Incarceration renders some people so dependent on others that they gradually lose the capacity to rely on themselves to guide their actions and restrain their conduct, according to Craig Haney of the University of California-Santa Cruz.
The emphasis on the punitive and stigmatizing aspects of incarceration has furthered the psychological isolation of prison from society, compromised prison visitation programs and curtailed scarce resources used to maintain ties between prisoners, their families and the rest of society, according to a report written by for a conference funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in January of 2002.
The report examines the unique set of psychological alterations that many prisoners are forced to undergo in order to survive the penitentiary experience and the psychological impact of incarceration and its implications for post-prison adjustment back into society.
The rapid influx of new prisoners, serious shortages in staffing and other resources, and embracing of an openly punitive approach to corrections led to the “de-skilling” of many correctional staff members who often resorted to extreme forms of prison discipline (such as punitive isolation or “supermax” confinement) that had especially destructive effects on prisoners, repressing conflict rather than resolving it. Increased tensions and higher levels of fear and danger resulted, according to the report.
Since the 1970s, a combination of forces has transformed the nation’s criminal justice system and modified the nature of imprisonment. The combination of overcrowding and rapid expansion of prison systems nationally adversely affects living conditions in many prisons, jeopardizes prisoner safety, compromises prison management and limits prisoner access to programming.
In the mid-1970s incarceration shifted from putting people in prison, believing it would rehabilitate them for re-entry into society as productive citizens, to one that used imprisonment to inflict pain on wrongdoers (“just deserts”), disable criminal offenders (“incapacitation”), or to isolate deviants from society (“containment”).
Thus, in the first decade of the 21st century, more people have been subjected to the ill effects of imprisonment, for longer periods, under conditions that threaten greater psychological distress and potential long-term dysfunction. Many will return to communities that have already been disadvantaged by a lack of social services and resources.
Penal institutions require inmates to relinquish their individuality and freedom to make their own choices and decisions. This process requires what is a painful adjustment for most people.
The adaptation to imprisonment, at times, creates habits of thinking and acting that can be dysfunctional in periods of post-prison adjustment.
Subtle psychological alterations occur in the routine course of adapting to prison life. The term “institutionalization” is used to describe the process by which inmates are shaped and transformed by the institutional environments in which they live.
Institutionalization has taught most people to cover their feelings and not to openly or easily reveal intimate feelings or reactions. Prisoners struggle to control and suppress their own internal emotional reactions to events around them.
Prison culture preys on both mental and physical weakness and vulnerability and discourages the expression of candid emotions or intimacy.
It is important to emphasize that these are the natural and normal adaptations made by prisoners in response to the unnatural and abnormal conditions of penitentiary life, according to Haney’s study.
Because many institutions are dangerous places, prisoners learn quickly to become hyper vigilant and ever-alert for signs of threat or personal risk.
To be continued…
Prisoners who struggle with their emotions and behavior create obscure as well as camouflaging personas. They risk alienation from others and are subject to chronic emotional flatness and debilitating social interaction…finding that they’ve created a permanent and unbridgeable distance between themselves and other people.
Some prisoners find safety in social invisibility by becoming as inconspicuous and unobtrusively disconnected from others as possible. In extreme cases, especially when combined with prisoner apathy and loss of the capacity to initiate behavior on one’s own, the pattern closely resembles that of clinical depression. Long-term prisoners are particularly vulnerable to this form of psychological adaptation.
In addition to obeying the formal rules of the institution, there are also informal rules and norms that are part of the unwritten institutional and prisoner culture code that must be followed.
In many institutions, the lack of meaningful programs has deprived most inmates of pro-social or positive activities in which to engage while incarcerated. Prisoners are denied basic privacy rights and lose control over mundane aspects of their existence that most citizens take for granted.
They are housed in extremely cramped spaces (a 60 square foot cell is roughly the size of a king-sized bed), have little or no control over who they share that space with and the intimate contact it requires. Some feel they are treated like infants, and the degraded conditions under which they live are a repeated reminder of a compromised social status and stigmatized social role as prisoners. A diminished sense of self-worth and personal value may result, Haney’s reports states. Prisoners may come to think of themselves as “the kind of person” who deserves the subjection of degradation and stigma while incarcerated.
For some prisoners, incarceration is so stark and psychologically painful that it represents a form of traumatic stress severe enough to produce post-traumatic stress reactions once released.
The fact that a high percentage of persons presently incarcerated have experienced childhood trauma means, among other things, that the harsh punitive and uncaring nature of prison life may represent a kind of “re-traumatization” experience for many.
Mental illness and developmental disability represent the largest number of disabilities among prisoners. Upwards of as many of 20% of the current prisoner population nationally suffers from either some sort of significant mental or psychological disorder or developmental disability, Haney says, yet both groups are too often left to their own devices to somehow survive in prison and leave without having had any of their unique needs addressed.
Supermax facilities, where prisoners are kept under conditions of unprecedented levels of social deprivation for long periods of time. This kind of confinement creates its own set of psychological pressures that, in some instances, disable prisoners for integration into the outside world.
Several basic propositions; prisons have become difficult places to adjust and survive over the last several decades; adaptation to prisons exact psychological costs to prisoners; some prisoners are more vulnerable to the ill effects of imprisonment than others; the psychological cost and ill effects of imprisonment can severely impede post-prison adjustment; and multiple things should be done, in and out of prison to minimize these impediments.
The abandonment of rehabilitation, Haney believes, has resulted in an erosion of modestly protective norms against cruelty toward prisoners.