Custodial sentencing

• What is it ?

  • when the court requires someone to be held in prison as fines + community service is not justifiable
• What are the 5 aims ?

  1. protect the public from violent offenders
  2. punish offenders + prevent recidivism
  3. deter others in society through social learning theory
  4. atone from wrong doing + provide justice
  5. rehabilitate through therapy + education
• What are the 3 main psychological affects on prisoners ?

  1. Deindividuation
  2. conditions of a prison
  3. mental health
• What is involved in deindividuation ?

  • combination of anonymity + shared ideas that enable a person to lose self control, identity and go against social norms
  • lose sense of identity to fit into prison cultures
  • adopt behaviours that are rewarded to remain safe
• What is involved in conditions of prison ?

  1. Overcrowding
  2. heat
  3. jobs
• Overcrowding ?

  • increase in murder, suicide and assult

  Yuma doing positive correlation in Japan prison density and violence

  Calhaurn studied overcrowding in rats and found it led to increase stress and aggression
• Heat + noise

  • increase effect of overcrowding

  vietah- students in high temp and population density expresses more negative emotion than control group
• Job burn out ?

  Prison staff shortage increases workload for remaining staff

  • led to an I craze in psychological exhaustion and graduate loss of care
  • poor relationship with inmates
• Mental health ?


  6ft square cell, solitary confinement

  • suicide, self harm were 15x higher in prison and highest risk in young men in first 24h in prison
  • depression- felt anxious + hopeless

  newton- self harm is due to fit in with prison community

  snow- found those who try suicide are more likely depressed but those who sh have higher anger + stress
• Evaluation ?

  1. Individual differences
  2. prisons aim to rehabilitate
  3. prisons reform trust
• Individual differences ?

  • different prisons have different regimes
  • sentence lengths
  • reason for incarceration
• Prisons aim to rehabilitate ?

  • education programmes
  • cbt
  • training
• Prison reform trust ?

  found 25% of women + 15% men in prison have symptoms of psychosis

  • made worse my prisons/ triggered