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Effect of prison life on inmates
Psychological effects on human behaviour in prison
Enduring the effects of prison
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While living as an inmate in a prison, it is likely that one would go through some sort of transformation. While some go to prison and become reformed while showing the desire to change their life around, others may have a negative change. This negative change could include becoming more volatile and violent as a result of harsh prison treatment or prolonged isolation from the public. In a popular reality show, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, cast member Joe Giudice recently spoke of his plans for going to prison for tax fraud, saying “You either learn how to become a criminal, or a better person. So, I’m going to try to become a better person.” These differing changes can be seen in the prison writings of Robert Beck and Jack Henry Abbott. …show more content…
Similarly to Beck, Abbott spoke opposingly of his conditions of the corrupt prison system that he faced for many years. On speaking of the rooms in the red-brick building, Abbott mentioned the many harsh beatings and unjust solitary confinement that he and other children faced, saying “ Locked in our cells, we could not see one another, and if we were caught shouting cell-to-cell, we were beaten. We tapped out messages, but if they heard our taps, we were beaten--the entire row of cells, one child at a time.” (Abbott 192) Because Abbott was a “state-raised convict”, he was more exposed to severe prison brutality from a young age and for much more of his life than Robert Beck, eventually affecting his personality and evoking a negative change. Abbott wrote, “The thing that I related above about emotions is the hidden, dark side of state-raised convicts. The foul underbelly everyone hides from everyone else, It is the other half--which concerns judgement, reason (moral, ethical, cultural).” (Abbott 195) It is perhaps this reason that Abbott killed a man just one month after being released into a halfway house. The prison systems that Abbott endured for years had a negative impact on his emotions, changing him into someone who is more violent and less …show more content…
For example, Abbott’s inner conflicts are how he, as a state-raised convict, is perceived and viewed by the public, as well as his own awareness of how his life in prison has led to him becoming a more violent person who lacks emotions, and his inability to break away from the typical prisoner mindset and into that of a functioning member of society outside of prison bars. Abbott wrote of how although he knows about certain emotions through reading them, he cannot actually feel them and ultimately, he cannot fully understand them. Robert Beck also goes through a conflict, but of a different form. When Iceberg Slim is released from prison, he is faced not with the conflict of whether or not he should change and turn from his illegal practices of being a street pimp, but how best to leave his past life behind with the least damage done. He realizes that bitter, former prostitutes could easily turn him in if they felt that he had wronged him, so he did his best to ensure that his last prostitute wasn’t left unsettled, allowing him to leave the business without
I feel that this book gives a rough, inspiring and passionate warning that the rush to imprison offenders hurts the guards as well as the guarded. Conover reminds us that when we treat prisoners like the garbage of society, we are bound to treat prison staff as garbage men -- best out of sight, their own dirt surpassed only by the dirt they handle. Conover says in one part of his book, “Eventually admitting that being in a position of power and danger brings out a side of myself I don’t like.” I feel both prisoners and officers deserve better.
Newjack is Ted Conover’s personal memoir as a correctional officer in one of New York’s famous maximum security prisons: Sing Sing. The job of a correctional officer consists of long days locking and unlocking cells, moving prisoners to and from various locations while the prisoners beg, aggravate and abuse them. After a short time at the academy and a brief period of on-the-job training, Conover found himself working, often alone and always unarmed, in galleries housing sixty or more inmates. He heard of many stories that happen in prison. Stories include inmates beating inmates and burning their cell house, an inmate who was beaten by correctional officers after striking an officer in the head with a broom handle. Surprisingly, there are even some instances where there are voluntary sexual encounters between female staff and inmates. It is really a welcoming job for the “newjacks” and for the readers. On top of that, supervisors do not mentor or guide new officers and officers on one shift push problems off onto the next. Conover sees and realizes that correctional workers are very flexible characters, neither good nor bad, but must cope with stress and problems in a well-organized manner. As Conover points out, that at Sing Sing is against the possibility of staff getting to know prisoners. It is ridiculous to see that there are problems that prison administrators clearly could have solved but do not, instead, they care more about the inmates and officer’s relationship. In particular, enticements for better supervision and more support for effective staff are clearly needed.
you go to prison, whether you belong there or not, you become a dangerous person, and they
After reading the book I have gained a new understanding of what inmates think about in prison. Working in an institution, I have a certain cynical attitude at times with inmates and their requests. Working in a reception facility, this is a facility where inmates are brought in from the county jails to the state intake facility, we deal with a lot of requests and questions. At times, with the phone ringing off the hook from family members and inmates with their prison request forms, you get a little cynical and tired of answering the same questions over and over. As I read the book I begin to understand some of the reason for the questions. Inmate(s) now realize that the officers and administrative personnel are in control of their lives. They dictate with to get up in the morning, take showers, eat meals, go to classes, the need see people for different reason, when to exercise and when to go to bed. The lost of control over their lives is a new experience for some and they would like to be able to adjust to this new lost of freedom. Upon understanding this and in reading the book, I am not as cynical as I have been and try to be more patient in answering questions. So in a way I have changed some of my thinking and understanding more of prison life.
