The Contribution Social Psychology Makes to Human Understanding of Self and Behavior in Prison - Essay Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : The contribution of social psychology makes to our understanding of self, attitudes and behavior in prison. Course : xxxxxxxxxxx @2009 The contribution of social psychology makes to our understanding of self, attitudes and behavior in prison. Introduction When someone lands in prison, adapting to prison life is always very hard. Sometimes the prisoner gets some effects psychologically that will be dysfunctional even when the person gets out of prison. However, the social psychological effects of imprisonment differ from one person to person and in a number of occasions these effects can easily be reversed. Apparently, not everyone who gets imprisoned gets his or her social psychology harmed. However, it is very conspicuous that most of the prisoners gets changed and are always scathed by prison experience. At least, prison is agonizing, and imprisoned people regularly go through long-term consequences for having undergone pain, deprivation, and tremendously uncharacteristic pattern and norms of living and relating with others. The pragmatic consensus on the most adverse effects of imprisonment as that many ex-prisoners who have been in well managed go back to freedom will less or temporally clinically established psychological turmoil as a result. Basically, prison does not make people crazy. Nevertheless, even researchers who argue that imprisonment pains affect social psychology negatively openly admit that for some people, imprisonment yields into some negative permanent changes. It is evident that the more intense, callous, dangerous or else psychologically-taxing the temperament of the imprisonment, the higher the number of people who will have the negative effects and the more intense the damage. The prisoners are shaped by prison’s environment and thus the prisoner’s life is affected in they way they think, act and feel. These are however the usual responses to the abnormal state of affairs in prisons. Adaptation to these conditions is not usually pathological even if normally the conditions are destructive. They are “usual” reactions to a group of pathological conditions which become destructive when they are internalized and the prisoners become what these conditions entail. Like every process where the change occurs progressively, the more a person is imprisoned, the more the prisoner stays in prison, the greater the psychological impacts. When a person gets imprisoned, at first they are forced to adapt to a habitually harsh and inflexible institutional routine without any privacy or independence. Subjection to a declined, stigmatized status and awfully sparse material conditions is very depressing, unpleasant and hard. The best way of how prison affects social psychology is the penalty requirement of prison life to surrender the freedom sovereignty of prisoners making their own decisions. This process entails what is normally overly painful for many people. In fact, some people never adjust to prison life. Overtime, nevertheless, prisoners might get used to the muting of self-initiative and autonomy that prison entails and become progressively more reliant on institutional incidents that they once resisted. Finally, it may seem something normal to be deprived significant control of ones decisions and in the last stages of the adaptation, a prisoner will be so much used and dependant on prison decision makers to decide for them and become overly reliant on prisons timetable to manage their daily routine. Slowly, the prisoners will lose the ability to instigate behavior on their own and the ruling to make decisions alone. Indeed, in some intense cases, profoundly institutionalized people might get exceptionally uncomfortable once their earlier freedom and independence is returned. The behavior of prisoners is also controlled. Prisoners are forced to get used to complicated network of characteristically very clear precincts and limits and incase the prisoners violate them; the consequences are hasty and severe. Basically, prisons oblige careful and constant scrutiny, and are quick to punish and in most cases the punishment is severe, infractions of the restraining rules. With these, the prisoners will be surrounded with external limitations, make them so much accustomed to rules and policies and acclimatize them so entirely to such extremely visible policies of restriction that internal controls shrivel. In some cases, especially for prisoners who are young, development might fail altogether. Therefore, being imprisoned makes some people to become so dependant on external constraints that they slowly lose the ability to depend on self-imposed limits to direct their actions and hold back their behavior. Consequently, if the external limit is taken away, such people discover they can no longer conduct things alone. Worse still, they might not be able to desist from doing things that are self-destructive or not accepted by law. That’s the reason a prisoner will commit a crime even after undergoing through a very harsh time in prison. Such person once granted the freedom will not be able to desist from wrong doing. This is because unless there are some restrictions, he or she has to err because the person is so much used to being restricted. Prisoners might also become highly suspicious and hyper vigilant. This is because prisons are conspicuously hazardous places whereby it’s hard to escape and thus prisoners learn to be overly alert always just incase their life is at risk. Interpersonal mistrust normally occurs because the risks are high, and because there are people in their immediate surroundings poised to take advantage of weak point or utilize carelessness or inattentiveness. Some prisoners learn to scheme a tough villain veneer that keeps