The US Penal System

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Prison system in the US:
The Psychological and Physiological Effects of Incarceration on Prisoners
and their transition from Prison to the Community

Rajiv Lama
Fulton Montgomery Community College (FMCC)











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Introduction

Transition from a normal life to life in the prison can be difficult for anyone. Even for the toughest of criminals, prison can be a scary place. Prison creates new mental health issues for people who have never experienced them and can even exacerbate the condition for people who are already dealing with mental health issues. Only some are lucky enough to get out of prison unscathed and unchanged by the experience. For ex-offenders who have stayed a long period of time in prison, transition of life inside the prison setting to the community can be equally difficult.
This research paper examines the various psychological and physiological changes that many prisoners during the process of institutionalization undergo inside the prison setting. This paper examines the current state of the prison in the country and studies the overpopulation in the prison setting. The incarceration rates, recidivism1 rates with their growth rates are studied and some arguments about the root cause for the rates being high are also included in the paper. This paper also tries to argue why the psychological transformation that ex-offenders go through in the prison setting make it very hard for them to cope up with the society, their family life and re-integrate themselves in their field of employment. This paper also tries to prove why the unsuccessful transition from prison back to the community can be the can be the reason for recidivism rates being high in the country.
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Prisons haven't been always been the way we define them today. The prison system nowadays where the process of rehabilitation and institutionalization is promoted had not yet been invented in the penal system in the past. The prison system in the US has been dated to start around at 16th and 17th century. In those times when public events were designed to shame or deter a criminal, prison was just a place the criminals stayed awaiting punishment. The 18th century was known as the era of "Bloody Code"2. In this area punishments were harsh and the prisons were badly maintained and diseases were common in the prison setting. The very first penitentiary was established in 1789 and this new type of prison system brought about a series of reforms and refinements in the penal system (Hubpages, 2014). Capital punishments started to be replaced with imprisonment and only serious crimes as murder were sentenced capital punishment. The growth of the modern penitentiary started in the 19th century after the penitentiary act was put into action in 1799. The beginning of the 19th century saw the birth of a new rule Prevention of Crime Act3. The process of institutionalization and the concept of rehabilitation began to prevail in the prison system and in 1993 the Prison service became a part of the government (Hubpages, 2014).




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The State of the Prisons in the US and Incarceration Rates

To talk about the prison system and the effect that it has on the people, we have to first know about the incarceration rates4 and the state of prisons in the country. The United state has the highest incarceration rate in the world and this title has given to the country since 2002. There are many countries in the world where the incarceration is high but tends to stay around 100 per 100,000 residents. However, The imprisonment rate in the US is a staggering 621 prisoners per 100,000 residents. At the end of the year 2014 the United States held an estimated 1,561,500 in states and federal correctional facilities. This is a seemingly unbelievable statistics but it is correct (Carson, 2015). The data of this statistics was collected from Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Although many people may think that jail time is a distant possibility for them and that they will not be the victim of incarceration, there is quite a gradual increase in the incarceration rates in the united states. It was published in the journal Pediatrics that 41% of young adults are arrested by the time they are 24. 6.6% of the population is incarcerated at some point in their life and a more shocking fact is that the statistics rises to 32% for African-American men as reported by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).



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The dramatic changes in the increase in the imprisonment rate and the size of the prison population in the United states has caused widespread overcrowding resulting in many problems being created in the physical and mental well health of the inmates. The combination of overcrowding in the prison population with the rapid increase in incarceration rates in the country has an adverse affect on the living condition inside the prison and has greatly limited prisoner access to treatment and resources. The perfect illustration how increase in the prison population has affected the prisoners is one of the largest prison systems in the country California. The prison population in California was about 20,000 in the early 1970s and its current prison population is roughly 160,000 which is roughly eight times increase in the prison population from the 1970s. However the frightening fact is that there was no adequate increase in the funding for prison services or for the programming of inmates. This resulted in the prison system in California facing major lawsuits and the federal courts in the state found out that the system had failed to provide the necessary services to the prisoners. The prisoners there had to suffer from mental effects of confinement because of overcrowded conditions.
Thus, Looking at the prison system in the United States, it is veracious to say that more and more people are becoming subjects to imprisonment as the US incarcerates people at a higher rate than other countries. Parallel to that fact is another fact that the prisoners are confined to live in prisons that threaten their

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psychological well being and which may hamper their social functioning in the long term.

