COLUMBIA, Mo.
Wearing shorts in 30-degree weather and a yellow raincoat revealing tattoos on his left triceps and left pinky finger, University of Missouri-Columbia sociology professor Brian Colwell is no ordinary researcher.
But no ordinary researcher could get inside California’s prison system to examine hierarchy, social order and the meaning of respect among inmates in a way that draws parallels to modern conflicts in Bosnia and Iraq.
Colwell interviewed 74 inmates for his recent article in Social Psychology Quarterly, choosing long-term and short-term inmates and trying to interview a representative proportion of Whites, Blacks and Hispanics.
He didn’t use a recorder. Adapting a conversational approach, he learned how racial and group divisions were reinforced by inmates as a way to prevent violence.
“You don’t have much of a choice because of the violence,” Colwell said. “They don’t integrate well these groups. When you put them together, people die.”
Colwell, 34, got his first tattoo at 14, dropped out of high school at 16, graduated from the University of Washington at 27 and got his doctorate in social psychology from Stanford University a little less than two years ago.
