The menu was different each week, but was the same every four weeks, so after a few months, the options became very mundane. There were provisions for low-fat options too, but these were only ever given to inmates who had a note from the doctor. The meals were generally stews and curries — anything that could be made in a large pot.
And they were very high in carbohydrates — more filling than nutritious — and pasta, potatoes, rice etc were the base of most meals. This was a small, single portion of cereal, a small carton of UHT milk, four tea bags, a couple of sachets of jam and a couple of pats of butter. A couple of times a week, we were given half a small pork pie, which were jokingly called porkpiecicles as they were usually still frozen. This was delivered to each cell late in the evening to be eaten overnight.
The food provided was much better quality than the usual fare, sometimes produced by a professional chef brought into the prison. There was actually a ban on inmates converting to Islam in the run up to Ramadan because it was common to do so just for the food, which was often traded. In some circumstances, the move may come after a request has been made or an application process has been completed. The few days notice give the prisoner the chance to say goodbyes to the other guys and inform family and friends on the outside of the move.
When somebody is ghosted, they are usually told the night before, after bang-up, to allow them to pack belongings but not mix with other inmates — making it impossible to settle any scores or collect debts. In extreme cases, the inmate would only be told where they are going as they are being processed for transport the next morning so nobody on the wing would know.
Youth transferred to the adult criminal justice system fare worse than those that remain in the juvenile justice system Austin et al. The number of juveniles held in adult jails rose dramatically from 1, in to 8, in , a percent increase. In the late s, 13 percent of confined juveniles were in adult jails or prisons Austin et al. Although federal law requires separation of children and adults in correctional facilities, a loophole in the law does not require its application when those children are certified as adults.
In , 7, youth were counted in jails Minton, , and 3, prisoners in state-run adult prisons were found to be under 18 Sabol et al. The number of juvenile inmates has declined in recent years, with 1, in prisons Carson and Sabol, In an overall trend that is very similar to the one we have described for adults, the confinement rate of juveniles increased through the s and s. By , the juvenile confinement rate had reached a peak of juveniles in placement per , population.
The confinement rate of juveniles rose steadily from in , to in the mids, to in , reaching a peak in before starting to decline Allen-Hagen, ; Child Trends, n. It is worth noting that the placement rate did not change substantially between and ; the increased confinement rate is due largely to the growth of delinquency referrals handled by juvenile courts during that period rather than greater use of placement National Research Council, With the growth in prison and jail populations, juveniles still represent less than 1 percent of the overall incarcerated population.
When youth are confined in jails, detention centers, or prisons designed for adults, they have limited access to educational and rehabilitative services appropriate to their age and development. Living in more threatening adult correctional environments places them at greater risk of mental and physical harm Deitch et al. Research also has shown that placing youth in the adult corrections system instead of retaining them in the juvenile system increases their risk of reoffending Bishop and Frazier, ; Mulvey and Schubert, ; Redding, These disadvantages are borne disproportionately by youth of color, who are overrepresented at every stage of the juvenile justice process and particularly in the numbers transferred to adult court.
Youth of color also remain in the system longer than white youth. Minority overrepresentation within the juvenile justice system raises at least two types of concerns. First, it calls into question the overall fairness and legitimacy of the juvenile justice system.
Second, it has serious implications for the life-course trajectories of many minority youth who may be stigmatized and adversely affected in other ways by criminal records attained at comparatively young ages National Research Council, Congress first focused on these kinds of racial disparities in when it amended the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of P.
If the number of minority youth was disproportionate, then states were required to develop and implement plans for reducing the disproportionate representation.
Despite a research and policy focus on this matter for more than two decades, however, remarkably little progress has been made toward reducing the disparities themselves. On the other hand, at least in the past decade, some jurisdictions have begun to take significant steps to overhaul their juvenile justice systems to reduce the use of punitive practices and heighten awareness of racial disparities for more discussion, see National Research Council [].
The steady decline in the juvenile confinement rate, from per. Thus, the requirement was broadened from disproportionate minority confinement to disproportionate minority contact, and states were required to implement strategies aimed at reducing disproportionality.
Imprisonment produces negative, disabling behavioral and physical changes in some prisoners, and certain prison conditions can greatly exacerbate those changes. As discussed further below, numerous empirical studies have confirmed this observation. Many aspects of prison life—including material deprivations; restricted movement and liberty; a lack of meaningful activity; a nearly total absence of personal privacy; and high levels of interpersonal uncertainty, danger, and fear—expose prisoners to powerful psychological stressors that can.
Prison stress can affect prisoners in different ways and at different stages of their prison careers. Some prisoners experience the initial period of incarceration as the most difficult, and that stress may precipitate acute psychiatric symptoms that surface for the first time.
Preexisting psychological disorders thus may be exacerbated by initial experiences with incarceration e. Other prisoners appear to survive the initial phases of incarceration relatively intact only to find themselves worn down by the ongoing physical and psychological challenges and stress of confinement.
They may suffer a range of psychological problems much later in the course of their incarceration Taylor, ; Jose-Kampfner, ; Rubenstein, For some prisoners, extreme prison stress takes a more significant psychological toll. Posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD is a diagnosis applied to a set of interrelated, trauma-based symptoms, including depression, emotional numbing, anxiety, isolation, and hypervigilance. Studies conducted in the United States have observed the highest prevalence: PTSD is reported in 21 percent of male prisoners Gibson et al.
Herman proposes an expanded diagnostic category that appears to describe more accurately the kind of traumatic reactions produced by certain experiences within prisons.
A person must 1 be exposed to a severe stressor resulting in intense fear or helplessness; 2 undergo psychic reexperiencing or reenacting of the trauma; 3 engage in avoidance behavior or experience psychic numbing; and 4 experience increased arousal, typically in the presence of stimuli related to or reminiscent of the original trauma American Psychiatric Association, For additional discussion of the disorder, see Wilson and Raphael As reported in Haney , p.
Complex PTSD can result in protracted depression, apathy, and the development of a deep sense of hopelessness as the long-term psychological costs of adapting to an oppressive situation. Of course, the unique and potent stresses of imprisonment are likely to interact with and amplify whatever preexisting vulnerabilities prisoners bring to prison. Prisoners vary in their backgrounds and vulnerabilities and in how they experience or cope with the same kinds of environments and events.
As a result, the same prison experiences have different consequences for different prisoners e. Many prisoners come from socially and economically marginalized groups and have had adverse experience in childhood and adolescence that may have made them more rather than less vulnerable to psychological stressors and less able to cope effectively with the chronic strains of prison life than those with less problematic backgrounds e. As noted earlier, significant percentages of prisoners suffer from a range of serious, diagnosable psychological disorders, including clinical depression and psychosis as well as PTSD.
The exact onset and causal origins of these disorders cannot always be determined—some are undoubtedly preexisting conditions, some are exacerbated by the harshness and stress of incarceration, and others may originate in the turmoil and trauma generated by prison experiences. The incidence of psychological disorders among prisoners is discussed further in Chapter 7. Clemmer , p.
Incorporating these mores is a matter less of choice than of necessity. In addition to the internalizing of cultural aspects of the prison, prisonization occurs as prisoners undergo a number of psychological changes or transformations to adapt to the demands of prison life. It is a form of coping in response to the abnormal practices and conditions that incarceration entails. The nature and degree of prisonization will vary. Two notable characteristics of the prison environment contribute to the process of prisonization: the necessary structure and routines that can erode personal autonomy and the threat of victimization.
Maintaining order and safety within prisons often requires that routines and safeguards be established. As a result, daily decisions—such as when they get up; when, what, or where they eat; and when phone calls are allowed—are made for prisoners. Over long periods, such routines can become increasingly natural Zamble, , and some prisoners can become dependent on the direction they afford.
As Irwin , p. Those who succumb to prisonization may have trouble adjusting to life back in the community, which is more unstructured and unpredictable. In extreme cases, some lose the capacity to initiate activities and plans and to make decisions Haney, In addition, prisoners often are aware of the threat of victimization, especially in overcrowded institutions.
As part of the process of prisonization, prisoners develop strategies for coping with or adjusting to this threat McCorkle, Some prisoners become hypervigilant. Some cope with the threat of victimization by establishing a reputation for toughness, reacting quickly and instinctively even to seemingly insignificant insults, minor affronts, or slightest signs of disrespect, sometimes with decisive even deadly force Haney, ; Phillips, Other prisoners adopt aggressive survival strategies that include proactively victimizing others King, ; Rideau and Sinclair, As King , pp.