Psychological Effects of Incarceration on Prisoners.

To talk about the psychological effects of incarceration, the process "Institutionalization" must be defined first. An American criminologist Craig Haney defined the process of Institutionalization as:

" The term "institutionalization" is used to describe the process by which inmates are shaped and transformed by the institutional environments in which they live. Sometimes called "prisonization" when it occurs in correctional settings, it is the shorthand expression for the negative psychological effects of imprisonment. "
- (Haney, 2012)

Many sociologists, psychiatrists and psychologists have studied this process and found this process to be a process by which the norms of prison life are incorporated in a person's habit of thinking, feeling and acting according to it. However, during the process of "institutionalization" with or without the willingness of an inmate, a transformation begins and this transformation leads to

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many psychological effects on the prisoners. The longer an inmate's sentence, the more they are likely to be changed by institutionalization.
There are many negative psychological effects that the process of institutionalization has on an inmate. Firstly, as prisoners become accustomed to the prison life, they start to depend on the institutional structure and routines to make their decisions. They become dependent so much on external constraints1 that they start losing the capacity to depend on themselves and make decisions according to their inner self. Another psychological effect that the process of institutionalization has on prisoners is social isolation. Many prisoners serving their time retreat deeply inside themselves during the long time they serve in isolation from society (Haney, 2012). They start trusting no one and live an isolated life of desperation. As such long term prisoners are likely to suffer from clinical desperation. There are evidence that incarcerated parent not only affect their psychological well-being while being detained but, additionally that the experience of detainment has done little or nothing to give them the instruments to shield their kids from the same possibly destructive experiences6. Many inmates endure verbal abuse, sexual, threats and even attacks from the guards those inmates do not have hope for reporting abuse against them. (Villines, 2013). The women inmates are at an increased risk of being sexually assaulted by the prison guards. The Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that 70,000 inmates are sexually abused every year by prison guards.
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Prisoners are denied basic privacy rights in the prison. In extreme cases because of the traumatic stress that get due to the pains that they receive during imprisonment, they eventually begin thinking of themselves as a person who deserves only the degradation that they have been subjected to during incarceration. This results in diminished sense of self-worth and value in the prisoners. All these negative psychological changes can adversely affect a person's life inside and outside the prison and can completely alter a person's personality.

Physiological effects of Incarceration

Inside the prison premises assaults, brawls and acts of violence are common between inmates. There is so much physical harm that an inmate can endure in the prison setting. However, the violence is not limited to the strong inmates as prison guards who are working in a high stress environment are likely to involve in acts of violence too. The aftermath of such abuses and solitary confinement inside the prison have been found to have physiological effects on the prisoners.
Prisoners who have been in solitary confinement5 many times report manifestations like those of hypertension for example, endless cerebral pains, trembling, sweat-soaked palms, compelling tipsiness and heart palpitations. Prisoners likewise encounter issue with their eating and assimilation, particularly inside the initial three months of isolation. (Smith, 2010). Many inmates in the
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prison setting may likewise experience issues such as stiffness of muscles in the body due to long amount of inactivity, resting, and some may even encounter insomnia. Prisoners who have spend longer time in solitary confinement may encounter an expanded oversensitivity to normal sounds, for example, the sound of shutting doors, which adds up to sleeping difficulties for the prisoners (Shalev, 2014; Smith, 2010).

The Root of Prison Recidivism: Unsuccessful transition from prison to society.

"Recidivism is one of the most fundamental concepts in criminal justice. It refers to a person's relapse into criminal behavior, often after the person receives sanctions or undergoes intervention for a previous crime. Recidivism is measured by criminal acts that results in rearrest, reconviction or return to prison with or without a new sentence during a three-year period following the prisoner's release."
- (National Institute of Justice, 2014)

