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No. XXXIX (2017)
Articles

On the harmful/harmless effect of long-term imprisonment on the mental and physical health of prisoners

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  • Kamil Miszewski
Kamil Miszewski
The Maria Grzegorzewska University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7420/AK2017G

Published 2017-01-02

Keywords

  • kara długoterminowego pozbawienia wolności,
  • psychologiczne skutki pozbawienia wolności,
  • powrót do przestępstwa,
  • skutki długotrwałej izolacji,
  • więźniowie seniorzy,
  • przeludnienie,
  • kryminologia

How to Cite

Miszewski, K. (2017). On the harmful/harmless effect of long-term imprisonment on the mental and physical health of prisoners. Archives of Criminology, (XXXIX), 197 – 230. https://doi.org/10.7420/AK2017G
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Abstract

In his 1940 book, The Prison Community, Donald Clemmer introduced the term ‘prisonisation’ into criminal science. This notion expresses the view that as the inmate continues to serve their sentence, their mental and physical health sees a continual decline; the inmate becomes more and more involved in destructive activity as part of the prison subculture, prisons as such being responsible for these negative developments. Erving Goffman, who coined the term ‘total institution’, speaks in a similar tone, describing prison as a place where the individual self is forcibly remoulded. We could also add Gresham Sykes to this group of theorists, with his conception of the ‘pain of imprisonment’, i.e. types of deprivation that every inmate experiences while in detention. But are these gentlemen not exaggerating? Does the prisoner really stand no chance of adapting to imprisonment in a way that would leave his or her mental and physical health intact?The European Committee on Crime Problems, set up in 1957, is an organ of the Council of Europe. It has drafted many international agreements and European conventions, including Resolution 76/2 on the Treatment of Long-term Prisoners, adopted by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers on 17 February 1976. The resolution draft was preceded by a report from two years of research on, inter alia, the consequences of long-term imprisonment, including psychiatric and psychological studies. As Elżbieta Janiszewska-Talago writes, the psychiatric studies indicated that after 4-6 years of imprisonment inmates were subject to the occurrence of a functional psycho-syndrome which could be called the isolation syndrome, leading to overall decline of intellectual function, lower concentration, stereotypical and monotonous reactions, and loss of one’s sense of reality. The occurrence of this syndrome depended on the personality of the inmate, their age, how long they had been detained, and the routine (rules) followed in the penitentiary facility. The longer the term of imprisonment and the more intense the isolation, the more the nervous defence mechanisms of the inmate deteriorated and the symptoms enumerated above became more frequent. Yet, as Janiszewska-Talago continues, the psychological research indicated quite the contrary. ‘It did not discover any case of loss of overall intelligence that would be proportional to the length of time spent in prison, in fact to the contrary – a statistically significant improvement was noted. Meanwhile motor reactions had declined and a significant drop in the averages pertaining to extraversion was reported. As a result, no mental decline was found to have occurred among long-term prisoners, nor was there any advanced deterioration of cognitive function or personality traits during the time in prison’ (Janiszewska-Talago 1980: 39). In light of these discrepant findings, the Committee concluded that the consequences of long-term imprisonment depended on the convict’s personality, the social circle they belonged to in prison, their opportunities to interact, develop and make decisions regarding themselves as well as the strictness of the rules followed in the prison. Since the 1960s there has been ongoing discussion in English-language literature regarding the harmfulness of imprisonment (it continues today [Hulley, Crewe, Wright 2015]). To my knowledge no one has yet unequivocally proven that such harmfulness is the case. What is striking, moreover, is that the condition of many long-term prisoners actually improves. This does not mean that mental or physical deterioration never occurs, but no one really knows what factors are responsible. Laying the blame on long-term imprisonment is a shortcut, an oversimplification that proves true every once in a while, seemingly at random. I try to present a comprehensive overview of the large body of works on this subject. At the end I present my own findings from research on long-term prisoners carried out in Polish prisons. Although my research did not relate directly to the issue of the harmfulness/harmlessness of long-imprisonment (I studied inmates’ ways of adapting to prison conditions over the course of at least 20 years, their involvement in work, study, ways of spending free time, strength of attachment to family, relations with prison staff and many other issues), yet is casts a certain light on the problem.

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