How does being sentenced to prison affect someone later in his or her life? Many people pose the question, but they have yet to form an immutable response. Oscar Wilde once said, “one of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be”, this quotation engenders the philosophy of prison, which consists of one being held responsible for his or her wrongdoings. The book Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman explores how a once drug money launderer goes to jail for a crime which she committed almost a decade earlier. At the time she committed the crime, she considered herself lost and naive in regards to her life. Throughout the book, the audience witnesses Kerman’s struggles and how she ultimately overcomes them in order to better herself for the future. After examining the book, one can see that Kerman uses many rhetorical elements in her writing such as ethos, the rhetorical triangle, narration, and myriad others to make her memoir a timeless piece of non-fiction.
Although prisons have the primary objective of rehabilitation, prisoners will likely go through many other troubling emotions before reaching a point of reformation. Being ostracized from society, it is not uncommon to experience despair, depression, and hopelessness. Be that as it may, through reading various prison writings, it can be seen that inmates can find hope in the smallest things. As represented in “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane”, the author, Etheridge Knight, as well as other black inmates look up to Hard Rock, an inmate who is all but dutiful in a world where white people are placed at the top of the totem pole. However, after Hard Rock goes through a lobotomy-esque procedure, the motif
Throughout his novel, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, author and professor Robert Perkinson outlines the three current dominant purposes of prison. The first, punishment, is the act of disciplining offenders in an effort to prevent them from recommitting a particular crime. Harsh punishment encourages prisoners to behave because many will not want to face the consequences of further incarceration. While the purpose of punishment is often denounced, many do agree that prison should continue to be used as a means of protecting law-abiding citizens from violent offenders. The isolation of inmates, prison’s second purpose, exists to protect the public. Rehabilitation is currently the third purpose of prison. Rehabilitation is considered successful when a prisoner does n...
The authors begin the book by providing advice on how a convict can prepare for release from prison. Throughout the book, the authors utilize two fictional characters, Joe and Jill Convict, as examples of prisoners reentering society. These fictional characters are representative of America’s prisoners. Prison is an artificial world with a very different social system than the real world beyond bars. Convicts follow the same daily schedule and are shaped by the different society that is prison. Prisoners therefore forget many of the obl...
Guards will no longer call you by name but by your number. For as long as you are there, you are that number. You no longer are treated like a human being but a number. Prisoners start to lose respect for themselves because of this treatment and on top of that, they are now given an abundance of other labels when they are released. Some of those labels include, “convict,” “criminal,” “dangerous,” and “antisocial.” When labels are given to an offender or a would-be offender in a mean manner, their risk of offending increases. This can also be predicted by the reintegrative shaming
Prisons exist in this country as a means to administer retributive justice for those that break the laws in our society or to state it simply prisons punish criminals that are to receive a sentence of incarceration for more than one year. There are two main sub-cultures within the walls of prison the sub-culture of the Department of Corrections (which consists of the corrections officer, administrators, and all of the staff that work at the prison and go home at the end of their day) and the actual prisoners themselves. As you can imagine these two sub-cultures are dualistic in nature and this makes for a very stressful environment for both sides of the fence. While in prison, the inmates experience the same conditions as described in the previous
Prison Reform in The United States of America “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones” (Nelson Mandela, 1994). The United States of America has more people behind bars than any other country on the planet. The prisons are at over double capacity. It cost a lot of money to house prisoners each year.
Although, some prisons do have some rehabilitation programs for the inmates that need it, the therapy sometimes does not help. More than half of prisoners reoffend within at least three years of leaving prisons. Those who reoffend tend to have more severe and more aggressive offenses than previously. A man by the name of Brandy Lee has shown that by having a very strict program in prisons with violent offenders in San Francisco jails reduced the amount of violence in jails. The program also helped to reduce the rate of violent re-offences after leaving the jail by over 50
In the essay "Prison "Reform" in America," Roger T. Pray points out the much attention that has been devoted to research to help prevent crimes. Showing criminals the errors of their ways not by brutal punishment, but by locking them up in the attempt to reform them. Robert Pray, who is a prison psychologist, is currently a researcher with the Utah Dept. of Corrections. He has seen what has become of our prison system and easily shows us that there is really no such thing as "Prison Reform"
“It’s really clear that the most effective way to turn a nonviolent person into a violent one is to send them to prison,” says Harvard University criminologist James Gilligan. The American prison system takes nonviolent offenders and makes them live side-by-side with hardened killers. The very nature of prison, no matter people view it, produces an environment that is inevitably harmful to its residents.
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.