A Game You Can’t Win
by
Ross Macmillan and Joshua Page
| July 25, 2009
|
Summer 2009
Criminologists and socio-legal scholars describe contemporary prisons as places where inmates face boredom, loneliness, and a loss of autonomy, while administrators strive to keep prisoners separate and busy, and finances well-managed. According to Macmillan and Page, the remarkably mundane videogame Prison Tycoon 4: Supermax captures the spirit of today’s large American prisons perfectly.
Authors
Ross Macmillan is in the sociology department at the University of Minnesota. His interests include sociology of the life course and social demography.
Joshua Page is in the sociology department at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of the forthcoming The "Toughest Beat:" Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California.