The process of adapting to the prison environment has several psychological dimensions. Often unable to trust anyone, they. Some prisoners can become psychologically scarred in ways that intensify their sense of anger and deepen their commitment to the role of an outsider, and perhaps a criminal lifestyle Irwin, The prisonization process has additional psychological components.
Finally, as Lerman b, pp. Prisoners who have deeply internalized the broad set of habits, values, and perspectives brought about by prisonization are likely to have difficulty transitioning to the community. Not surprisingly, according to Haney , p.
We have repeatedly emphasized that even maximum and medium security prisons vary widely in how they are physically structured, in the procedures by which they operate, and in the corresponding psychological environment inside. We have focused our analysis primarily on what can be regarded as the common features of prison life, lived under ordinary circumstances.
However, the aphorism that. In this section, we consider two prison conditions that are at the extreme ends of the social spectrum of experiences within prison—overcrowding and isolation. As noted earlier, the rapid increase in the overall number of incarcerated persons in the United States resulted in widespread prison overcrowding.
The speed and size of the influx outpaced the ability of many states to construct enough additional bedspace to meet the increased demand Haney, Specifically, as of the end of , only 20 state prison systems were operating at less than percent of design capacity, while 27 state systems and the Federal Bureau of Prisons were operating at percent of design capacity or greater see Guerino et al.
California has experienced significant prison population reductions since then, largely in response to the federal court directive issued in Brown v. Plata In the mids, the average prisoner in a maximum security prison in the United States was housed in a single cell that was roughly 60 square feet in dimension slightly larger than a king size bed or small bathroom.
That relatively small area typically held a bunk, a toilet and sink usually fused into a single unit , a cabinet or locker in which prisoners stored their personal property which had to be kept inside the cell , and sometimes a small table or desk. After the s, double-celling or, in extreme cases, triple-celling, dormitory housing, or even the use of makeshift dormitories. See Carson and Sabol , p. The use of double-celling can place a significant strain on prison services if not accompanied by commensurate increases in staffing, programming resources and space, and infrastructure to accommodate the larger population of prisoners in confined spaces.
During the period of rapidly increasing rates of incarceration, legislators, correctional officials, and prison architects came to assume that double-celling would continue, and as noted earlier, the Supreme Court in essence authorized its use.
Despite the initial widespread concern over double-celling among correctional professionals, prison litigators, and human rights groups, this practice became common in prison systems across the United States.
Although many prisoners have a decidedly different view, correctional officials report that it causes a minimum of disruption to basic prison operations Vaugh, Several correctional practices have perhaps ameliorated the dire consequences that were predicted to follow widespread double-celling. One such practice is use of the larger cells mentioned above. These are smaller than the previously recommended 60 square feet of space per prisoner, and not all prisons adhere to this new standard. However, those that do—typically prisons built more recently—provide double-celled prisoners with more space than they had in the small cells common in older facilities.
In addition, even in some older facilities that do not meet the newer standard, the adverse consequences of double-celling can be mitigated by extending the amount of time prisoners are permitted to be out of their cells and increasing the number of opportunities they have for meaningful programming and other productive activities. A large literature on overcrowding in prison has documented a range of adverse consequences for health, behavior, and morale, particularly when overcrowding persists for long periods e.
More recently, British researchers found that overcrowding and perceived aggression and violence were related to increased arousal and stress and decreased psychological well-being Lawrence and Andrews, In another study, Gillespie observed that prior street drug use and degree of overcrowding could explain the.
In addition, several studies have made a connection between overcrowding and the increased risk of suicide Huey and McNulty, ; Leese et al. According to Huey and McNulty , p. Establishing empirical relationships between overcrowding and inmate disciplinary infractions and violence has proven challenging e.
Some studies have found a causal relationship, while others have not for a review, see Steiner and Wooldredge, The apparent inconsistency in outcomes may be due in part to other factors of prison life that complicate research in this area, including the level of analysis at which crowding is measured and its effects are assessed e.
Prison operations adjust and institutional actors adapt in multiple ways in attempts to deal with overcrowding-related pressures. Inmate violence levels themselves are known to be affected by a complex set of forces and factors Steiner, , and even undercrowded conditions, prisoner behavior can be managed through exceptional means, such as an especially high concentration of staff Tartino and Levy, These and other complexities likely help explain the lack of definitive research results on this issue.
