Effects of Imprisonment Flashcards
What are the 4 reasons for imprisonment ?
- Punishment
- Deterrence
- Public protection
- Rehabilitation
How do Prisons punish offenders ?
- Locked in a cell
- Limited contact with outside world
- Few personal possessions
- Share a cell
- Restricted movements
- Strict schedules and rules
How do Prisons work ?
- Stops crime being committed whilst imprisoned
- Takes away personal freedom to give ‘justice’ to society and the victim
How does Prison have a negative impact on prisoners ?
- Restrictive and unpleasant experience
- Boredom and violence from other inmates
- Suicide risk is 4 times than the general population-paticularly in early parts of sentences
How is prison used as a deterrent ?
- Works on behaviourist principles
- Prison is unpleasant- negative reinforcement to not commit crime
- Negative reinforcement of seeing someone else go to prison- deters the public
Why do criminals reoffend ?
- Upon release many lost their jobs and support network- turn back to a life of crime
- Mental health issues
What are the traits most prisoners have ?
- In care as a child
- Absence from school
- Poorly educated
How is rehabilitation used in Prisons ?
- Programmes to reduce reoffending
- Training and skills, in preparation for employment on release
- Jobs keep them away from their old friends, provide income and reduce boredom
- Increases self esteem
What did Gillis and Nafekh discover about rehabilitation ?
- Found 70% of offenders on employment programmers remained free during their conditional release
- Compared to 55% who weren’t on the programme
- Those who did return to prison – programme went back after an average of 37 months
- Compared to 11 months for the non-programme group.
What was the Aim of Haney and Zimbardo’s study ?
- Investigate effect of being assigned to different roles – prison guard or prisoner.
- Done to critically evaluate whether the resulting attitudes and behaviour was due to situational or dispositional factors.
What was the Sample of Haney and Zimbardo’s Study ?
- 24 male volunteers
- Responded to newspaper ad
- Paid $15 a day
What was the procedure of Haney and Zimbardo’s study ?
- Mock prison was created
- IV was participants role
- DV was their behaviour
- All participants consented to play their role for 24 hours a day for a maximum of two weeks.
How were prisoners treated in Haney and Zimbardo’s Study ?
- Only to by their number, not their names.
- Wore a loose-fitting smock.
- Not given underwear, had rubber sandals and were
What were the results of Haney and Zimbardo’s study ?
- Participant behaviour was strongly affected by the role they had been given.
- They internalised the environment and their roles.
- They found the situation believable and it stopped being just an experiment.
- 90% of conversations were about their situation in the prison and not the outside world.
What was the Pathology of power that Zimbardo proposed after the prison experiment ?
- No ‘script’ for how they should behave
- Took it upon themselves to engage in hostile interactions.
- The guards came to enjoy their position of power and control
What was the pathological prisoner syndrome the prisoners experienced in Zimbardo’s study ?
- They moved from disbelief at the conditions, towards rebellion and then when this failed they acted out of self-interest and cohesion was lost.
- Some were ‘good’, siding with the guards
- Others were ‘sick’ showing signs of extreme emotional distress.
What created prisoner and guard pathology in ZImbardo’s study ?
- Loss of identity- uniform and ID numbers for prisoners rather than names
- Arbitrary control – guards exercised power in random ways, based on guard’s mood
- Dependency and emasculation – style of the prisoners’ uniform, lack of underwear made them less manly. Needed permission to ask to go toilet
What was concluded from Haney and Zimbardo’s study ?
- The behaviour of the participants explained by situational, not dispositional factors.
- Some individual differences between how people individually manage their social roles.
- Findings of the study should be used to inform guard training programmes.
What is Restorative Justice ?
- Brings victim and offender together
- Victim is able to explain the impact of the crime on them to the person who did it.
- May also try to get an understanding of why they were targeted.
- Tries to recognise the needs of the victim of the crime -Give them peace of mind and regain a sense of control.
What is the process of Restorative Justice ?
- Operates alongside the criminal justice system. Still punished
- The offender is expected to agree to actions suggested during the process
- Supervised by trained officials and can only go ahead if both sides agree
- Both sides bring supportive people, such as family or friends.
- Offender and Victim speak about how the crimes impacted them and their families
- A ‘contract’ is then drawn up and signed by both parties.
How could Restorative Justice be counterproductive ?
- Potential to harm both the victim, who is meeting face to face with the person who has caused them harm
- The offender who could feel humiliated
What showed Restorative Justice works ?
- Sherman and Strang (2007) found it works in property and violent crime as it is possible to identify a personal victim.
- Most effective for violent crime and burglary
- Was shown to reduce PTSD symptoms in the victim and reduce repeat offending by the burglar.
