Findings show that past accounts of doing time show striking similarity to modern day explanations of everyday life in prison. These results lead one to question the impact of penal ideology on the experience of doing time in United States prisons. A dramatic shift in penal philosophy over the past 30 years has replaced rehabilitation with incapacitation and punishment. In addition to the shift in penal ideology came the expansion in the prison population that continues today. Ethnographic accounts of prison society and the interpretations of the lived experience of those confined in the United States penal institutions have the ability to shed light on the impact of documented changes in correctional philosophy. This study conducted face-to-face interviews with men currently incarcerated in a maximum security Missouri prison, as well as historical accounts of “doing time” to assess how this change has affected the day-to-day lives of inmates. Notes, references