According to Haney , p. Overcrowding is likely to raise collective frustration levels inside prisons by generally decreasing the amount of resources available to prisoners. In addition, overcrowding has systemic consequences for prison systems.
Prisons and prison systems may become so crowded that staff members struggle to provide prisoners with basic, necessary services such as proper screening and treatment for medical and mental illnesses see Chapter 7.
In fact, the Supreme Court recently concluded that overcrowding in the large California prison system. Prison administrators can take steps to ameliorate the potentially harmful impact of overcrowding, and many of them have done so. To deal with drug use, for example, prison officials have effectively employed increased surveillance and interdiction of the flow of drugs into prisons, increased the number and effectiveness of internal searches, implemented more random drug testing of prisoners, provided significant disincentives for drug possession or use, made treatment more accessible to prisoners with substance abuse problems, and closely monitored the continued application of these measures and their outcomes.
Such control efforts have proven effective as part of a comprehensive drug interdiction program in reducing overall levels of drug use even in overcrowded prisons e. Heightened staffing levels may allow prisons to approximate the kind of programming and increased out-of-cell time that less crowded prisons would afford at least to the point where the sheer lack of space impedes or prevents doing so and may serve to counteract some of the adverse consequences of overcrowding.
Similarly, the introduction of improved mental health monitoring and suicide prevention programs may lessen the harmful psychological consequences of overcrowding. As noted earlier, there is evidence that at least since the s, prisons generally have become safer and more secure along certain measurable dimensions. Specifically, the number of riots and escapes and per capita rates of staff and inmate homicides and suicides all have decreased sharply from the early s.
Thus, however much the severe overcrowding and lack of programming may have adversely affected the quality of life for prisoners, certain basic and important forms of order and safety were maintained and even improved in some prison systems Useem and Piehl, , There are a number of plausible explanations for this unexpected finding. For one, during the period in which rates of imprisonment rapidly increased, a greater proportion of prisoners were incarcerated for nonviolent, less serious crimes.
In addition, the architecture and technology of institutional control became much more sophisticated and elaborate over this period, so that correctional systems may have become more effective at responding to and thwarting disruptive or problematic behavior. A number of commentators also have acknowledged the important ways in which decisive judicial intervention and continuing oversight contributed significantly to maintaining prison order and stability, as well as ameliorating the most inhumane practices and conditions during the period of the prison buildup Feeley and Rubin, ; Schlanger, Finally, other.
Also deserving of further study is the extent to which prisoner characteristics, modern forms of architectural and institutional control, decisive judicial intervention, and the use of more sophisticated prison management practices have successfully offset the negative consequences of overcrowding discussed above.
Whether and to what degree some or all of these ameliorating factors may have entailed significant trade-offs in other aspects of the quality of prison life should be investigated as well e. Historically, to maintain order and safety within facilities, prison administrators have placed individuals exhibiting assaultive, violent, or disruptive behaviors in housing units separate from the general prison population.
Segregation or isolated confinement goes by a variety of names in prisons in the United States—solitary confinement, security housing, administrative segregation, close management, high security, closed cell restriction, and others. Isolated units may also be used for protective custody, for those inmates that need to be protected from others but do not necessarily pose a threat to the population. Such units have in common the fact that the prisoners they house have limited social contact in comparison with the general prison population.
Among prison systems, there are different types of isolation units, ranging from less to more restrictive in terms of social contact and security. For example, the Bureau of Prisons has three types of segregated housing: special housing units, special management units, and administrative maximum. Referral to and placement in these units are governed by policies for determining the level of security and supervision the Bureau of Prisons believes is required Government Accountability Office, In less restrictive units, inmates may have limited congregate activity with others, be provided access to programming e.
In more restrictive units, isolated inmates rarely if ever engage in congregate or group activity of any kind, have limited if any access to meaningful programming, are not permitted contact visits, and have most or all of their social contact limited to routine interactions with correctional staff.
The social contact permitted with chaplains, counselors, psychologists,. The same is typically true of whatever limited contact they may be permitted to have with other inmates. Estimates of the number and rates of prisoners in isolated housing are limited by variations in the definitions and terms used to denote solitary-type confinement across different prison systems, as well as the fact that few systems regularly and reliably provide access to data on these issues.