other prisoners at a bay. In fact, some prisoners believe that they have to project a bully image in order to avoid being tortured or exploited by other prisoners. This will make them develop bully or a violent character and such character may slowly get instilled. Some even keep weapons to protect themselves against victimization. Therefore, such people even after prison they will not trust anyone and will always be suspicious that anyone can attack them. Hence they will always be overly alert to defend themselves. It has been discovered that younger prisoners are more expected to employ violence avoidance tactics than older ones (Clark 1970). Prisons normally shape the prisoners and this needs carefully calculated emotional responses by the prisoners. Hence this entails the prisoners to manage and hold back their own internal emotional responses to proceedings around them. This leads to prisoners developing emotional over-control and a comprehensive lack of artlessness. Such prisoners will eventually become people who can be easily exploited. Some prisoners strive emotionally to develop a “prison mask” whereby they alienate themselves from everyone including themselves. Their social interaction will be affected and thus forming relationships with others in future may become difficult in future. This is because they slowly become used to creating a huge permanent gap between themselves and other people. The isolation and social distancing from other prisoners is a defense not only against mistreatment but also against the awareness that the lack of interpersonal control in the direct prison surroundings makes emotional investments in relationships perilous and unpredictable. The prisoners who manage to have a thick and effective mask while in prison find that the discouragement against engaging in open communication with others leads them to finally withdraw from dependable social interactions in general (Gendreau 1992). Some people who have been in prison may eventually withdraw socially from others and isolate themselves. Many prisoners find solace in social invisibility through being inconspicuous and discreetly disconnected from other people. This social withdraw makes them trust no one, retreat extremely into themselves and adjust to prison strain by leading secluded lives of quiet hopelessness. In severe cases, mostly when the prisoner is indifferent and lacks the ability to start behavior on his or her own, this person goes through what a person with clinical depression undergoes. Prisoners who have found themselves in prison for a long time are very susceptible to this. Such prisoners finally become lethargic and humorless. In fact, most long term prisoners become cut off from outside world and feel like they don’t exist thus they isolate themselves from the other world (Cohen 1972). In prison, there are informal rules that ought to be followed. For most prisoners this means shielding against the dangerousness and denial of the surrounding environment through accepting all informal rules, including some of the most abusive and tremendous values of prison life. Notably, prisoners do not have any optional culture to participate in. most prisons do not have pro-social actions to engage in while in prison. Many prisoners cannot access productive employment thus they do not get a chance to obtain career skills and earn ample compensation; those without work do menial tasks for only few hours per day (Walters 1996). Prison conjugal visits are rare and sexual contact is not allowed. In turn, the prisoners try to address their basic needs like recreation, love and work. This makes them adapt to illicit prison culture that to prisoners is the only meaningful way of life. Prison life discourages any weaknesses in people and puts off the expression of open emotions or intimacy. Such people after spending long time in prison may even become sexually withdrawn and because prisoners face imprecise norms of sexuality in which domination and compliance become entwined with and mistaken for the base of intimate relations (Anderssen 1999). Basically, prisoners lack privacy rights and eventually lose control over ordinary features of their being that free citizens take for granted. Prisoners stay in crowded and extremely small rooms. Prisoners do not choose who to share a room with, when to eat, when to sleep or wake up. Some get prisoners infantilized and they bad environment they stay remind them of their compromised social position and thus they feel that socially they are stigmatized just because they are prisoners. Lastly, some prisoners may feel worthless. This lowers such peoples’ self esteem and might instill some mentality that they only deserve stigmatization. Such people will not be confident in anyway in life and when stigmatized, they will feel that they deserve the treatment. For some prisoners, imprisonment is very psychologically damaging such that some develop post agonizing stress reactions due to the painful moments they passed through while in prison. The harsh and uncaring prison life may represent re-truamatization experience in them. Thus the way they react to evens even after imprisonment will be very dramatic. Such stresses might lead the ex-prisoner to react stressfully in every event they encounter (Bonta 1994). Bibliography Anderssen, E., 1999, American woman fights extradition to U.S: Marijuana charges, New Jersey: Academic Press. Bonta, J., 1994, The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, Anderson Press: Cincinnati, OH. Clark, R., 1970, Crime in America, Pocket Books: New York. Cohen, S., 1972, Psychological survival, Penguin: Hammondsworth. Gendreau, P., 1992, Coping with Prison: Psychology and Social Policy, Hemisphere: Washington, DC. Walters, P., 1996, Body count: Moral poverty and how to win America’s war against crime and drugs, Simon & Shuster, Inc: New York. Read More