A total institution is defined by Goffman as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated, individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. This volume deals with total institutions in general and, mental hospitals, in particular. The main focus is, on the world of the inmate, not the world of the staff. A chief concern is to develop a sociological version of the structure of the self. Each of the essays in this book were intended to focus on the same issue--the inmate's situation in an institutional context. Each chapter approaches the central issue from a different vantage point, each introduction drawing upon a different source in sociology and having little direct relation to the other chapters. This method of presenting material may be irksome, but it allows the reader to pursue the main theme of each paper analytically and comparatively past the point that would be allowable in chapters of an integrated book. If sociological concepts are to be treated with affection, each must be traced back to where it best applies, followed from there wherever it seems to lead, and pressed to disclose the rest of its family. Erving Goffman was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania until his death in 1982. He is recognized as one of the world's foremost social theorists and much of his work still remains in print. Among his classic books are The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life; Interaction Ritual; Stigma; Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity; and Frame Analysis . William B. Helmreich is a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and City College. He has written Against All Odds, The Enduring Community, Saving Children , and The Things They Say Behind Your Back all available from Transaction.

On sentencing Jason Mitchell to three terms of life imprisonment for the manslaughter in December 1994 of three people--first a retired couple and subsequently his father, whose body he dismembered--the judge at Ipswich Crown Court on 5 July 1995 expressed the view that it was difficult to understand why Jason, a restricted patient, had been allowed back into the community. Were the doctors at fault in their diagnosis of Jason's psychotic symptoms? Were they wrong in thinking that he was fit to return to the community so soon after becoming mentally ill and being hospitalized in 1990? Did the Mental Health Review Tribunals in 1991 and 1993, which sanctioned Jason's conditional discharge, act in error? What happened to Jason's prison medical records of 1988-9, which disclosed signs of oncoming schizophrenia while he was serving a sentence of two years' youth custody? Were doctors, probation officers and social workers handicapped by the absence of these records? These and other pertinent questions relating to the management of Jason's case by mental health services, and the care and treatment he received from doctors and nurses, are fully explored in this report of the independent panel of inquiry set up in 1995 by Suffolk Health Authority.