Research Catalog

Title

Games prisoners play : the tragicomic worlds of Polish prison / Marek M. Kaminski.

Author

Kaminski, Marek, 1962-

Publication

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, ©2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 215 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• "On March 11, 1985, a van was pulled over in Warsaw for a routine traffic check that turned out to be anything but routine. Inside was Marek Kaminski, a Warsaw University student who also ran an underground press for Solidarity. The police discovered illegal books in the vehicle, and in a matter of hours, five secret police escorted Kaminski to jail. A sociology and mathematics major one day, Kaminski was the next a political prisoner trying to adjust to a bizarre and dangerous new world. This book represents his attempts to understand that world.".
• "As a coping strategy until he won his freedom half a year later by faking serious illness, Kaminski took clandestine notes on prison subculture. Much later, he discovered the key to unlocking that culture - game theory. Prison first appeared an irrational world of unpredictable violence and arbitrary codes of conduct. But as Kaminski shows, prisoners, to survive and prosper, have to master strategic decision-making. A clever move can shorten a sentence; a bad decision can lead to rape, beating, or social isolation. Much of the confusion interpreting prison behavior, he argues, arises from a failure to understand that inmates are driven not by pathological emotion but by predictable and rational calculations.".
• "Kaminski presents unsparing accounts of initiation rituals, secret codes, caste structures, prison sex, self-injuries, and the humor that makes this brutal world more bearable. This is a work with implications for understanding human behavior far beyond the walls of one Polish prison."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Polen
• Poland
• Prisoners Dilemma Game
• Gevangeniswezen
• Spieltheorie
• Soziologie
• Gefängnis
• Prisoners > Social conditions
• Imprisonment > Poland
• Prisoners > Poland > Social conditions
• Prisons > Social aspects > Poland

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-207) and index.

Contents

Entry -- The constraints of prison life: an overview -- Becoming a grypsman -- Prison code of behavior -- Argot -- Everyday life -- Sex, flirtation, love -- Strategic ailment -- Exit -- Variants and evolution of grypsmen subculture -- Prison playground: games and decisions -- Essential argot.

ISBN

• 0691117217
• 9780691117218

LCCN

2004044338

OCLC

• ocm54356439
• 54356439
• SCSB-1331876

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library