Specifically, what kinda transformations do people go through, psychologically speaking, after years of imprisonment?
WAG, with no cite - many become even more hardened criminals and addicts, many join gans while inside, or continue previous affiliations.
I’m sure QtP will be along with a more definitive answer.
Sorry, I thought this was about that new blood pressure medication.
need an admin to fix my title. I wish I could spell. Thanks Gabe
Common things are low level paranoia, they tend to belive that anything that goes awry in their lives is due to maliciousness, if one letter is late, it can cause them to believe the sender is trying to punish them.
This can become much more extreme with drug use, or lack of it in the case of cannabis and can lead to long term mental problems.
They become institutionalised, I have seen this diagnosed in prisoners as young as 22 by phsychiatrists, in this particular case the prisoner was actually exempted from a lot of the courses that address offending behaviour as it was felt that these could be of no benefit to him.
Stress and frustration, can lead to longer term problems. These often have their roots in the prisoners lack of control on just about any aspect of their lives. This lack of control is something that unless you have been in an institution such as the armed services or a closed order monastry, most people would not understand.
Change of drug habit, its not at all unusual for a prisoner to arrive in prison with no drug habit and come out with a heroin one, albeit a low level habit, which then grow out of contol, upon release.
My husband works in corrections, and has never once heard of a story of mental problems caused by cannabis withdrawal.
Cannabis may be somewhat psychologically addictive, but is not physically addictive. Those who seem to suffer drastic effects when its use is stopped probably had mental issues long before they started using it.
That is not a diagnosis. It may be a symptom if a greater mental issue, but there is no such thing as a psychiatrist (at least a competent one) diagnosing someone as being “institutionalized.” Nor would it be a legitimate excuse for excusing an inmate from any required treatment programs. There has to be other reasons.
Secondly, at the prison in which my husband works (medium security) the average sentence is nine months. That’s usually not enough time to have a huge impact on a person’s psyche.
Very true. But some inmates cope quite well with this environment. It just depends on the individual.
Human beings are extremely adaptable, and will learn to cope with almost any environment. Some inmates are quite happy-- they have friends, jobs, status among the other inmates and with good behavior can get preferred housing.
Don’t get me wrong-- it’s not a pleasant place, by any means. It’s hot in the summer/cold and drafty in the winter, smelly, uncomfortable and you’re not exactly living with the nicest of people.
Some people adapt quite well. Some people just want to “lay down” and do their time as quietly as possible, and some people get very stressed and have a lot of problems. Some people come out of prison worse than what they went in, and some people come out better. Some join gangs. Some find Jesus. Some learn better ways of escaping detection with their criminal activities, and some learn job skills. Again, it just depends on the individual.
Like many things in life, prison is what you make of it. It can be a chance to get an education and turn your life around, or you can use it as an excuse to become embittered at society.
Perhaps prisons vary by state, but in the one my husband works, the inmates are tested periodically for drug use, and if they test positive, are put in special controlled environments. There are also strenuous efforts made to find out how the drugs are entering the prison. This is not to say that some don’t slip through the cracks, but it’s not a rampant problem.
Many inmates can’t afford drugs. Inside the prison, drugs cost about ten times “street value.” For an inmate earning about twenty cents an hour, you can imagine how difficult saving up enough money to purchase them would be.
Of course, some inmates have funds sent in from the outside, and there is a trade economy inside the prison, but it’s still pretty pricy. Hubby says that a joint inside the prison is about one-sixth the size of one on “the outside” and costs at least three packs of cigarettes. That’s steep.
I hope our Board’s resident prison doctor weighs in. Doc Q, where are you?
Paranoia is very common in prisons, and yes it can be part of an underlying condition, however, its also true that regular cannabis users become more paranoid when they stop using.
This is not unusual for ordinary users, a mild paranoia when stopping smoking cannabis, but in prison, and with issues already, it can be just enough to tip them over.
Drug use in prison is absolutely rife, obtaining cannabis is easy, or any other drug.
As for testing in prisons, there is a strict laid down procedure, however there are ways to continue drug use and either be clean when tests take place, or they can be masked, or catheterisation if you think you are likely to be tested, or ‘watering up’ or simply failing to produce a sample, which lands you in some trouble, but not as much as a positive for the big 3, and then there is simply not caring at all about being tested positive, even in isolation prisoners find ways to obtain drugs.
Where I am, its considered a medium term jail, we get them on sentences from around 8 months upwards to perhaps 10 or 12 years, they will probably do their last three or four years here, depends upon their security category.
I have seen figures which suggest that up to 80% of prisoners have personality problems of varying degrees, wether these were pre-existing or drug induced, or prison environment induced, is the big question, the answer will more likely be some of all of the above and other factors too.
