Five Types of Total Institutions

Types of Total Institutions: (1) welfare institutions
(2) medical institutions
(3) penal institutions
(4) institutions organized around work, training, and labor
(5) religious training and practice institutions

S3: What are total institutions?: According to Ervin Goffman, "total institutions" are "place[s] of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an
appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.’

S4: Some characteristics of total institutions, Batch Living: Where the majority of one's lived days are carried with a large group of others, whom are mostly treated alike, and the people are required to do the same thing together (e.g., eating, medicating). Spheres of life are also blended and/or eraced (home, leisure, and work).

S5: Some characteristics of total institutions, "Inmate role/identity": Once a person enters a total institution, their autonomy is taken away and their communication with the outside world is limited or prohibited. There is also the expectation from the institution that the "inmate" will be compliant and obedient.

S6: The great contradiction of total institutions lies in the tension between their professed goals (e.g., caring for the mentally or physically ill, protecting the aged or vulnerable, guarding the dangerous) and their undeclared use as dumping grounds... [T]he hypocrisy between what total institutions say they do to people and what they actually do is measured in changes in people’s bodies and in the institutions’ accounting for money spent or saved. -Anthony Ryan Hatch (2019). Silent Cells. University of Minnesota Press. End of description.]