With those limitations in mind, it appears that about 5 percent of the U. Although it is impossible to calculate precisely and reliably whether and how much overall change has occurred in the rate at which prison systems have resorted to isolated confinement during the period of increased rates of incarceration, the fact that there are many more persons in prison means that significantly more of them have been subjected to isolated confinement.
In these data, restricted housing includes disciplinary segregation, administrative segregation, and protective custody, and these figures represent a 1-day count. In each case, some facilities simply failed to respond to this census item, which may make these figures low-end estimates e. A recent review by the Government Accountability Office found that 7 percent of the federal prison population was held in segregated housing units in 5.
This represents an increase of approximately 17 percent over the numbers held in and, based on the current Bureau of Prisons prisoner population, indicates that approximately 15, federal inmates are confined in restricted housing. There is general agreement that over the past several decades, prison systems in the United States began to rely more heavily on the practice of confining prisoners on a long-term basis inside the most restrictive kind of. In , the U. Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, was the only supermax prison in the country.
By , 34 states and the federal system had supermax prisons, holding just over 20, inmates or 1. The average lengths of stay within isolation units are also difficult to calculate precisely and, because of sporadic reporting by state and federal prisons administrations, impossible to estimate overall.
Indeed, only a handful of states have collected data on time spent in isolation. There have been a number of reported cases of isolated confinement for periods of 25 or more years. By policy, these special units are reserved for inmates believed by correctional officials to pose serious problems for prison operations. The supermax prison represents an especially modern version of an old practice—prison isolation—but now paired with increasingly sophisticated correctional technology.
See, for example, In re Medley, U. Brown et al. Stalder et al. At least one prison system that greatly reduced the number of segregated prisoners by transferring them to mainline prisons reported experiencing an overall reduction in misconduct and violence systemwide Kupers et al.
Moreover, some empirical evidence indicates that time spent under supermax prison conditions contributes to elevated rates of recidivism Lovell et al. Further research is needed on the relationship between levels of use of long-term isolation of prisoners and both overall behavior within prisons and recidivism rates.
There are sound theoretical bases for explaining the adverse effects of prison isolation, including the well-documented importance of social contact and support for healthy psychological and even physical functioning e. The psychological risks of sensory and social deprivation are well known and have been documented in studies conducted in a range of settings, including research on the harmful effects of acute sensory deprivation, the psychological distress and other problems that are caused by the absence of social contact, and the psychiatric risks of seclusion for mental patients.
See Cacioppo and Cacioppo [] and Haney and Lynch [], for reviews of a broad range of these and other related studies on the adverse effects of social isolaton. When the prison opens its massive, razor-wire-topped gates at for a controlled mass-movement to the yard, I head inside like a fish swimming upstream through a river of convicts.
Hundreds of them. At times like these, I need to stay hyper-vigilant. I duck and dodge, pausing a few times to say hi when someone calls out my name. I then fix myself a bowl of instant oatmeal using our hot water dispenser, stir in a spoonful of peanut butter, a handful of cashews, almonds, and sunflower seeds, mix a cup of milk powdered , dig a few bananas out of my locker purchased on the black market , then sit down to enjoy lunch as I await my turn to bathe.
Sometimes fiction, sometimes poetry, sometimes creative nonfiction. From 3 until 6, I soar free. I delve into my fantasy world and live vicariously through my protagonists as they experience love and loss, battle evil, and fight to make their world a better place.
I am forced to pause for twenty minutes, though, while I jump up onto my bunk at for count time. At or so, I roll out with the herd of orange- and blue-clad convicts heading toward the chow hall. Or you will get a ticket. I choke down what I can, then scram. The chow hall, too, is a dangerous place to linger. After dinner, I teach a writing class that usually lasts about an hour. Today, it runs over, because we actually have quite a lot of fun learning the difference between active and passive voice.
Around 8 I call Mom. Thank you for using GTL. At , I take Ross out the back door of our unit for his final potty break. I then jog upstairs to the microwave area, heat myself a ramen noodle soup, and pop myself some popcorn. This is my chill-out time. For the next two hours, I sit on my bunk and slurp noodles and crunch popcorn while I watch T.
Day complete, I kill my T.
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