I’ve run across the idea a few times that there are actually a significant number of convicts who do not want to leave prison, or want to return to prison, after their sentences are served–some even going so far as to commit another crime just to get caught and sent back. Is this true or just someone’s idea of irony?
These walls are kind of funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized. They send you here for life, that’s exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyways. (Shawshank Redemption)
My wife works at the state prison, and this is definitely the case in some situations. For some of the inmates, this is the first time in their lives that they have had a warm bed and three meals a day. They don’t want to leave.
Damn, beaten to the Shawshank quip.
I was gonna ask if the OP had seen/read it recently 
But mainly, I wanted to subscribe to the thread, and the option to do it without posting never works for me.
There’s a fantastic story in The Gift of the Magi about a bum trying to get into prison for the winter. So he’s wandering around, being vagrantly, eating huge meals without paying for them, etc. Finally,
he wanders to a church and, as he’s staring at it, realizes that he doesn’t have to go to jail. He can turn his life around. Just as he makes this life-changing epiphany, a police officer taps him on the shoulder and arrests him for loitering.
I met an ex-con who wanted to go back. I met him at my job. I was a bank teller. He wanted to make a withdrawel – at gunpoint.
I’m missing the joke. But I saw it a couple of weeks ago, a brief reference to an alleged bank robber who robbed a bank of two 50 dollar bills and told the teller he’d be in his car smoking a cigarette when the cops came.
Now explain the winky?
(The first half of my question is “Does this happen?” The second half, which isn’t suited for GQ is “Should they be allowed to stay?”)
Sorry, no real joke, was mainly defusing the implication that it was the only reason you could have come up with the question. Of course, every time I’ve had this discussion, it’s been a result of someone watching or reading Shawshank.
Sure it happens. As mentioned, it’s probably better then home for some. Not only that, if they become “top dog” or something, they are likely not to be messed with, so why not?
Should they be allowed to stay? Well we can’t have them recommitting crimes just to go back. Someone innocent is bound to get hurt. I don’t agree with it, but what can you do?
The O. Henry story you describe is called The Cop and the Anthem, I believe.
Does anyone have a cite for a specific inmate who doesn’t want to leave prison, as opposed to 2nd or 3rd person anecdotes? Prison is really hell in most cases and having met dozens of inmates (some released years earlier and some still serving lengthy sentences after decades), even those who have lived most of their lives institutionally haven’t made any statements to me about release other than that they welcome(d) it.
Some of the features of the modern American prison include earning less than a dollar/hour (Pennsylvania starts you at less than 30 cents/hr… and you buy your own stamps, soap, phone calls etc.) for 6-10 hour days of physical labor, the constant possibility of rape or murder, constant noise, record overcrowding, boredom, and lack of control over most aspects of your life.
Have humans found ways to cope with that? Sure. Are there many people who prefer that to the outside? I’m skeptical.
Haven’t seen one who wanted to stay after his sentence was over.But I don’t think it’s impossible. What I do see fairly often is people who don’t want to be released with conditions.They don’t want to get out before their sentence is over and be subject to supervision- they want to serve every day of their sentence and be released without any extra retrictions.
Plus, you have to look at the life they will have in prison and the one they will have outside. For some inmates, the choice is not between low paid , hard physical labor, overcrowding, noise and danger in prison vs a normal life on the outside. For some, the choice is between a place to sleep with three meals a day, with little physical labor and some recreation, or a crowded ,noisy,dangerous shelter which forces you to leave at 8am and doesn’t allow you to return until 7pm
1st person experience: Mine.
Just today I had a patient tell me he wanted to stay in prison longer so he’d be eligible for Hepatitis C treatment. (Treatment is up to a year long, and inmates with short stays aren’t eligible. In fact this guy was at present not eligible even if he did stay a long time, as his liver was in too good a shape as of yet.)
We also just readmitted an inmate. He was out for exactly one day, and promptly broke the conditions of his release. I don’t know first hand, but was told by others involved that he did it to get sent back in.
OK, so that’s basically choosing prison over death because of the nature of our healthcare system. I’m not sure this meets the ‘voluntary’ criterion.
I’ve never heard of a shelter worse than a prison in terms of levels of control and violence. Most people who wish to avoid shelters do so by not showing up at them at all.
I’ve never stayed in a shelter, so I don’t have firsthand knowledge, but plenty of the ex-prisoners I encounter at work have. According to them, the men’s shelters are worse than some of the prisons. Makes sense, if you think about it. A fair amount of shelter residents are the very same people who were in prison, and shelters don’t have all of the security measures that prisons do. While many people who wish to avoid shelters just don’t go to them, some don’t have that option, - like people who were released from prison under some form of supervision who have nowhere else to live. Where does a paroled prisoner whose family won’t take him in go? The choices are basically a shelter, some sort of residential program, or the street. Prison may be preferable to the shelter and the program- prisons don’t throw you out with no where to go all day like the shelters do, sometimes the rules at shelters and programs are as strict or stricter than the ones in prison ( I remember one drug program that didn’t permit mail for two months, phone calls for six months and visits for a year), and again, the population is much the same as that in prison.
I’m not sure if you’d consider this as a first person account, but Charles Manson didn’t want to leave prison in 1967.
Now we’re mixing shelters and drug treatment programs. to which many people are sentenced just like prison. Essentailly many of these are prisons with a treatment component.
OK, maybe we’ve got Chuckie Manson wanting to stay. So that’s a man who chooses prison over a painful, prolonged death and one of the world’s most notorious crazy people choosing prison. Not building a strong case here. We may as well add that people appealing sentencing on death row are “choosing” prison over lethal injection or electrocution.
You can leave a shelter in the morning if you feel your life is threatened the previous night; not so with a prison. Rape isn’t institutionalized in shelters as it is in prison. If even half of the rape statistics I’ve seen for US prisons are true I don’t see what sort of great “security measures” inmates are privvy to. And yes, many people do choose the street before shelters… but if anything they seem to try pretty hard to avoid arrest.
Have we not only become a society that locks up 2 million+ people but also one that feels the need to justify it because people prefer being locked up?
Here in Minnesota, we are starting to have many convicts in prison with very long sentences, due to increased sentencing guidelines. Many of them are becoming elderly, but are unlikely to be paroled due to the length of their sentences.
So the prison administration is seriously looking at developing a prison nursing home, to care for prisoners in their 70’s, 80’s, & even 90’s. [They aren’t much of an escape risk at that age, so you can cut down on the guards. But you make up for that in the need for nurses & attendants!] They are definately worried about the added expense this will pose for the prison system.
They did look into changing the law, or having the governor pardon these inmates, so they could dump them out of prison and not have to pay for their geriatric care. But some studies showed that most of them would still end up in nursing homes, and since they had no other resources, they would eventually be paid for by taxpayers anyway. And private nursing homes on the outside would cost more than a prison system nursing home.