The psychological impacts and disturbances resulting from detention also under death penalty

                      

Prof.: Adel Madani

Introduction

  • Detention represents a psychological burden on the prisoner and leads to many psychological pressures on him
  • This tense environment in addition to the psychological, social and economic conditions of the prisoner represent failing factors and a fertile environment for sustaining mental disorders
  • Prisoners are different in the speed of their reactions to these changes based on their personal characteristics and endurance, as well as the duration of their stay in prison.
  • Oscar Wilde who spent two hard and arduous years of his life in prison says:
  • “We who live in prison and we do not have in our lives but grief, we have to measure the time by our painful heartbeats and bitter moments”
  • Bonta and Gendreau have concluded that the personal differences of prison inmates are most important in determining the ability to cope with the situation.
  • Zamble and Pororino stressed the fact that prison effects differ from one inmate to another.
  • Depression, anxiety, aggression, introversion and isolation are the most common psychological disorders among prisoners.
  • Aggressiveness is often produced due to the sense of injustice that may be interpreted as oppression. The effects of that aggressiveness appear in the way a prisoner deals with his inmates and with prison officials.
  • The prisoner undergoes a number of emotional ailments including frustration, fear of the future and loss of self-confidence and lack of trust in others and hesitation
  • He is deprived of the enjoyment of social life and of all the relations he has made with others.
  • The more a person has faith in destiny, is thankful of God, and has a strong hope that circumstances will improve, the less the psychological impact would be or it will disappear completely.
  • Bartol – The anxiety and emotional disturbance of the prisoner reach their zenith at the beginning of the term of imprisonment and at the end of it- near his release – while the disorder subsides in the middle of the period of the sentence.
  • In Flanagan’s survey of prison inmates, one of the five biggest problems in their prison was: “the sense that their lives are being wasted”
  • In a survey conducted by Flanagan on those who spent 10 years or more in prison, they were asked about the suffering that comes on top their list due to imprisonment, it was found out that it was the loss of contact with family members and friends.
  • The family of the prisoner is a double edged weapon: it represents a motivation to move forward as it represents the light at the end of a tunnel, and at the same time his longing to his family makes the passage of time slower.
  • However, some prisoners avoid family visits either to avoid to see the anguish in their eyes or because the feeling of despair due to separation after each visit is hard to bear.
  • All the above psychological disorders are not illnesses in themselves… in the sense that – with all their pain – they help the prisoner to adapt to the abnormal prison environment.
  • These changes become illnesses and destructive factors when the prisoner goes out of prison without having a certain body to take protective precautions to prevent the development of Post Trauma Stress Disorder. Then, the prisoner will continue to suffer after his release.
  • The French doctor, Dr. Alexander Manet, in the novel of Two Cities by the English writer Charles Dickens, loses his sense of reality because of his experience in prison (he left the Bastille prison before the outbreak of the French Revolution). His voice after his departure was very deep and embodies suffering because of isolation and non-use of his voice, according to Dickens.
  • After getting out of prison, Dr. Manet always used to stay in his dark room and focus on making shoes. He could not easily mingle with his family members, friends and even his daughter

The most important psychological pressure facing prisoners

(1) The loss of the sense of individuality:

  • The sense of individuality is inherent in the normal social life outside the prison, and the manifestations of lack of this sense in prison are: wearing a uniform, conducting identical ways of life in the prison cells, eating the same food with the same people at the same times, and lack of privacy in the urinating and defecating experience; numbers are usually assigned to them and are the basis of dealing with them.

(2) Traumatic experience:

  • Imprisonment, especially when committing the first offense, constitutes a traumatic and violent experience. It represents a dark starting spot in his life. This traumatic experience leads the prisoner to feel bitter, desperate, frustrated.
  • Entering the prison is a stigma that stays with him all his life.
  • People avoid and suspect him after he gets out of prison.

(3) Missing the family:

The prisoner leaves the family and friends, and suffers from trying to find an answer to the question relating to what he will say to his children as a justification for his absence from the family? And how he would explain the situation?

