Forensic Psychology For Dummies (120 page)
Read Forensic Psychology For Dummies Online
Authors: David Canter
Banning cruel punishment
Throughout history, societies have used many different forms of punishment, including physical assault, such as whipping or binding with chains, and different types of execution, as well as fines, being forced to join the army or navy, or being transported to the Americas or Australia.
In most countries, the more vicious forms of punishment have been stopped and both the US and Europe have special constitutional requirements that disallow torture, demeaning or unusual forms of punishment.
In the US, the eighth amendment to the constitution forbids excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishments.
The European Convention on Human Rights, article 3, states that ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’.
Education is another positive area of prisons. Many offenders failed in school and can barely read or write or do elementary arithmetic. Crime may have been the only way they could survive with these disadvantages. When prison provides the opportunities that school never did, it can make a difference to their lives, although of course it can also enable them to commit more sophisticated crimes!
Training in prison is also useful, especially with younger offenders. Giving a person a trade qualification can open up job opportunities that were never available to them before. Although setting up training facilities is demanding for prisons, where it’s done it can be very effective.
Asking whether prison can make offenders worse
Prison can cause distinct, debilitating, psychological effects on inmates, including:
Feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem
including depression. Incarceration denies people their basic right to privacy and forces them to relinquish control over everyday features of their daily lives that other people take for granted. They may live in a small, sometimes extremely confined and poorly lit and ventilated cell and may have little or no say in choosing the person with whom they have to share that space. In addition, they have no option over when they get up or go to bed, when or what they eat, when they shower or use the toilet or exercise. These degrading circumstances continually remind them of their stigmatised existence. In some cases, prisoners can come to believe that they deserve the degradation and stigma to which they’ve been subjected while imprisoned.
Prison is a ‘total institution’ in which every aspect of the inmates’ lives is controlled, as I describe in the preceding point. Prisons withdraw much of the inmates’ independence or right to decide for themselves. This situation can be difficult for prisoners to cope with initially, but on release causes problems when trying to re-adjust. People can become institutionalised and passively accept everything the regime requires them to do. Consequently, they can have difficulty taking any active role themselves in the future.
They may believe that certain prison officers or other inmates have caused them harm, whether or not that is the case, as well as feeling that the whole legal process and incarceration is unfair and something to be challenged.
become natural in prison, because after all it’s full of criminals, many of whom have a history of violence. Some male prisoners learn to project a ‘hard man’ image believing that unless they do they’re likely to be dominated and exploited. They don’t tolerate anything they think is an insult, no matter how trivial. This can get them into trouble in prison as well as on release.
are consequences of the potential threats prisoners may see all around them. Prisoners who develop this unrevealing and impenetrable ‘prison mask’, risk creating an enduring and unbridgeable distance between themselves and other people.
is part of the process whereby prisoners protect themselves. They hide behind a cloak of social invisibility and become as low-key and discreetly detached from others as possible. In extreme cases, this behaviour can make prisoners seem to be clinically depressed.
such as agreeing to the unwritten prisoner code of conduct or risk repercussions. This can include not reporting any assaults they have experienced or that they know about and relying on any gang hierarchy for guidance on what they should do. This can tie them into a criminal subculture that is difficult to shake off once outside prison.