As for being institutionalised, well what can I say? there are a number of prisoners who are pretty much dependant upon prison, and who only have short breaks outside the system and I see enough of them to know it exists.
This does not bode well for their release.
The Prison Reform Trust in the UK has special concern about the increasing length of prison terms being handed down and inmates becoming insitutionalised, and if you look around the net you’ll find lots of folk being concerned at the institutionalising effects of prison and how these can impede rehabilitation.
- Heroin
- Cocaine
- Meth? PCP? Or Marijuana?
A lot of the problems already mentioned didn’t develop in prison. Most prisoners with mental health problems or drug dependancies or criminal lifestyles already had them before they arrived in prison.
I’d agree that the main effect actually caused by imprisonment is institutionalisation. For inescapable practical reasons, prisons are highly controlled environments - prisoners are always being told what to do and how to do it. Many of them become dependant of having other people make their decisions for them.
I suppose it’s possible, but it’s not exactly common. My husband has worked in several different prisons ranging from medium to Super Max security, and he has never seen, nor heard of anyone “tipping over” from lack of weed.
Should an inmate come to the prison with pre-existing substance abuse problems, he is immediately put into treatment before he joins general population (depending on the severity of his problem, of course.) There are also voluntary treatment programs in general population, as well as support groups and the like.
Dude, your instiution seriously needs to work on its security. Prisons take substance abuse seriously-- they don’t just wink at the problem. The prison in which my husband works is periodically searched with drug-sniffing dogs, and there are random “shakedowns” of the inmates and all areas to which they have access.
Yes, there is drug use in prisons, but none of the prisons in which my husband has worked has it been “absolutely rife.”
The expense alone excludes many potential “customers.” In addition, testing positive can destroy someone’s chances for an early release, as well as removing the privledges the inmates strive to get. (Preferred housing, different jobs, being moved to a prison of a lesser security level, being allowed to participate in service programs like raising puppies to be trained as assistance animals . . . etc.) Thirdly, if anything is rife in prisons, it’s snitching-- actively encouraged by the staff, as you can imagine.
At my husband’s prison, tests are always random and unnanounced (sometimes in the middle of the night.) Inmates are given three hours in which to produce a sample, in which they are not allowed to leave, and are monitored to make sure they don’t do anything to mess with the results of the test. An officer observes the inmates urinating to ensure they don’t tamper with the samples or switch them. If an inmate refuses to supply a sample, he is declared to be a “positive” and is punished accordingly.
It should be made clear that a personality/character disorder is not a mental illness. It covers a lot of different issues, like lack of empathy or a violent temper. Boiled down, it’s just being an asshole. It’s not necessarily debilitating, because lots of people who lead law-abiding lives have personality/character disorders to varying degrees.
It may not so much be dependency on prison as much as a lack of any other lifestyle options. Even for ex-inmates highly dedicated to bettering themselves, getting a decent job after being in prison is extremely difficult. Frankly, people don’t want a convicted thief working in their business, or someone convicted of a sex crime working around women or children.
Many of them also lack social communication skills, or have unsightly tatoos in visible locations. They may also have issues with authority. In short, they’re not highly sought-after job candidates. Many an inmate faced with the choice of hard, unrewarding work with little chance of advancement or highly lucrative crime will choose the latter.
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Rehabilitation depends solely on the individual’s desire to change their ways. Unless a man is willing to change, nothing on God’s green earth will work.
. . . Taking a cock up the ass no longer seems like such a big deal?
My emphasis.
That’s one hellava sweeping statement. No doubt there are very well run prisons. But unless you’ve actually made a study of prisons worldwide (or even US wide) you’re fighting a very uphill battle to convince me that what you say is true of a vast number of prisons, based on everything else I’ve ever read.
My husband has met with a lot of prison officials from all over the country setting up a new system called Rentry, which has an emphasis on programming and counseling to help inmates “re-enter” society, so he has a lot of experience with issues that prisons face.
Rules and procedures vary from state to state-- this is true-- and some are more succesful than others, but my husband’s experience is that all are striving toward the same goal-- to make the prisons run as effeciently and safely as possible.
Politicians get a lot of criticism for their tough-on-crime-but-on-a-lower-budget stance, but they often do positive things for the system. The director of our state’s prisons and some state-level politicians have implimented a campaign to reduce sexual assault in the prisons. With a change in administration, the emphasis could be on job training, or on substance abuse eradication.
The point being is that once a politician has a pet project, the insitutions must strive to meet his goals, or have a damn good reason why not. Prisons face enormous political pressures from inmate advocacy groups, civil rights groups, politicians and the media. Prison officials who seem to be ignoring problems can get in a shit load of trouble.
I would take what you read about prisons with a grain of salt. There are a lot of “statistics” out there which have been vastly skewed to make a political point, and even legitimate publications have been known to cite them without checking the studies themselves for correct methodology.
Oh, I do, Lissa, I do. Trust me.
Hey, that’s cool. You have no reason to trust what I say. Skeptisicm is healthy.
Try to undertstand where I’m coming from, though. As the wife of a corrections professional, it greatly bothers me when I see how the system is sometimes painted. From reading some of the things put out by advocay groups, you’d think prisons are hell-holes, filled to the brim with suffering men who are tormented by brutal, sadistic employees who desire nothing more than to make inmates miserable and ignore/encourage their victimization by others.
I have met a LOT of corrections employees. Like all professions, there are bad apples, but for the most part, I find them to be professionals who just want to do their jobs. Sure, for some it’s self-interest: the desire for promotion or to look good in the idea of others, but some have a sincere desire to make their communities a better place. They know most of these guys will be back on the streets sooner or later-- the same streets where they live, in many cases.
Like any other people, the employees want as stress-free an environment as possible. This means keeping the inmates as calm as possible, and hopefully, busy. This is one reason why inmate recreation is taken so seriously in my state–a bored inmate is a dangerous inmate.
They also take seriously any inmate complaints that they are being teased or treated poorly by the guards because that’s a situation which can dangerously escalate. The inmates outnumber the guards a hundred to one-- it’s not in the guards’ best interest to have them riled.
As I said, I understand completely where you’re coming from-- I wouldn’t trust a stranger on the internet, either. What I would suggest, if you’re interested in this subject, is to visit some prisons and talk to some professionals.
The prison in which my husband works is considered to be easy-going. There is very little violence-- there hasn’t been a murder in over a quarter of a century. The general atmosphere is relatively good-natured. The inmates mostly keep themselves in line because they don’t want to rock the boat.
Well for one, prison officers are not particularly keen on being called ‘guards, ’ wardens’ etc.
Being responsible in a million ways for literally the lives of inmates and staff, running various courses, being counsellor for distressed inmates, social worker, advisor and so many other things, its so much more than ‘warder’ or ‘guard’ which are both very restrictive in meaning in the public perception.
As for drugs getting into prison, they do, the world over, unless you have a system of complete isolation from other humans, you will get drugs in prison, even in the higher category prisons.
One of the most abused drugs in prison is…nope, you’ll probably not guess, it’s steroids.
We have randomised tests, suspicion tests and voluntary testing regimes, and in the UK those tests have been blamed for the change in the choice of drug, which was actually predicted by experts in the filed in the US.
Cannabis is in your system for up to one month, in urine samples, so there is far more likelhood of being caught than if you take heroin which is not detectable in urine after 2 or 3 days. The addition of time for being caught with drugs in the system provided the incentive to switch drug, because there is a cumulative tariff of time added such that you can get as much time being nailed for the sixth time on cannabis as the first time heroin positive test, and its the cannabis prisoners get caught doing.
Result, well, you might think that such sanctions would encourage you to give up drugs, but prisoners have their own logic, and just switch drug, and now we turn out far more low consuming junkies as a result, and those junkies go on to develop their habit further.
We could drasticly reduce drug importation inot our prisons, but somehow I doubt if the bleeding hearts would allow it, as it would involve visits having absolutely no physical contact, with a screen between prisoner and visitor, and we would also need to search legal aides, and we would also need the warrants and correct staff to carry out invasive searches.
Drug dogs are commmon enough, we get them in at least a dozen times a year, higher catergory prisons have them on site permanently, drugs still get through though.
Here, at least at the prisons I have experience with, the terms “guard” and “officer” are pretty interchangable, except in a formal setting, when “officer” is preferred. Many officers call themselves guards in casual speech, as in, “I work as a guard at the prison.”
“Warden” only applies to the head of the prison, and to his immediate subordinates, who are called “Deputy Wardens”. (At my husband’s prison there are four Deputies, each with their own rank.)
Maybe things are different in the UK, but our corrections employees have very specific job duties-- an officer would never be expected to do the duties of a “case manager” (which is what we call social workers). Any counselling they would do would be in a very casual manner-- any serious issues must be referred to a mental health professional. They might advise an inmate in an informal way-- for example, as to what paperwork to use-- but anything other than that is referred to a case manager.
In NY, the official title is correction officer but being called a guard or c.o. is quite common. The wardens used to be the top guys who were in charge of the prisons but they’ve been replaced by superintendants for political reasons.