(4) Lack of motivation:

Because of the routine of life inside the prison, the prisoner lacks much of his motivation and incentives, because he sees the same faces, and is doing the same work every day.

All this leads the prisoner to lose his sense of motivation so that his ability to think properly and solve problems is reduced.

(5) Sexual deprivation:

In prison, the relationship between the prisoner and the community is disrupted, but this penalty may also impact his sex drive, which is instinctive in the human beings. Sexual deprivation is one of the most important problems facing the prisoner.

(6) Lack of role models:

Prisoners who are still in the onset of adulthood imitate models role present around them in the environment in which they live (abnormal role models of ex-cons and habitual criminals). This reminds us of the saying : “prisons are schools of crime”.

Phases of change

  • The first phase of being put in jail represents a stage in which the inmate adopts a defensive behavior that shows resistance to the system and has feelings of suspicion and mistrust towards the employees of the prison.
  • The second phase is also relevant to thinking about the day of return to normal life and how the external environment shall interact with him (social stigma outside the prison)

Impacts on the family

  • Field studies indicated that the imprisonment of the family’s breadwinner leads to many negative effects, and that a high percentage of the families were affected by the imprisonment of their breadwinner (97.4%). However, only 3.8% of the families in need received assistance and support that alleviated the negative effects of the imprisonment of its breadwinner.
  • The family relations network has been adversely affected.
  • The level of education of family members is clearly affected and they suffer from frustration.
  • Individuals may get delinquent for many reasons (lack or absence of supervision and low or lack of income)
  • Economic difficulties, so everyone is more prone to delinquency.
  • Introversion and isolation from others surrounding them for fear of stigmatization or humiliation.

The death penalty

  • After spending 32 years in the Medical Prisons Service, a British doctor found out that “a large proportion of the killers get tense at the time of committing the crimes to the extent that they feel indifferent to the consequences that may befall them while others succeeded in convincing themselves that they can escape the consequences.”
  • The implementation of the death penalty makes it impossible to reform and rehabilitate the convict.
  • It is impossible to repair the effects when the innocence of the sentenced person is proven after the execution of the sentence.

Impacts of the sentence to death penalty

  • The person sentenced to death penalty suffers from extreme tension, insomnia, and nightmares which are usually related to the sight of the gallows and hangman.
  • A sense of guilt or blame for the personality that caused the issuance of his sentence to death penalty.
  • He might feel persecuted by society.
  • The person would have headaches and constipation, or may resort to addiction as a way to escape from the expected reality.
  • The effect of passing the sentence to death penalty varies according to the religious background: is it a person who believes in fate or calculates everything?
  • Does the accused have reasons for committing his crime? Was he aware of the consequences of that crime or not?
  • Is he suffering from a mental disorder, for example, or madness or not, and identification of the behaviors of the person sentenced to death penalty.
  • From all this, we can finally come up with an approximate conclusions on the psychological impact on all those sentenced to death penalty.

 

 

How can we reduce the psychological effects

  • The modern vision relevant to prisons is that they are places that deal with the body and mind of inmates through three concepts:
  • Imposing a penalty for the crime, representing a deterrence for criminals, and then a place for rehabilitating the prisoner to reintegrate him into society.
  • According to this vision, the inmate has the right to education, recreation, care for his physical and psychological safety, and being involved in professional or rehabilitative programs of any kind.

Measures

  • Working on training the prison staff on psychological skills, especially the basic ones.
  • Considering to give the prisoner care after his release to follow up the social adjustment process he started in the penal institution.
  • Helping the inmate to benefit from structural, recreational and educational programs.
  • Paying attention to health and psychological care within penal institutions.
  • Helping inmates to get rid of addiction to alcohol or drugs.
  • Guaranteeing the presence of doctors or specialists in mental illness in prisons.
  • Conducting periodic examination of the sentenced, and stopping the implementation of solitary confinement if symptoms of psychological depression appeared.
  • Preparation of centers for treating these diseases in some penal institutions

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