Dealing With Offending Behaviour: The Psychological Effects of Custodial Sentencing Flashcards
What are the 3 psychological effects associated with serving time in prison?
Stress & depression, Institutionalism and Prisonisation
Describe how custodial sentencing can be considered a cause of stress and depression in inmates?
Suicide rates + incidents of self-mutilation and self-harm are much higher in prison than in the general population. The stress of the prison experience also increases risk of psychological disturbance following release.
What is institutionalism in relation to custodial sentencing?
Inmates may have become so used to the norms + routines of prison that they can no longer function in the outside world.
What is prisonisation in relation to custodial sentencing?
Refers to the way in which prisoners are socialised into adopting an ‘inmate code’. Behaviour that may be considered unacceptable in the outside world may be encouraged & rewarded inside the prison. Difficult to adapt when leaving prison.
How does Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment support the psychological effects of custodial sentencing?
One of the prisoners began to “act crazy, to scream, to curse, to go into a rage” and had to be released after just 35 hours.
What is a limitation of using Zimbardo’s study to support the psychological effects of custodial sentencing?
It lacks ecological validity as it was a fake prison, so therefore we can’t say it represents what inmates would be like in a real prison environment.
What evidence supports the psychological effects of custodial sentencing? (The Prison Reform Trust)
The PRT found that 25% of women and 15% of men in prison reported symptoms indicative of psychosis (compared to 4% in general pop.)
What evidence supports the psychological effects of custodial sentencing? (Cheeseman, 2003)
Found many aggressive incidents in prison occurred due to the need to relieve stress. Suggests aggressive incidents in prison could be due to the environment being highly stressful.
What evidence suggests that psychological effects can influence recidivism rates?
Coid et al (2007) - Reported that mental health of an offender had a direct effect on recidivism rates. Offenders in UK who received treatment for mental health problems while in prison were 60% less likely to reoffend than untreated offenders.
What is a limitation of the psychological effects of custodial sentencing? (Individual differences)
Cannot be assumed that all offenders react in the same way - different prisons have different regimes so there are likely to be wide variations in experience - also, length of sentence, reason for incarceration & previous experience in prison may all be important factors - difficult to make general conclusions that apply to every prison + prisoner
What is a limitation of psychological effects of custodial sentencing? (Issues with validity)
Difficult to know whether the psychological & emotional difficulties the inmates experience within the prison are due to the context or whether they were pre-existing - therefore it would be wrong to say that it’s an effect of custodial sentencing
