Each of these propositions is presented in turn below. The paper will be organized around several basic propositions that prisons have become more difficult places in which to adjust and survive over the last several decades that especially in light of these changes, adaptation to modern prison life exacts certain psychological costs of most incarcerated persons that some groups of people are somewhat more vulnerable to the pains of imprisonment than others that the psychological costs and pains of imprisonment can serve to impede post-prison adjustment and that there are a series of things that can be done both in and out of prison to minimize these impediments. I am well aware of the excesses that have been committed in the name of correctional psychology in the past, and it is not my intention to contribute in any way to having them repeated. Although I approach this topic as a psychologist, and much of my discussion is organized around the themes of psychological changes and adaptations, I do not mean to suggest or imply that I believe criminal behavior can or should be equated with mental illness, that persons who suffer the acute pains of imprisonment necessarily manifest psychological disorders or other forms of personal pathology, that psychotherapy should be the exclusive or even primary tool of prison rehabilitation, or that therapeutic interventions are the most important or effective ways to optimize the transition from prison to home. One important caveat is important to make at the very outset of this paper. In this brief paper I will explore some of those costs, examine their implications for post-prison adjustment in the world beyond prison, and suggest some programmatic and policy-oriented approaches to minimizing their potential to undermine or disrupt the transition from prison to home. Moreover, prolonged adaptation to the deprivations and frustrations of life inside prison what are commonly referred to as the "pains of imprisonment" carries a certain psychological cost. Indeed, as I will suggest below, the observation applies with perhaps more force now than when Sykes first made it. Nearly a half-century ago Gresham Sykes wrote that "life in the maximum security prison is depriving or frustrating in the extreme," (1) and little has changed to alter that view. This paper addresses the psychological impact of incarceration and its implications for post-prison freeworld adjustment. That is, modified prison conditions and practices as well as new programs are needed as preparation for release, during transitional periods of parole or initial reintegration, and as long-term services to insure continued successful adjustment. Among other things, social and psychological programs and resources must be made available in the immediate, short, and long-term. A range of structural and programmatic changes are required to address these issues. Among other things, these recent changes in prison life mean that prisoners in general (and some prisoners in particular) face more difficult and problematic transitions as they return to the freeworld. As a result, the ordinary adaptive process of institutionalization or "prisonization" has become extraordinarily prolonged and intense. The trends include increasingly harsh policies and conditions of confinement as well as the much discussed de-emphasis on rehabilitation as a goal of incarceration. It argues that, as a result of several trends in American corrections, the personal challenges posed and psychological harms inflicted in the course of incarceration have grown over the last several decades in the United States. This paper examines the unique set of psychological changes that many prisoners are forced to undergo in order to survive the prison experience.
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