Characteristics of total institutions

(E. Goffman)

  1. Physical barriers to the outside world (e.g. high walls, fences); restricted entry and exit.People inside the institution are cut off from people outside the institution.
  2. Inside the institution: breakdown of barriers between different aspects of life (e.g. work, sleep, play, eating).
  3. All aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the same central authority.
  4. Many people live together for a considerable period of time.
  5. Activities are done by a whole group of similarly situated people, all of whom are treated similarly and required to do the same things jointly.
  6. Activities are highly regulated, scheduled and formally administered and inflexibly imposed from above on inmates.
  7. Inmates/residents are controlled by non-inmates/non-residents.
  8. Staff and inmates/residents inhabit two different social and cultural worlds.
  9. There is considerable social distance between staff and inmates/residents.
  10. Inmates/residents are usually excluded from (knowledge of) the decisions taken concerning them.
  11. Activities serve institutional needs rather than individuals’ needs.
  12. Incentives given for work do not have the same significance as in the outside world.
  13. There are restrictions on inmates’/residents’ self-determination, autonomy and freedom of action.
  14. The institution intrudes into the inner life of its inmates/residents.
  15. Misbehaviour in one sphere impacts on other spheres of the individual’s life, and punishments may be more severe than in the outside world.
  16. There may be a feeling that time spent in the institution is time wasted (e.g. prison).

Examples of total institutions

Goffman divides these into five different types:

  1. Institutions established to care for people felt to be both harmless and incapable: orphanages, nursing homes.
  2. Places established to care for people felt to be incapable of looking after themselves and a threat to the community, albeit an unintended one: psychiatric hospitals.
  3. Institutions organized to protect the community against what are felt to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the people thus sequestered not the immediate issue: concentration camps, POW camps, prisons.
  4. Institutions purportedly established the better to pursue some work-like tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds: work camps, boarding schools, ships, army barracks.
  5. Establishments designed as religious retreats from the world: monasteries, convents, monasteries and other cloisters.

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors