What is a Total Institution?
When we think of prisons, mental hospitals and other isolated institutions, we assume their only purpose is to house people from society, but in reality they do so much more. The whole point of places like a prison is to not only keep harmful people separate, but to reconstruct them into a new person. A total institution is an isolated social system in which those who have more authority control most, if not all aspects of other participants' lives. In a quote from Erving Goffman, the person who coined the phrase "Total Institution," he gives his thoughts on the subject by saying, "Their encompassing or total character is symbolized by the barrier to social intercourse with the outside that is often built right into the physical plant: locked doors, high walls, barbed wire, cliffs and water, open terrain, and so forth. These I am calling Total Institutions" (Characteristics of Total Institutions by Erving Goffman, pg 1). Basically what he is saying in his definition is that the most basic requirement is for a community to be walled off from the rest of society with their own set of rules and procedures than everywhere else. Everything from having your own style to being able to eat what you want is stripped away. A person just becomes a face in the masses of their community. Total Institutions are very unique aspects of today's world that can be categorized differently depending on their purpose, have a very special process for managing their members and instigate many different reactions from society.