Navigating Protective Custody Classification: Examining the Lived Experiences of PC Inmates
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Classification systems in prisons have consequences in both formal and informal ways for inmates. Protective custody (PC) units are especially unique spaces in which traditionally the most vilified populations – informally often referred to as “skinners, rats, and scaredy cats” – have been housed. Increasingly, inmates with alternative reasons for seeking protection, such as first-time offending or exiting a gang are requesting protective custody placement and are granted such placement with relative ease. This has significantly altered the composition of protective custody units. Related to those compositional shifts, my research asked four questions: 1. How do inmates on protective custody units navigate their day to day lives? 2. How do inmates perceive the social dynamics and larger governance structure to be different in protective custody units in comparison to general population units? 3.Does protective custody serve a protective purpose? 4. How does the PC classification shape the institution and the lived experiences of inmates? To explore these questions, I conducted 23 interviews with protective custody inmates at a provincial prison in Western Canada. I found inmates request PC placement for various reasons ranging from perceiving it as a safer space for ex-gang members to simply wanting to socialize with other inmates they know on a different unit. As a second finding, I demonstrate that the protective custody classification is not fulfilling any protective function and protective custody units run similarly to general population units, especially with respect to violence among inmates and prison politics that shape everyday life inside. Once an inmate is placed on the protective custody unit it becomes clear that the politics and violence they aimed to escape on general population units are present on protective custody units as well. In addition, they have to navigate the added stigma of being labeled a PC inmate. As a result, inmates must navigate the discreditability of PC through consistent and vigilant boundary work to prevent the permanent stain of the protective custody classification.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".