The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment Craig Haney, University of California-Santa Cruz This paper was produced for a conference funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on January 30-31, 2002. The views expressed herein are those of the authors, and should not be attributed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment Abstract Moreover, prolonged adaptation to the depriva- tions and frustrations of life inside prison—what This paper examines the unique set of psy- are commonly referred to as the “pains of im- chological changes that many prisoners are prisonment”—carries a certain psychological forced to undergo in order to survive the prison cost. In this brief paper I will explore some of experience. It argues that, as a result of several those costs, examine their implications for post- trends in American corrections, the personal prison adjustment in the world beyond prison, challenges posed and psychological harms in- and suggest some programmatic and policy- flicted in the course of incarceration have grown oriented approaches to minimizing their poten- over the last several decades in the United tial to undermine or disrupt the transition from States. The trends include increasingly harsh prison to home. policies and conditions of confinement as well as the much discussed de-emphasis on rehabili- One important caveat is important to make tation as a goal of incarceration. As a result, the at the very outset of this paper. Although I ap- ordinary adaptive process of institutionalization proach this topic as a psychologist, and much of or “prisonization” has become extraordinarily my discussion is organized around the themes of prolonged and intense. Among other things, psychological changes and adaptations, I do not these recent changes in prison life mean that mean to suggest or imply that I believe criminal prisoners in general (and some prisoners in par- behavior can or should be equated with mental ticular) face more difficult and problematic tran- illness, that persons who suffer the acute pains sitions as they return to the freeworld. A range of imprisonment necessarily manifest psycho- of structural and programmatic changes are re- logical disorders or other forms of personal pa- quired to address these issues. Among other thology, that psychotherapy should be the exclu- things, social and psychological programs and sive or even primary tool of prison resources must be made available in the imme- rehabilitation, or that therapeutic interventions diate, short, and long-term. That is, modified are the most important or effective ways to op- prison conditions and practices as well as new timize the transition from prison to home. I am programs are needed as preparation for release, well aware of the excesses that have been com- during transitional periods of parole or initial re- mitted in the name of correctional psychology in integration, and as long-term services to insure the past, and it is not my intention to contribute continued successful adjustment. in any way to having them repeated. This paper addresses the psychological im- The paper will be organized around several pact of incarceration and its implications for basic propositions—that prisons have become post-prison freeworld adjustment. Nearly a half- more difficult places in which to adjust and sur- century ago Gresham Sykes wrote that “life in vive over the last several decades; that especially the maximum security prison is depriving or in light of these changes, adaptation to modern frustrating in the extreme,”1 and little has prison life exacts certain psychological costs of changed to alter that view. Indeed, as I will sug- most incarcerated persons; that some groups of gest below, the observation applies with perhaps people are somewhat more vulnerable to the more force now than when Sykes first made it. pains of imprisonment than others; that the psy- Papers prepared for the "From Prison to Home" Conference (January 30-31, 2002) 77 The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment C. Haney chological costs and pains of imprisonment can fectively documented—the U.S. rates have con- serve to impede post-prison adjustment; and that sistently been between four and eight times there are a series of things that can be done both those for these other nations.3 in and out of prison to minimize these impedi- ments. Each of these propositions is presented in The combination of overcrowding and the turn below. rapid expansion of prison systems across the country adversely affected living conditions in many prisons, jeopardized prisoner safety, com- I. The State of the Prisons promised prison management, and greatly lim- ited prisoner access to meaningful programming. Prisoners in the United States and else- The two largest prison systems in the nation— where have always confronted a unique set of California and Texas—provide instructive ex- contingencies and pressures to which they were amples. Over the last 30 years, California’s pris- required to react and adapt in order to survive oner population increased eightfold (from the prison experience. However, over the last roughly 20,000 in the early 1970s to its current several decades —beginning in the early 1970s population of approximately 160,000 prisoners). and continuing to the present time—a combina- Yet there has been no remotely comparable in- tion of forces have transformed the nation’s crease in funds for prisoner services or inmate criminal justice system and modified the nature programming. In Texas, over just the years be- of imprisonment.2 The challenges prisoners now tween 1992 and 1997, the prisoner population face in order to both survive the prison experi- more than doubled as Texas achieved one of the ence and, eventually, reintegrate into the free- highest incarceration rates in the nation. Nearly world upon release have changed and intensified 70,000 additional prisoners added to the state’s as a result. prison rolls in that brief five-year period alone. Not surprisingly, California and Texas were Among other things, these changes in the among the states to face major lawsuits in the nature of imprisonment have included a series of 1990s over substandard, unconstitutional condi- inter-related, negative trends in American cor- tions of confinement. Federal courts in both rections. Perhaps the most dramatic changes states found that the prison systems had failed to have come about as a result of the unprece- provide adequate treatment services for those dented increases in rate of incarceration, the size prisoners who suffered the most extreme psy- of the U.S. prison population, and the wide- chological effects of confinement in deteriorated spread overcrowding that has occurred as a re- and overcrowded conditions.4 sult. Over the past 25 years, penologists repeat- edly have described U.S. prisons as “in crisis” Paralleling these dramatic increases in in- and have characterized each new level of over- carceration rates and the numbers of persons im- crowding as “unprecedented.” By the start of the prisoned in the United States was an equally 1990s, the United States incarcerated more per- dramatic change in the rationale for prison itself. sons per capita than any other nation in the mod- The nation moved abruptly in the mid-1970s ern world, and it has retained that dubious dis- from a society that justified putting people in tinction for nearly every year since. The prison on the basis of the belief that incarcera- international disparities are most striking when tion would somehow facilitate productive re- the U.S. incarceration rate is contrasted to those entry into the freeworld to one that used impris- of other nations to whom the United States is of- onment merely to inflict pain on wrongdoers ten compared, such as Japan, Netherlands, Aus- (“just deserts”), disable criminal offenders tralia, and the United Kingdom. In the 1990s, as (“incapacitation”), or to keep them far away Marc Mauer and the Sentencing Project have ef- from the rest of society (“containment”). The abandonment of the once-avowed goal of Papers prepared for the "From Prison to Home" Conference (January 30-31, 2002) 78 The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment C. Haney donment of the once-avowed goal of rehabilita- and the social costs of incarceration becoming tion certainly decreased the perceived need and increasingly concentrated in minority communi- availability of meaningful programming for ties (because of differential enforcement and prisoners as well as social and mental health sentencing policies). services available to them both inside and out- Thus, in the first decade of the 21st century, side the prison. Indeed, it generally reduced con- more people have been subjected to the pains of cern on the part of prison administrations for the imprisonment, for longer periods of time, under overall well-being of prisoners. conditions that threaten greater psychological The abandonment of rehabilitation also re- distress and potential long-term dysfunction, and sulted in an erosion of modestly protective they will be returned to communities that have norms against cruelty toward prisoners. Many already been disadvantaged by a lack of social corrections officials soon became far less in- services and resources. clined to address prison disturbances, tensions between prisoner groups and factions, and disci- plinary infractions in general through ameliora- II. The Psychological Effects of tive techniques aimed at the root causes of con- Incarceration: On the Nature of flict and designed to de-escalate it. The rapid Institutionalization influx of new prisoners, serious shortages in The adaptation to imprisonment is almost staffing and other resources, and the embrace of always difficult and, at times, creates habits of an openly punitive approach to corrections led to thinking and acting that can be dysfunctional in the “de-skilling” of many correctional staff periods of post-prison adjustment.