were supposed to work. In order to reach this hidden world, a prisoner-centered perspective has been used, which in this book means a systematic focus on the prisoners' actions and experiences. The result of this approach can be summed up in what I call a prison community that should not have existed. To a large extent, it is this community that we see in the prisoners' actions documented in interrogation protocols and described in prisoners’ biographies. The most important result of this dissertation is that there was a prison community even among isolated prisoners. This is important because the separate system was built upon the idea of isolation, it was the very foundation of the model, and it was a system widely spread internationally. The prisoners' forbidden acts produced a community that was not meant to exist. The dissertation has also studied other ways for prisoners to affect their situation, for example: simulations of ill health, self-harm actions, stimulation strategies, smuggling and illegal production, bribes and thefts