Journal of Forensic Psychology

Psychological Effects of Incarceration on the Basis of Institutionalization

¹Department of Psychology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
^*Correspondence: Zeeno Negovan, Department of Psychology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania, Email:

Received: 01-Jul-2022, Manuscript No. JFPY-22-17562; Editor assigned: 05-Jul-2022, Pre QC No. JFPY-22-17562(PQ); Reviewed: 19-Jul-2022, QC No. JFPY-22-17562; Revised: 27-Jul-2022, Manuscript No. JFPY-22-17562(R); Published: 04-Aug-2022, DOI: 10.35248/2475-319X.22.7.236

Description

The acceptance of imprisonment is always tough and sometimes forms habits of thinking and acting that can be dysfunctional during post-prison adjustment. Yet, the mental effects of incarceration vary from individual to individual and are often reversible. Not all persons who are incarcerated are disabled or psychologically harmed. At the starting stage, prison is painful and incarcerated persons often suffer consequences from having been subjected to pain and very atypical forms and norms of living and interacting with others.

However, even researchers who are openly skeptical about whether the pains of imprisonment usually translate into psychological harm allow that, for at least some people, prison can produce negative, long-lasting change. And most people agree that the more extreme, harsh, dangerous, or otherwise psychologically demanding the nature of the confinement, the greater the number of people who will suffer and the deeper the damage that they will suffer.

The term "institutionalization" is used to label the process by which convicts are transformed by the institutional environments in which they live. Sometimes called "prisonization" when it happens in correctional settings. The procedure has been studied widely by psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists, and includes a unique set of psychological adaptations that often occur in varying degrees in response to the extraordinary demands of prison life. In common terms, the process of prisonization involves the combination of the norms of prison life into one's habits of thinking, feeling, and acting.

It is important to highlight that these are the natural and normal versions made by prisoners in response to the unusual and abnormal situations of prisoner life. The dysfunctionality of these adaptations is not "pathological" in nature. They are "normal" reactions to a set of pathological circumstances that become challenging when they are taken to extreme lengths, or become chronic and deeply internalized.

Persons progressively become more accustomed to the limits that institutional life imposes. The several psychological methods that must be employed to adjust become gradually "natural," second nature, and, to a degree, adopted. To be sure, the process of institutionalization can be indirect and hard to distinguish as it occurs. Thus, prisoners do not "choose" do surrender to it or not, and few people who have become institutionalized are conscious that it has happened to them. Fewer still consciously decide that they are going to willingly allow the transformation to occur.

Conclusion

The process of institutionalization is eased in situations in which persons enter institutional surroundings at an early age, before they have made the ability and expectation to control their own life selections. Because there is less tension between the demands of the institution and the autonomy of a mature adult, institutionalization profits more quickly and less trickily with at least some younger inmates. Moreover, younger inmates have little in the way of already advanced independent judgment, so they have little if anything to return to or rely upon if and when the institutional structure is removed. And the longer someone remains in an institution, the superior the likelihood that the process will change them.