Psychological effects

• There are 3 psychological effects outlined:

  • stress/depression
  • institutionalisation
  • prisonisation
• Stress and depression are common because suicide and self harm rates are higher in prison and stress increases disturbance in past prison.
• Institutionalisation is where you are adapted to the norms and routines of prison and this leads to difficulty adjusting upon release.
• Prisonisation is where in prison inmates adopt a code.

  The behaviour that is deemed acceptable and rewarded in prison is not acceptable outside of prison and this increases an inmates chances of recidivism.
• AO3

  :)

  Research to support this comes from The Prison Reform Trust who stated that the oppressive regime of prison may trigger the vulnerable as they found 25 % of women and 15 % has symptoms indicative of psychosis.

  Cheeseman found many aggressive incidents occur to relieve stress.

  Bartol also found 119 suicides with the first 24 hours.

  This therefore provides evidence to support psychological effects in prison which increases the validity.
• AO3

  :(

  Issues with this is that you can’t assume all offender will react the same way.

  For example offenders will serve different sentences, for different periods of time, for different offences.

  This present wide variations as different prisons will also have different regimes.

  Therefore you can’t make general conclusions that apply to every prison and prisoner and therefore it lacks generalisability.
• AO3

  :(

  Also you can’t definitively determine that psychological effects are the result of prison or pre-existing.

  An offender may have committed a crime due to mental health issues and these will have further manifested while in prison.

  Therefore it would be erroneous to state psychological effects are the result of prison.