Recent study done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that 3 in 4 former prisoners were arrested within 5 years of release in 2005. 37% of prisoners who were arrested within five years of release were re-arrested within the first six months after release, with more than half 57% arrested by the end of the first year (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014). The word "release" is just another obstacle that
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an ex-offender has to deal with, to make it in the society. Many of the ex-convicts who get released find themselves bound by society's shackles of restrictions and prejudices (Chura, 2014). The psychological changes that a person can go through during the process of "Institutionalization" can harm post- prison life when the inmate goes out to the real world. The transformation inside the prison setting can interfere in the ex-inmate's ability to cope up with society, integration into the employment setting and an incarcerated parent can even have trouble resuming his/her role in the family. After years of being socially invisible, isolated bound in a 20 feet room, coping up with society is the hardest obstacle for an ex-offender to overcome. An incarcerated parent can be profoundly affected by the psychological changes that they go through during the time they're incarcerated. The parent will find it hard to make decisions for their children as he/she has been depending on the institutional structure and routine to make their decisions. Finding employment for a normal person is hard enough these days but if a person is an ex- convict it is almost impossible.
These all reasons accumulate in driving an ex-convict to make a wrong decision in his life again and the root cause of the reason why recidivism is higher.




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Conclusion

After researching about the state of the prison system in the country and the adverse effect that it has on the offenders, I have come to a conclusion that no matter the communities and background from which prisoners come from, we know that those consequences and implications are felt in unprecedented ways in these communities, by these families, and for these children, like no others. The psychological difficulties that the prisoners have to go through in the prison setting will completely alter a person's personality. Many guards in jail and prison are also the reason why trauma, anxiety, depression are rising among the prisoners.The bases of recidivism are not that subtle and never have been. To control the rate of recidivism in the country we have to first tackle the root of it. When the very society who are supposed to make an ex-offender feel a part of society when he/she gets released becomes prejudiced and bind the criminals with shackles of boundaries, the rates of recidivism are bound to be high.
Things won't change until we will characterize our punitive framework not as a social arrangement but rather as a social issue, one that we handle with the same determination and force as we do other social issues. There must be change. The voiceless and vote less prisoners and ex-prisoners in America need us to advocate for change.


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Notes




1. Recidivism: when a person who has already been incarcerated and released reverts back to criminal behaviors.

2. Bloody Code: this era was known as the bloody code because people would get Capital Punishment for most of the crimes. A thief would be executed even if the crime were not that big.

3. Prevention of Crime Act: this introduced a new rule, which revolved around hard physical work, technical and educational instruction as well as a strong moral atmosphere for incarcerated youths.

4. Incarceration rate: it is the rate of the prisoners in the country. The incarceration rates for different races are different.

5. Solitary Confinement: A separate place inside the prison where the criminals who break rules inside the prison are kept in isolation with maximum security.

6. Destructive experiences: as in the negative psychological experience the parent went through while being incarcerated which is bad for the children too.


















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Works Cited


Villines, Z. (2013, March 15). The Effects of Incarceration on Mental Health. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from GoodTherapy.org: http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/prison-incarceration-effects-mental- health-0315137
Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2014, April 22). Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 30 States in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010. Retrieved May 02, 2016, from Bureau of Justics Statistics: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/rprts05p0510pr.cfm
Carson, E. A. (2015). Prisoners in 2014. U.S Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. NCJ: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Chura, D. (2014, May 27). The real roots of Prison Recidivism. Retrieved May 01, 2016, from Beacon Broadside: http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/05/the-real-roots-of- prison-recidivism.html
Hubpages. (2014, June 13). Breathing Through Bars: A Brief HIstory on the Prison System in America. Retrieved May 03, 2016, from Hubpages: http://hubpages.com/politics/Breathing-Through-Bars-A-Brief-HIstory-on- the-Prison-System-in-America

Haney, C. (2012). The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post- Prison Adjustment. University of California. Santa Cruz: University of California.
National Institute of Justice. (2014, June 17). Recidivism. Retrieved May 01, 2016, from National Institute of Justice (NIJ): http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx
Shalev, S. (2014). Sourcebook on solitary confinement (English). Retrieved May 30, 2016, from Solitary Confinement: http://solitaryconfinement.org/sourcebook
Smith, P. S. (2010). The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature. In P. S. Smith, The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature (Vol. 34, pp. 441-528). The University of Chicago Press.
Tsai, T., & Scommegna , P. (2012, August 14). U.S. Has World's Highest Incarceration Rate. Retrieved April 25, 2016, from PRB (Population Reference Bureau): http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx