Contents

The Effects of Imprisonment

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 Policing, Ethics and Human Rights

Cambridge Criminal Justice Series

Published in association with the Institute of Criminology, University of

Cambridge

Published titles

Community Penalties: change and challenges, edited by Anthony Bottoms,

Loraine Gelsthorpe and Sue Rex
Ideology, Crime and Criminal Justice: a symposium in honour of Sir Leon
Radzinowicz, edited by Anthony Bottoms and Michael Tonry
Reform and Punishment: the future of sentencing, edited by Sue Rex and
Michael Tonry
Confronting Crime: crime control policy under New Labour, edited by
Michael Tonry
Sex Offenders in the Community: managing and reducing the risks, edited by
Amanda Matravers
The Effects of Imprisonment, edited by Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna

ii

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 Contents

The Effects of Imprisonment

Edited by

Alison Liebling
Shadd Maruna

iii
First published by Willan Publishing 2005
This edition published by Routledge 2011
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© the Editors and Contributors 2005

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

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Hardback first published 2005

ISBN 10: 1-84392-093-X

ISBN 13: 978-1-84392-093-9

Paperback edition 2006

ISBN 10: 1-84392-217-7

ISBN 13: 978-1-84392-217-9

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Project management by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock, Devon

Typeset by GCS, Leighton Buzzard, Beds

iv
 Contents

Contents

List of tables and figures ix

Notes on contributors xi

Acknowledgements xvii

Foreword by Andrew Coyle xix

1 Introduction: the effects of imprisonment revisited 1

Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna

PART 1 THE HARMS OF IMPRISONMENT:

THAWING OUT THE ‘DEEP FREEZE’ PARADIGM

2 Release and adjustment: perspectives from studies of

wrongly convicted and politically motivated prisoners 33
Ruth Jamieson and Adrian Grounds

3 The contextual revolution in psychology and the question

of prison effects 66
Craig Haney

4 Harm and the contemporary prison 94

John Irwin and Barbara Owen

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

5 The effects of supermax custody 118

Roy D. King

6 The politics of confinement: women’s imprisonment

in California and the UK 146
Candace Kruttschnitt

PART 2 REVISITING THE SOCIETY OF CAPTIVES

7 Codes and conventions: the terms and conditions of

contemporary inmate values 177
Ben Crewe

8 Revisiting prison suicide: the role of fairness and distress 209

Alison Liebling, Linda Durie, Annick Stiles and Sarah Tait

9 Crossing the boundary: the transition of young adults

into prison 232
Joel Harvey

10 Brave new prisons: the growing social isolation of modern

penal institutions 255
Robert Johnson

11 ‘Soldiers’, ‘sausages’ and ‘deep sea diving’: language,

culture and coping in Israeli prisons 285
Tomer Einat

12 Forms of violence and regimes in prison: report of research

in Belgian prisons 306
Sonja Snacken

PART 3 COPING AMONG AGEING PRISONERS

13 Older men in prison: survival, coping and identity 343

Elaine Crawley and Richard Sparks

14 Loss, liminality and the life sentence: managing identity

through a disrupted lifecourse 366
Yvonne Jewkes

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 Contents

PART 4 EXPANDING THE PRISON EFFECTS DEBATE

BEYOND THE PRISONER

15 The effects of prison work 391

Helen Arnold

16 Imprisonment and the penal body politic: the cancer of

disciplinary governance 421
Pat Carlen

17 The effects of imprisonment on families and children of

prisoners 442
Joseph Murray

AFTERWORD

18 Reinventing prisons 465

Hans Toch

Appendix. Conference participants 474

Index 476

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

The Editors dedicate this book to Distinguished Professor Hans Toch,

the patron saint of prison effects research and our cherished friend.

A. Liebling
S. Maruna

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 List of tables and figures

List of tables and figures

Tables

6.1 Selected characteristics of the prison population and the

women interviewed at HM Prison Downview and the
women prisoners interviewed in California 154

8.1 Frequency of imported vulnerability per prison, 2002 217

8.2 Key differences between groups of prisoners in levels of

distress and vulnerability 218

8.3 Main correlations between suicide rates and mean

distress levels 219

9.1 Descriptive statistics of a sample of newly received

prisoners 238

9.2 Percentage of participants who ‘strongly agreed’ or

‘agreed’ with each of the statements measuring
psychological distress 248

9.3 Summary of standard multiple regression analysis for

variables predicting psychological distress 248

11.1 Distribution of frequency of argot terms 296

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

Figures

8.1 Modelling overall distress: with imported vulnerability:

prisoner data 2002 and 2004 221

8.2 Modelling GHQ12: with imported vulnerability:

prisoner data 2002 and 2004 221

8.3 Distress and well-being in prison 223

17.1 The relationship between parental imprisonment and

child adjustment 453

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 Notes on contributors

Notes on contributors

Helen Arnold is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge

Institute of Criminology and has been working and conducting
research in prison for the last eight years. After completing the MPhil
in Criminology at the Cambridge Institute in 1999 she was a research
assistant for two years on two projects: ‘An Exploration of Decision-
Making in Discretionary Lifer Panels’, and ‘Measuring the Quality of
Prison Life’, before beginning her doctorate titled ‘Identifying the High
Performing Prison Officer’.

Pat Carlen is a freelance sociologist and Honorary Professor of

Criminology at Keele University. She has written extensively on the
relationships between crime and social justice and in 1997 was recipient
of the American Society of Criminology Sellin-Glueck Award for
international contributions to criminology.

Elaine Crawley is a Lecturer in Criminology at Keele University. She has

conducted extensive prison research both with prisoners and uniformed
prison staff. Her most recent research includes a two-year study of elderly
men in prison and an ethnographic study of prison officers at work. In
July 2004 she published the findings of her research into the lives of
prison officers in a book called Doing Prison Work (Willan, 2004).

Ben Crewe is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Criminology,

a Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Fellow in the Social
Sciences, and a Research Fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge. He
has recently conducted an ethnographic study of everyday life in a UK

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

prison, titled ‘The New Society of Captives’. He has also written on

masculinity and media culture.

Linda Durie was a research assistant in the Institute on Criminology,

Prison Research Centre, responsible for organising before and after
surveys, conducting interviews with prisoners and staff, and carrying
out observation on an evaluation on a safe local prison initiative. She
has conducted several research projects in prisons, and has worked for
the Prisons Inspectorate.

Tomer Einat received a PhD in Criminology from the Hebrew University

and is a lecturer of criminology at The Jordan Valley College (Israel). His
main interests are penology, prisons, prisoners’ subculture, alternatives
to imprisonment and criminal fines, areas of study where his work
has made a significant impact. He served as the co-chairperson of the
International Prison Initiative.

Adrian Grounds is a University Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychiatry

at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, and
Honorary Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the Cambridgeshire and
Peterborough Mental Health Partnership Trust. His research interests
are in services for mentally disordered offenders, and the effects of
wrongful conviction and imprisonment. He is also currently a Sentence
Review Commissioner and Life Sentence Review Commissioner in
Northern Ireland, and a Trustee of the Prison Reform Trust.

Craig Haney received his PhD (in Psychology) and JD degrees from
Stanford University in 1978. One of the principal researchers on
the ‘Stanford Prison Experiment’ in 1971, he has been studying the
psychological effects of living and working in actual prison environments
since then. His work has taken him to dozens of maximum-security
prisons across the United States and in several different countries where
he has evaluated conditions of confinement and interviewed prisoners
about the mental health consequences of incarceration. His scholarly
writing and empirical research have addressed a wide range of crime
and punishment-related topics, including the causes of violent crime,
psychological mechanisms by which prisoners adjust to incarceration,
and the adverse effects of prolonged imprisonment, especially under
severe conditions of confinement (especially in solitary or ‘supermax’
facilities). His forthcoming book about prison conditions in the United
States will be published by the American Psychological Association in
2005.

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 Notes on contributors

Joel Harvey completed his MA (first class honours) in Psychology at the

University of St Andrews in 1997 and his MSc in Forensic Psychology at
the University of Kent in 1998. He completed his PhD in Criminology
at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, in 2004. Joel
has worked for the New South Wales Police Service, The University of
New South Wales, and HM Prison Service on various research projects.
Currently, he is training to be a clinical psychologist at the University of
Manchester.

John Irwin After serving a five-year sentence (1952–1957) in a California

prison, John Irwin attended college and eventually received a PhD
in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. His PhD
dissertation was on the career of the felon, which was published in 1970
as The Felon. In 1967, he joined the sociology faculty of San Francisco
State University where he taught for 27 years. During his career as a
sociologist he continued studying prisons and jails and wrote Prisons
in Turmoil, The Jail, and Its About Time, the latter with James Austin. He
recently published a new book on the modern American prison, The
Warehouse Prison: The Disposal of the New ‘Dangerous Class’. He also was
highly active in prison reform during his professional career. He was a
member of a ‘working party’ organised by the American Friends Service
Committed and helped write the influential Struggle for Justice (1971).
With other activists he organised The Prisoners Union, which was highly
active in prison reform in the early 1970s. He continues to work on prison
reform and at present is participating with a group of criminologists,
lawyers and law professors on a sentencing reform pamphlet.

Ruth Jamieson is currently a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal

Justice in the School of Law at Queen’s University, Belfast. Prior to
joining the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Queen’s
in 2004 she taught at Keele University from 1995–2004 and worked for
the Canadian Department of Justice on the research and evaluation of
Federal/Provincial Legal Aid and Access to Justice Programs. She has
also published in the areas of war and crime and transnational crime.
She is currently involved in research on topics such as the effects of long-
term imprisonment, and gender and resilience in armed conflict.

Yvonne Jewkes is Reader in Criminology and member of the International

Centre for Comparative Criminological Research at the Open University.
She has published widely on various aspects of imprisonment and is the
author of Captive Audience: Media, Masculinity and Power in Prisons (Willan,
2002) and editor of the forthcoming Handbook on Prisons (Willan).

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Robert Johnson is a Professor of Justice, Law and Society at the

American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of several
social science books, including Condemned to Die, Death Work, and Hard
Time, as well as a collection of original poems, Poetic Justice. Johnson has
testified or provided expert affidavits before state and federal courts, the
US Congress, and the European Commission of Human Rights, and is a
Distinguished Alumnus of the Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public
Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York.

Roy D. King is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Criminology,

Cambridge. Before that he was Professor of Criminology and Criminal
Justice at the University of Wales where he established the Centre for
Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice. He has published
several books on prisons and his continuing research interests are in
the proliferation of supermax custody, and international comparisons
of prisons and imprisonment. He is currently working on prisons and
imprisonment in Brazil.

Candace Kruttschnitt is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the

University of Minnesota. She has published extensively on the subject
of female offenders, including both reviews of research pertaining to
gender differences in aetiology and primary analysis of criminal court
sanctions. She recently completed a book with Rosemary Gartner on
women’s imprisonment (Marking Time in the Golden State: Women’
Imprisonment in California. Cambridge University Press, 2005). She also
chaired the National Research Council’s Workshop on Violence Against
Women. She was Vice President of the American Society of Criminology,
and a council member of the Crime, Law and Deviance Section of the
American Sociology Association. She received her BA degree from the
University of California, Berkeley, her MPhil, MA and PhD degrees in
sociology from Yale University.

Alison Liebling is a Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the

University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. She is the Director
of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre.
She is the author of Suicides in Prison (1992), The Prison Officer (2001, with
David Price), and Prisons and their Moral Performance (2004).

Shadd Maruna is a Lecturer at the Institute of Criminology, University of

Cambridge. His book, Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild
Their Lives (American Psychological Association Books, 2001), was
awarded the American Society of Criminology’s Prize for Outstanding

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 Notes on contributors

Contribution to Criminology in 2001. More recently, he co-edited After

Crime and Punishment: Pathways to Offender Reintegration (Willan, 2004).
In 2005 he begins a new position as a Reader in Law and Criminology at
Queen’s University Belfast.

Joseph Murray is completing his doctoral dissertation on prisoners’

children at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University.
Previously he researched neighbourhood poverty at the Social Exclusion
Centre, London School of Economics. He was awarded the Manuel
Lopez-Rey prize at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University,
2002. His main research interests are in longitudinal studies and the
social and psychological effects of imprisonment.

Barbara Owen is a Professor of Criminology at California State

University, Fresno. She earned her PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley in
1984. As an ethnographer, she continues to work in the areas of feminist
criminology, gender-responsive policy, substance abuse treatment and
prison culture for women.

Sonja Snacken is Professor of Criminology and Penology at the Vrije

Universiteit Brussel and the University of Gent (Belgium). Her research
concentrates on sentencing and the implementation of sanctions and
measures, including the causes and consequences of penal inflation,
prisoners’ rights, prison regimes and prison violence, sentencing and
human rights.

Richard Sparks is Professor of Criminology at the University of

Edinburgh. Prior to taking up his present position he worked for thirteen
years at Keele University where the research reported in this volume
(with Elaine Crawley) was undertaken. Richard’s research interests
lie mainly in the areas of the sociology of punishment, especially
imprisonment, penal politics and public sensibilities towards crime and
criminal justice.

Annick Stiles was a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge

Institute of Criminology; Prison Research Centre, responsible for
quantitative data analysis. Since completing the project, Annick has left
the Institute to take up a career in landscape gardening.

Sarah Tait was educated at the Universities of McGill in Montreal (BA

Women’s Studies) and Toronto (MA Criminology). She was a research
assistant, in the Prison Research Centre, University of Cambridge,

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responsible for conducting interviews with prisoners and staff, and

carrying out observation. She is a PhD student at the University of
Cambridge, Institute of Criminology, studying gender, culture and care
among prison officers.

Hans Toch is Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice at the University

at Albany, State University New York. A social psychologist working in
criminology and criminal justice administration, Hans Toch is a prolific
author whose books include Living in Prison (Free Press, 1975), Violent
Men (Aldine, 1969), The Disturbed Violent Offender (with Ken Adams, Yale,
1989), Police as Problem Solvers (with J.D. Grant, Plenum, 1991), Mosaic of
Despair (A.P.A. Books, 1992), Police Violence (with William Geller, Yale,
1996), Corrections: A Humanistic Approach (Harrow and Heston, 1997)
and Acting Out (with Ken Adams, APA Books, 2002). Hans Toch is
an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the
American Society of Criminology, and in 1996 he served as president of
the American Association for Forensic Psychology. He was a member of
the Governor’s Task Force on Juvenile Violence and a consultant to the
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. His
book Men in Crisis won the Hadley Cantril Memorial Award and he is
co-recipient of the August Vollmer Award from the ASC.

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 Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Like its predecessors in the Cambridge Criminal Justice Series, this

collection is an outgrowth of a Cropwood Conference at the University
of Cambridge, the International Symposium on the Effects of
Imprisonment (14 and 15 April 2004). Cambridge’s Institute of
Criminology has been receiving support from the Barrow Cadbury
Trust since 1968 to underwrite the convening of Cropwood Conferences
on a variety of criminal justice related topics. The Trust also supports
the Cropwood Fellowship Programme, which enables Fellows, selected
in a competitive process, to spend up to three months in Cambridge
working on a research-related project, advised by a member of the
Institute’s academic staff. The Institute is enormously grateful to the
Barrow Cadbury Trust and to Barry Mussenden and Sukhvinder Stubbs
from Barrow Cadbury in particular, for their support of the Cropwood
Programme.
The International Symposium on the Effects of Imprisonment received
additional funding from the Prisons Research Centre and the Institute
of Criminology.
We are also grateful to all the participants at the conference for
their lively contributions (see list in the Appendix), and especially to
Andrew Coyle for so ably chairing the event. Robinson College staff
were excellent hosts. We would also like to thank Helen Griffiths for her
most efficient work in organising the conference and preparing papers,
and Ann Phillips for her very valuable assistance with the preparation
of the manuscript for publication.

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 Foreword

Foreword

Andrew Coyle
(Professor of Prison Studies, King’s College,
London)

In their introduction to this book Liebling and Maruna ask whether

the world really needs another book on the effects of prison. That is a
question which deserves an answer.
During all the years that I worked in prisons I never ceased to ask
myself why I did so. This was not because of obsessive uncertainty about
my chosen career. Rather, it came from a desire never to lose sight of the
reality of what I was doing. Shorn of all subtleties and rationalisations,
my task was to deprive other human beings of their liberty. I tried to
ensure that I did so in the most decent and humane way possible. I
attempted to reduce the pain of imprisonment for those men who were
under my care. I did my best to provide them with opportunities to
make positive use of their enforced time in captivity. But in doing all
of those things it was important always to remember that prison is by
its very nature a debilitating experience. That is why in any decent and
democratic society the imposition of imprisonment should always be an
instrument of last resort, only to be used when there is no other option.
In a number of countries, especially in the Western world, that principle
is no longer observed. The number of people in prison in the United
States has gone from half a million to over two millions in just over 20
years. In England and Wales the prison population has risen in the last
15 years from 45,000 to 75,000. In neither case has there been anything
like comparable rises in the crime rates or in detection rates. Put simply,
courts now send more offenders to prison and impose longer sentences
than they did before. One explanation for this is that society has become
more punitive and courts are simply responding to the demands of the
public and the media. This is partly true.
It seems to me that there is also another dangerous influence at work
and that is the proposition advanced by some people who work in and
around the prison system that good can come out of imprisonment; that
it can be an important method of changing the behaviour and attitude
of those who are sent there, so that they will come out better people
and much less likely to commit crime as a result of their experiences

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

in prison. This is what Nils Christie has called ‘the denial of existence
strategy’:

Study after study has shown how penal measures and long-term
incarceration have been made more acceptable to society if they
were disguised as treatment, training or pure help to suffering
individuals in need of such measures. (Christie 1978: 181)

As a result, in England and Wales many prisoners are now required

to undergo ‘programmes’ in an attempt to change their behaviour; the
number of women in prison has increased four times within a very
short period; in some parts of the country drug addicts can get better
treatment in prison than in the community; and it is now claimed that
some difficult children are better off in prison service custody than
in a welfare environment. Duguid (2000: 230) has characterised this
phenomenon, which of course is not new, as treating the prisoner as
‘object rather than subject’, someone whose only role is to co-operate
with decisions made by others, rather than someone to be encouraged
to take control of his or her own life.
In a similar context, one of the dangers when studying criminology is
that one can come to view the prisoner as an object rather than a subject,
engaging in dispassionate and supposedly neutral analyses of whether
human beings suffer ‘pain’, or indeed are affected in any way, by the
experience of imprisonment. In so far as this is the case, the answer to
the editors’ initial question is that the world does not need another book
on the effects of imprisonment; certainly prisoners do not.
Fortunately, the contributors to this volume have not fallen into
that trap. As they demonstrated during the two days they gathered in
Cambridge in 2004, they care deeply about the humanity of prisoners
and about the effects which imprisonment has on those who suffer it and
on their families. As a consequence, this book is not an arid scholastic
treatise. It has rigorous academic foundations but the conclusion which
cries out from it is that prison should have a very limited role to play
in a modern society. In that respect it is a fitting tribute to Hans Toch, to
whom it is dedicated.

References

Christie, N. (1978) ‘Prisons in Society or Society as a Prison’, in J. Freeman (ed.)

Prisons, Past and Future. London: Heinemann.
Duguid, S. (2000) Can Prisons Work? The prisoner as object and subject in modern
corrections. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

Chapter 1

Introduction: the effects of

imprisonment revisited1
Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna

Offenders emerge from prison afraid to trust, fearful of the

unknown, and with a vision of the world shaped by the meaning
that behaviours had in the prison context. For a recently released
prisoner, experiences like being jostled on the subway, having
someone reach across him in the bathroom to take a paper towel, or
making eye contact can be taken as a precursor to a physical attack.
In relationships with loved ones, this warped kind of socialization
means that problems will not easily be talked through. In a sense,
the system we have designed to deal with offenders is among the
most iatrogenic in history, nurturing those very qualities it claims
to deter.
(Miller 2001: 3)

Florence Nightingale (1859) famously argued that the first principle

of the hospital should be to do the sick no harm. A recent history of
prison standards (Keve 1996: 1) begins by arguing that Nightingale
‘undoubtedly would have expressed a similar principle for prisons’.
It seems that she actually did – or at least argued that we should do
more research into whether or not prisons caused harm. In a letter
to the Manchester Guardian in 1890, Nightingale laments the fact that
‘criminology is much less studied than insectology’ and argues that: ‘It
would be of immense importance if the public had kept before them the
statistics, well worked out, of the influence of punishment on crime or
of reformatories and industrial schools on juvenile offenders.’ Armed
with such knowledge, she believed, no rational society would support a
system of ‘reformation’ that made its subjects more likely to offend upon
their release than they were prior to admittance.
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 The Effects of Imprisonment

Since Nightingale’s time, the discipline of criminology has grown

immensely (surely by now eclipsing entomology at least in terms of
undergraduate interest levels) and recidivism statistics of the type she
described have become one of the discipline’s most essential products
(see Baumer et al 2002; Beck 2000; Kershaw 1997). However, the prison
has remained and indeed reliance on imprisonment as a means of social
control has increased substantially over the last 20 years in the United
Kingdom and especially in the United States. We rely on imprisonment
by remaining blind to the falseness of our assumptions about its
role and effectiveness. As Garland (1990) has argued, restricted to its
technical functions, imprisonment does not work, and there are other
institutions far better placed to deliver goods such as ‘repair’, ‘inclusion’
or ‘correction’. Yet, presumably, the public consent to the increasing use
of imprisonment based at least in large part on these narrow, technicist
and unproven grounds (Useem et al 2003).
Where did Nightingale’s remarkable prognostic abilities go wrong?
Perhaps we human beings are not as rational as she gave us credit for
being. Or else, more optimistically, perhaps criminology has simply
failed to make the case that prisons do not ‘work’. The study of the
effects of prison has a distinguished history within criminology, yet the
debate has gone stale in recent decades (partially indicated by how few
investigations of this nature have been supported by criminal justice
research councils in recent years). Haney and Zimbardo (1998: 721) have
argued that although social scientists contributed significantly to the
intellectual foundations on which the modern prison was developed,
over the last 25 years, we have ‘relinquished voice and authority in
the debates that surround prison policy’. This absence has created ‘an
ethical and intellectual void that has undermined both the quality and
the legitimacy of correctional practices’, they argue.
In recent years, the reigning paradigm in the prison effects literature,
voiced by Zamble and Porporino (1988) and others, is that incarceration
is akin to a ‘behavioral deep freeze’ (see Oleson 2002 for an ingenious
parody of this finding). In other words, the adaptational styles and
capacities of offenders are basically invariant and largely impervious
to effects of imprisonment. In this framework, incarceration simply
acts to put a person’s pre-existing propensities on hold until renewed
opportunities are presented for these propensities to be freely exercised
in the future. Essentially, Dostoevsky’s tragic optimism that humans
must be creatures who can ‘withstand anything’ – earned the hard way
after he spent four years in a Siberian prison camp – has become the
dangerously taken-for-granted assumption in contemporary thinking
about prison effects.

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

The logical conclusion of this ‘deep freeze’ argument is not so much

that ‘nothing works’, but essentially ‘nothing much matters’. Prisons can
become as harsh and inhumane as desired – and imprisonment does not
get much more inhumane than the conditions in so-called ‘supermax’
confinement widespread in the United States (see Haney, this volume) –
and no real damage will be done to their unfortunate inhabitants. Among
the shortcomings of this argument is the narrowness by which it defines
‘harm’. The contemporary effects literature lacks a sufficient affective
dimension. Fear, anxiety, loneliness, trauma, depression, injustice,
powerlessness, violence and uncertainty are all part of the experience
of prison life. These ‘hidden’, but everywhere apparent, features of
prison life have not been measured or taken seriously enough by those
interested in the question of prison effects. Sociologists of prison life
knew these things were significant, but have largely failed to convince
others in a methodologically convincing way that such ‘pain’ constitutes
a measurable ‘harm’ (see Liebling 1999). Yet, ‘pains’ have consequences,
however indirect. The petty humiliations and daily injustices experienced
in prison (as in our communities) may be suffered in silence, but as they
accumulate and fester these hurts can return as hatred and ‘inexplicable’
violence (see Gilligan, 1999). After all, if the consequence of injustice
and rejection is hatred (Storr 1991: 49; Parker 1970: 84–6) or resentment
(Barbalet 1998) and the product of this pain is violence (de Zulueta 1993),
we are surely obliged to avoid these unwanted and unintended effects.
Our dissatisfactions with the state of the existing literature, and our
recognition that important work challenging the ‘deep freeze’ paradigm
was beginning to emerge, provided the rationale for the conference out
of which the following chapters emerged.2 Our admittedly ambitious
aim in assembling this collection of chapters from leading international
scholars is to redirect the conversation among academics, policy-makers
and professionals regarding the effects of imprisonment. We define
this topic broadly to include the social, psychological, behavioural and
emotional impacts of the incarceration experience on prisoners (during
and after their captivity); as well as the impact of imprisonment on
prisoners’ families (see Murray, this volume); and on those working in
the institutions themselves (see e.g. Arnold, this volume; Carlen, this
volume); and, indeed, the impact that the institution of the prison has
on a society (especially in the present times of mass incarceration in the
US and elsewhere).
These are far from mere academic issues. For instance, there may be
justice implications if apparently objective measures of punishment,
calibrated in chunks of time, have radically different subjective effects
on recipients (von Hirsch 1993; Liebling 2004). Understanding the true

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effects of imprisonment is necessary if we are to appreciate what goes

on in prisons as well. As Sykes argued, the deprivations of prison life
provide the energy for the system of action that characterises the prison
(Sykes 1958). There is even a relationship between the effects debate and
prison design: reflecting on assumptions about the impact of prison over
time helps us to make sense of the varied and apparently contradictory
penal estate in England and Wales, for example.3 Finally, of course, an
understanding of the intended and unintended effects of imprisonment
has serious implications for the treatment of offenders and the reduction
of recidivism. One reason for the null findings of so many of the best
designed interventions may be that the positive impact of interventions
such as education or job training may be systematically undermined by
the negative effects of the incarceration process itself.
The account below presents a selective review of the debate over the
effects of imprisonment over the last 50 years or so, and shows some
of the limitations of the argument to date. We begin with the post-war
consensus regarding the dangers of total institutions like prisons on
the mental health and personality of the individuals they hold captive.
Then, we review the shift in the 1980s to seeing imprisonment as a
largely neutral experience with little lasting impact, good or bad. We
conclude with some of the new issues that have emerged in recent years
and which inform this collection.

The post-war consensus on prison effects

The first major critiques of imprisonment and its effects came from
sociologists critical of institutions per se (e.g. Goffman’s 1961 classic
Asylums). In the UK, Barton (1966) brought together several studies
showing detrimental effects of institutionalisation under the heading
‘institutional neurosis’. This was:

… a disease characterised by apathy, lack of initiative, loss of interest

more marked in things and events not immediately personal or
present, submissiveness, and sometimes no expression of feelings
of resentment at harsh or unfair orders. There is also a lack of
interest in the future and an apparent inability to make practical
plans for it, a deterioration in personal habits, toilet and standards
generally, a loss of individuality, and a resigned acceptance that
things will go on as they are – unchangingly, inevitably, and
indefinitely.
(Barton 1966: 14)

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

There were several overlapping factors associated with its aetiology:

loss of contact with the outside world; enforced idleness and loss of
responsibility; the authoritarian attitudes of medical and nursing staff;
the loss of personal possessions and friends; prescribed drugs; and loss
of prospects outside the institution (p. 63).4
Around the same time, other, more specific reservations about the
effects of imprisonment were being expressed from various sources in
the UK, including a report of the Advisory Council on the Treatment
of Offenders on Preventive Detention (Home Office 1963). It was
clear from research (e.g. West 1963) that very long sentences were
being inappropriately given to socially ‘inadequate’, repeat offenders
and that such prison terms only reinforced the cycle of dependency,
institutionalisation and crime (West 1963: 106–7; Home Office 1963).
Tony Parker’s The Unknown Citizen powerfully illustrated this critique:

Imprisonment neither reforms nor deters me. It confirms and

completes the destruction of my personality, and has now so
conditioned me that I am almost totally incapable of living outside.
A prison has become the only place in which I can exist satisfactorily,
and it has become a kindness on your part to return me to it since
the strain of living outside is so painful and intense.
(Parker 1963: 156)

In a landmark study of prison environments,5 Gresham Sykes (1958)

used the language of the ‘pains of imprisonment’. In his sociological
study of a maximum security prison in Trenton, Sykes identified five
main pains of imprisonment. They were:

• the loss of liberty (confinement, removal from family and friends,

rejection by the community, and loss of citizenship: a civil death,
resulting in lost emotional relationships, loneliness and boredom)
• the deprivation of goods and services (choice, amenities and material
possessions)
• the frustration of sexual desire (prisoners were figuratively castrated
by involuntary celibacy)
• the deprivation of autonomy (regime routine, work, activities, trivial
and apparently meaningless restrictions – for example, the delivery
of letters, lack of explanations for decisions)

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

• the deprivation of security (enforced association with other un-

predictable prisoners, causing fear and anxiety; prisoners had to fight
for the safety of their person and possessions) (Sykes 1958: 63–78).

According to Sykes, prisoners lost society’s trust, the status of

citizenship and material possessions, which constituted a large part
of their self-perception. The minutiae of life were regulated with a
bureaucratic indifference to individual need and worth:

Imprisonment, then, is painful. The pains of imprisonment,

however, cannot be viewed as being limited to the loss of physical
liberty. The significant hurts lie in the frustrations or deprivations
which attend the withdrawal of freedom, such as the lack of
heterosexual relationships, isolation from the free community,
the withholding of goods and services, and so on. And however
painful these frustrations or deprivations may be in the immediate
terms of thwarted goals, discomfort, boredom, and loneliness, they
carry a more profound hurt as a set of threats or attacks which
are directed against the very foundations of the prisoner’s being.
The individual’s picture of himself as a person of value … begins
to waver and grow dim. Society did not plan this onslaught, it is
true, and society may even ‘point with pride’ to its humanity in the
modern treatment of the criminal. But the pains of imprisonment
remain and it is imperative that we recognise them, for they provide
the energy for the society of captives as a system of action.
(Sykes 1958: 78–9)

These deprivations threatened the prisoner’s sense of worth and self-

concept. They provided the energy for the ‘society of captives’ to act
collectively, in order to mitigate their effects. They caused prisoners to
generate alternative methods of gaining self-esteem.
The post-war literature, then, has represented the power of institutions
as dangerous and damaging, including the fear of breakdown (Cohen
and Taylor 1972), and hopelessness about the future. This tradition
might be best captured in a more recent study by Gallo and Ruggiero
(1991). They describe prisons as ‘factories for the manufacture of psycho-
social handicaps’: ‘Even the most modern, comfortable and ‘humane’
regimes provide forms of destruction which are built into the normalcy
of incarceration’ (Gallo and Ruggiero 1991: 278). They argue that the
two most common types of behaviour found in prison were aggression
and depression. Prisoners in the research described the distress caused
by trying to keep their own distress under control as one of the harshest

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

pains of imprisonment. Their survival techniques, adopted to survive

imprisonment, damaged them. As one prisoner said:

I found myself giving precedence in a queue to ‘respectable’

prisoners; shaking hands with some and ignoring others; mocking
one inmate and being respectful and subservient to another.
Everybody complied with these unwritten rules. If you didn’t, you
were looked at with suspicion; you were regarded as someone to
shun, sometimes to punish.
(ibid.)

Gallo and Ruggiero describe prisons as worlds of ‘de-communication’

(see Johnson, this volume), where prisoners either lived in a state of
constant anxiety, or ‘disengaged’ in a form of psychological absenteeism
encouraged by the availability of drugs. In prison, they argued, ‘it is
possible to speak using a hundred words’ (ibid.: 285).
Two landmark psychological studies provided considerable support
for this anti-institution consensus in sociology: Milgram’s obedience
study and Zimbardo’s model prison experiment. Both studies remain
important, despite significant and well-documented methodological
shortcomings.6 With some exceptions (e.g. Shover 1996), contemporary
penology neglects these studies and tends to consider them discredited.
However, our view is that both studies (and the controversy they
provoked) provide important theoretical and empirical insights which
have considerable relevance to the contemporary prison experience.

Milgram and obedience to authority

Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth
than one might dare imagine. The ordinary person who shocked
the victim did so out of a sense of obligation – a conception of
his duties as a subject – and not from any peculiarly aggressive
tendencies.
(Milgram 1974: 6)

How are personal morals overcome in the face of autocratic authority?

How do individuals shake off their own responsibility for unacceptable
actions? What is the psychology of ‘ordinary cruelty’? Stanley Milgram
conducted a series of experiments in the 1960s intended to investigate
readiness to obey morally wrong and physically dangerous acts (Milgram
1974; see also Asch 1951 on conformity). Motivated by curiosity about the
cooperation of thousands of Germans with the systematic destruction of

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

the Jews and others during the 1930s and 1940s, Milgram conducted his
experiments at Yale University under the title, ‘the effects of punishment
on learning’.
In the now infamous tests, he persuaded duped volunteers to
administer shocks of increasing severity to a ‘student’ who gave wrong
answers to a series of learning tests. The experiment was conducted
under the strict guidance of the experimenter, who encouraged the
subjects to continue. Many participants showed signs of distress, and
some eventually refused to go on. However, levels of conformity far
exceeded expectations. Sixty-five per cent of the subjects administered
shocks of what they thought were as high as 450 volts, apparently
endangering the life of the actor who masqueraded as the student.
The level of blind obedience in such behaviour varied, of course. When
the experiments were repeated at a less prestigious location, the number
of subjects willing to deliver these levels fell to 50 per cent. When the
subject was in the same room as the ‘student’ instead of being the other
side of a glass partition, obedience levels dropped to 40 per cent. When
other ‘teachers’ left the room during the experiment in protest (providing
support for refusing to obey), obedience levels dropped to 10 per cent.
If the experimenter left the room, obedience dropped to almost zero,
and many participants administered lower levels than required (while
assuring the experimenter that they were obeying his instructions).
When subjects could enlist another person to actually deliver the shock
for them, obedience levels rose to 95 per cent.
The participants expressed serious reservations about their own
behaviour once the experiment was over. Milgram concluded in his
Epilogue, drawing on other examples of real atrocities, that ‘we find a
set of people carrying out their jobs and dominated by an administrative,
rather than a moral, outlook’ (p. 186). Other related studies showed
that ordinary citizens were more likely to obey an instruction if it was
given by someone in uniform, even if the instructor subsequently left
the scene. Nurses would deliver dangerous levels of drugs to patients if
instructed to do so by an unknown doctor over the telephone. Behaviour
was transformed under instruction from a legitimate authority.
Milgram concluded that his studies revealed ‘the capacity for
man to abandon his humanity … as he merges his unique personality
into larger institutional structures’ (p. 188). He claimed that morally
wrong behaviour can be viewed as a product of transactions with an
environment that supports such behaviour, and that social institutions
contain powerful forces (including authority structures) which can make
good men engage in evil deeds. Individuals experience strain during
these activities, but many resolve this strain through avoidance or denial,

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

and continue with their work (Milgram 1974: 156–64). As the world of
prisons becomes increasingly managerial and bureaucratic, the threat
of this sort of interpersonal masking of evil actions as legitimate (‘just
doing my job’) takes on increased urgency. Likewise, the exposure of the
extraordinary treatment of captives by British and American soldiers in
Iraq in recent years is a grim reminder of the truth behind Milgram’s
basic findings of the human capacity for evil in the line of duty.

The Zimbardo experiment

The Zimbardo ‘Simulated Prison’ experiment was another, classic
illustration of the dangers of institutional roles in influencing human
behaviour. Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (1973) conducted an experiment
in which subjects role-played prisoners and guards in a simulated
prison. Subjects were selected after careful diagnostic testing of a large
group of volunteer, male college students. Participants were randomly
assigned to act as either prisoners or guards in an experiment designed
to last two weeks.
The experiment was cut short, however, as the researchers became
startled and concerned by what they were seeing. The authors reported
that the ‘prison’ became a ‘psychologically compelling environment’,
eliciting unexpectedly intense, realistic and often pathological reactions
from the participants. The prisoners seemed to experience a loss of
personal identity and reacted profoundly to the arbitrary control of
their behaviour. This resulted in a syndrome of passivity, dependency,
depression and helplessness. Alternatively, most of the guards
experienced gains in social power, status and group identification,
which made their role-playing rewarding. Half the prisoners developed
an acute emotional disturbance. A third of the guards became more
aggressive and dehumanising than predicted. Importantly, few of
these reactions could be attributed to pre-existing personality traits.
The authors concluded that imprisonment destroys the human spirit of
both the imprisoned and their keepers. They argued that the brutality
of prison stems not from the characteristics of individual guards and
prisoners (the ‘dispositional hypothesis’), but from the ‘deep structure’
of the prison as an institution.
They concluded that ‘harmful structures do not require ill-intentioned
persons to inflict psychological damage on those in their charge’ (Haney
and Zimbardo 1998: 721). Evil can arise out of powerful social forces, and
situational variables shape even the most unethical social behaviours,
overriding personality traits. Personality traits, by themselves, did not
predict who survived, resisted and broke down under extreme stress,
although they may have operated as moderator variables:
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We feel there is abundant evidence that virtually all the subjects

at one time or another experienced reactions which went well
beyond the surface demands of role-playing and penetrated the
deep structure of the psychology of imprisonment.
(Haney et al 1973: 91)

The authors suggested that power was self-aggrandising. The most

hostile guards moved into leadership positions, making decisions which
were rarely contradicted. Rights were redefined as privileges, to be
earned by obedience. Everyone in the experiment came to despise lack
of power in others and in themselves. The prisoners showed disbelief,
followed by rebellion and self-interest. Some sided with the guards
and tried to win approval. The model prisoner reaction was passivity,
dependence (or learned helplessness) and flattened affect. The loss of
personal identity, and the experience of arbitrary control, forced them to
allow others to exercise power over them. The prisoners believed that
guards had been selected on the basis of their larger size. In fact, there
was no difference between the groups in average weight or height.
The conclusion was clear: ‘Like all powerful situations, prisons
transform the worldviews of those who inhabit them, on both sides of
the bars’ (Haney and Zimbardo 1998: 721). The risks of bureaucratic
practices, and of barely visible uses of power, were higher than we com-
monly assume. Among the important implications of the research were
clear lessons for the training of prison officers (see the interview with
Zimbardo by Cheliotis; 2004: 48). Shortly after the study was completed,
there was a spate of killings at San Quentin and Attica prisons. These
incidents emphasised the urgency of reforms which recognised the
dignity and humanity of both prisoners and guards (Pallas and Barber
1972).

The emergence of a new consensus

Beginning in the 1970s, however, these studies alleging the dangers of

institutions were subjected to methodological criticism and accusations
of ideological bias and selectivity (Sapsford 1978; Walker 1987). The
‘pains’ identified by these studies were largely unsubstantiated by
more carefully designed psychological research, leading a number
of psychologists to conclude that the effects of imprisonment were
largely minimal (Banister et al 1973; Bolton et al 1976; Bukstel and
Kilmann 1980; Walker 1983, 1987). Walker (1987) argues that ‘research
– chiefly by psychologists – has done much to deflate the sweeping

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

exaggerations – chiefly by sociologists – about the ill effects of normal

incarceration’.
Research in the 1970s and 1980s suggested that prisoners coped
surprisingly well (Richards 1978; Sapsford 1978, 1983),7 despite an
initial period of disorientation, and anxieties about family and friends.
Empirical studies concluded that ex-prisoners were able to resettle after
an initial period of restlessness upon release (Coker and Martin 1983). This
psychological research characterised the experience of imprisonment as
little worse than a period of ‘deep freeze’ (Zamble and Porporino 1988;
and see comments by officers in Crawley 2004: 97). Research such as
the Durham study (e.g. Banister et al 1973) seemed to many to largely
close the heated debate of the effects of imprisonment in favour of a
conservative, new consensus (see e.g. Bukstel and Kilmann 1980).
How is it possible to reconcile these apparently ‘neutral’ findings of
psychological research on the effects of long-term imprisonment with
earlier, and alternative, accounts of the nature of the prison experience?
During the late 1980s, psychological studies continued, but broadened,
and began to include the concept of coping. This concept allowed for
individual differences and environmental conditions to be considered
in more detail, and led to a richer stage in the study of prison and its
effects (see e.g. Toch et al 1989). For instance, prisoners who made suicide
attempts were found to differ in significant ways from other prisoners,
showing poorer coping strategies and suffering from a greater degree of
background disadvantage. The prison experience was far more difficult
for those prisoners who were not able to find their way into jobs, activities
and social networks in prison (see Liebling 1992). Imprisonment seemed
to be most distressing for vulnerable groups who were least able to cope
with the demands made by an unresponsive and depriving environment
(Liebling 1999).
In other words, the psychological resources and individual circum-
stances of prisoners had been insufficiently examined in the prison effects
research. Prison can be extremely, and differentially, painful depending
on one’s psychosocial background and particular experiences inside,
and yet this apparently obvious fact was not being reflected in the
research of the 1970s and 1980s. In the most comprehensive review of
the prison effects literature to date, Gendreau et al (1999: 18)8 conclude
that:

The sad reality that so little is known about what goes on inside
the ‘black box’ of prisons and how this relates to recidivism … Only
a mere handful of studies have attempted to address this matter
… Analogously, could one imagine so ubiquitous and costly a

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procedure in the medical or social services fields receiving such

cursory research attention?

At the beginning of the 1990s, Hay and Sparks nicely characterised the
‘effects debate’ as ‘sterile’ (Hay and Sparks 1992: 302). The measurement
of harm was poor, and the focus of most of the research was on long-
term prisoners because of an assumption that any harmful effects – if
they existed – would be curvilinear, increasing with length of time in
custody. There are several flaws in this argument. The impact of custody
is often most negative at the earliest stages. This is reflected in suicide
rates, absconding figures and in several research studies (for example,
Ericson 1975; Sapsford 1983; Gibbs 1987; Liebling 1999; and see Harvey,
this volume). Prisoners who die by suicide do not appear in these
‘long-term’ samples, nor do those who leave prison by other means, for
example, by transfer to psychiatric hospital. At the end of a long period
of imprisonment, only the survivors appear in research samples.
Additionally, there are few substantial longitudinal or developmental
studies of the effects of imprisonment (but see Jamieson and Grounds,
this volume). Most studies rely on short follow-up periods (e.g. Zamble
and Porporino 1988) or on cross-sectional samples, comparing groups
of different prisoners who have served different lengths of time.
Further, research has concentrated on prisoners during the period of
custody, when important effects may manifest themselves after release
from prison. The few studies that have examined long-term prisoners
after release (e.g. Coker and Martin 1983) have focused on general
measures of social adjustment, rather than more subtle, hidden kinds of
psychological and emotional disability (Grounds 2004).
Prison is not a uniform experience. Studies have tended to take
undifferentiated samples and to look for general patterns. These general
studies neglect the experience of particular groups and individuals,
such as women, the young, the old, prisoners segregated for their own
protection, those spending long periods of time in segregation units for
other reasons, and so on (see Kruttschnitt; Crawley and Sparks; and King,
this volume). Moreover, assumptions about ‘harm-as-deterioration’
(e.g. in IQ) are seriously limited. Suicide does not require a permanent
drop in measurable psychological constructs such as IQ. Pain is a harm
which psychological scales have so far failed to reflect (see Haney 1997).
Damage may be immediate, or cumulative, and independent of time
spent in custody. Repeated short periods of custody may engender
at least as much pain as one long sentence serving to ‘exacerbate
psychological vulnerabilities and emotional difficulties’ (Porporino and
Zamble 1984).

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

In short, the real effects of imprisonment, when understood in a broad

context, appear to be anything but a ‘deep freeze’. As the British Home
Office wrote in the 1991 White Paper, Custody, Care and Justice, following
the Woolf Report:

… [Prison] breaks up families. It is hard for prisoners to retain

or subsequently to secure law-abiding jobs. Imprisonment can
lessen people’s sense of responsibility for their actions and reduce
their self-respect, both of which are fundamental to law abiding
citizenship. Some, often the young and less experienced, acquire
in prisons a wider knowledge of criminal activity. Imprisonment
is costly for the individual, for the prisoner’s family and for the
community.
(Home Office 1991: para 1.16)

New directions in the effects debate

The next generation of research on prison effects needs to focus on issues

such as mental and physical health (including addiction issues), the
possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the developmental
health and well-being of prisoner families, and the impact of
imprisonment on the ability to successfully desist from crime. The
failure of research to pursue these crucial other harms of imprisonment
has resulted in the sterility to which Hay and Sparks (1992) refer.

Mental and physical health

Imprisonment can be detrimental both to the physical and mental
health of prisoners, and this is a particularly urgent issue with regard
to long-term and aged prisoners (see Jewkes; Crawley and Sparks, this
volume). While many prisoners receive medical treatment in prison
that would be unavailable to them outside (see Jones 1976), the health
risks of imprisonment are high, uneven and specific to the conditions of
confinement.
For instance, research by Gore et al in Scottish prisons has
demonstrated the increasing risk of HIV transmission in prisons (Gore
et al 1995; Taylor et al 1995; and Crofts et al 1995 on Australian prisoners)
where the random sharing of injecting equipment is common. Rates of
hepatitis B and C are increasing in prison, particularly among injecting
drug users. Crofts and colleagues argue that:

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 The Effects of Imprisonment

… [s]everal risk behaviours for transmission of HIV and hepatitis

B and C occur in prison, including the injection of illicit drugs
and tattooing with inadequately disinfected equipment as well
as unprotected sexual intercourse, including male to male anal
intercourse. One Australian study estimated that 36 percent of
prisoners had injected themselves intravenously, and twelve
percent had participated in anal intercourse at least once whilst in
prison.
(Crofts et al 1995: 285)

The authors also found that the high rate of continuing exposure to
hepatitis B in male prisoners aged less than 30 years who inject drugs
suggests that this is a group in whom ‘spread of HIV must be considered
to be simply a matter of time’ (ibid.: 287).
The Crofts study found that injecting drug use was more common
amongst women prisoners (ibid.: 286) and that exposure to hepatitis B
and C was more frequent. Recent Inspectorate reports have condemned
particular female establishments in the UK for turning ‘shoplifters’ into
‘drug addicts’, arguing that as many as 80 per cent of Styal Prison’s female
prisoners were injecting drugs (HMCIP 1995). In the above studies, risk
of transmission of viruses relating to intravenous drug use was found
to be high both during custody and immediately after release. Many
prisoners begin their injecting habit while in custody, although those
who inject daily outside prison do so less frequently whilst in custody
(Taylor et al 1995: 290–91) and some regular drug users stop while in
prison (ibid.: 292). The sharing of needles by injecting drug users is
however, far more common in custody than outside, and the cleaning
methods used by prisoners (rinsing with water, bleach or hairdressing
liquid) are more ineffective than those typically used on the outside.
Taylor and colleagues conclude that ‘various studies of behaviour and
prevalence of HIV in injecting drug users have shown that a period of
imprisonment is an independent predictor of being positive for HIV’
(ibid.: 291).
Their study of an outbreak of HIV infection in a Scottish prison, which
was initiated following a cluster of cases of acute hepatitis B infection,
demonstrates that transmission may occur during a period of custody as
a result of high-risk behaviours practised by prisoners. All of the infected
prisoners had shared injecting equipment within the prison.
A follow-up study of the prevalence of HIV infection and of drug-
injecting behaviour in the same establishment one year later concluded
that ‘the arrival of a carrier of hepatitis B or HIV within any of the needle-
sharing networks common within British prisons is all that is required

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

to start such an outbreak’ (Gore et al 1995: 295). A quarter of known

injecting drug users in the prison (18 of 72) had started injecting while
in custody. Between a quarter and a third of the men who injected drugs
between January and June 1993 became infected with HIV while in
custody (Gore et al 1995: 296). Over a quarter of the prison’s population
were injecting drug users.
The authors note that:

The predilection of prison populations for blood-borne virus

infections is not a new observation. Because of a more than 10 times
higher prevalence of previous hepatitis B infection and carriage
rates among prison inmates in the UK Blood Transfusion Services
ceased donor sessions in prisons in the early 1980s.
(Gore et al 1995: 296)

Yet the policy climate in the UK supports the use of prison to reduce
drug use. Detoxification programmes are proliferating, voluntary and
mandatory drug testing programmes are widespread, and prisoners
themselves sometimes rely on a short prison sentence to ‘get themselves
clean’ (see Crewe, this volume).

Post-traumatic stress
Research on the psychological effects of trauma has been shown to
apply to certain groups of prisoners who have been found to develop
symptoms of PTSD in medico-legal assessments. Such symptoms can
have debilitating effects and are associated with difficulties in restoring
and maintaining relationships. High levels of anxiety, disturbed sleep,
chronic depression, withdrawal from others and persistent feelings of
being ‘different’ from others and from one’s previous self are described
by clinicians working with former prisoners. For instance, in a series of
assessments of men who had served long prison terms after wrongful
convictions, Grounds (2004) found strong evidence of severe and
disabling psychological morbidity. Similar symptoms have been found
by other prisoners released after long prison sentences, particularly, for
example, where they have witnessed violence. Characteristic symptoms
of PTSD include restlessness, irritability and severe difficulties in
forming or restoring close relationships, fear and distress in response
to reminders of the traumatic event, avoidance behaviour, diminished
interest or participation in significant activities, feelings of detachment
and estrangement from others, loss of motivation and a restricted
range of affect (for example, an inability to feel warmth), and anxiety

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and depression. There may also be physical symptoms: increased

physiological arousal, outbursts of anger, difficulties in concentration
and hyper-vigilance. Such symptoms can be associated with increased
alcohol and drug use.
Adrian Grounds has argued that such symptoms can be regarded
as an ‘enduring personality change’. This is manifested as ‘inflexible
and maladaptive characteristics that impair interpersonal, social and
occupational functioning’ and which were not present before, such as
‘a hostile or mistrustful attitude towards the world, social withdrawal,
feelings of emptiness or hopelessness, a chronic feeling of threat, and
estrangement’ (Grounds 2004, forthcoming; and see Jamieson and
Grounds, this volume). Prolonged trauma can lead to major problems of
relatedness and identity which are only manifest in close relationships,
attitudes to themselves and sense of purpose (Grounds, forthcoming).
These shifts, in one’s sense of time and identity, and in the capacity to
build or sustain social connections, can make coping with the demands
of everyday life extremely difficult. The psychosocial and psychiatric
effects associated with imprisonment could be much more widely
understood as a result of these analyses.

Research on prisoners’ families

Finally, there is little research emphasis on the effects of imprisonment
on prisoners’ families (see Lanier 2003; and Murray, this volume). As
Light (1993: 322) argued, a term of imprisonment affects not only the
person remanded or sentenced. ‘The inmate’s family and dependants
are all too often the ones who suffer most’. Shaw (1992) further points
out:

It is a sobering thought that, in spite of the increasing attention

being paid to the children of broken and bereaved families, no
government in Europe, North America, or elsewhere appears to
know how many children within its jurisdiction are affected by the
imprisonment of a parent.

Despite considerable progress in understanding the immediate and long-

term effects of separation trauma upon children (see especially, Hendriks
et al 1993; and Rutter 1982), the impact of imprisonment upon the children
of prisoners has been slow to appear in the literature on the effects of
imprisonment. The effects of separation and loss on children include
increased behaviour disturbance and later delinquency, depression
and feelings of low self-esteem (Richards 1992). The apparent failure

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

to apply the findings of research on separation to our understanding

of imprisonment is particularly surprising, given the inevitability of
distress when one or both parents are imprisoned, in some cases for an
offence against the other parent (see Hendriks et al 1993). Additionally,
criminologists have amassed considerable evidence relating to the
damaging effects of early loss on child development and later antisocial
and destructive behaviour:

For children, imprisonment of adults may result in sudden

separation from a parent. Young children who lose parents are
likely to show separation anxiety, anger, behavioural disturbance
and deterioration in school performance. In their later lives they
may have more difficulties in forming satisfactory relationships,
lower than expected occupational status and increased incidence
of psychiatric illness.
(Grounds, forthcoming)

The links between research on the effects of divorce upon children and
the effects of imprisonment upon children have barely been drawn. This
link has been established by those concerned with the development of
children or with prisoners’ families rather than by commentators on
prison life and its effects. The vulnerability engendered by trauma and
loss in childhood, which is so common in the histories of the imprisoned,
plays a crucial role in the pattern of anger, misery and mistrust which
characterises violent offending (de Zulueta 1993). It may be exposed by
the rejecting and isolating experience of imprisonment. Shaw referred
to the pain and harm inflicted on children by the imprisonment of a
parent as ‘institutionalised child abuse’ (Shaw 1987) and to the children
themselves as ‘the orphans of justice’ (Shaw 1992).
These issues may be even more acute when the imprisoned parent is
the mother (see Kruttschnitt, this volume). There is some evidence that
keeping small babies in mother and baby units can have temporarily
damaging effects on development (see Catan 1992), and that a variety of
factors connected with their mother’s imprisonment (such as poverty,
unstable relationships and living arrangements, etc.) may have longer-
term detrimental effects (see also Woodrow 1992).

Imprisonment and desistance from crime

The study of desistance from crime has received an increasing amount
of attention in recent years (see Burnett 2004; Laub and Sampson 2003),
yet little of this work has focused on the role of the correctional system in

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this process. Indeed, something of a passive consensus has been reached

among desistance scholars (like the ‘deep freeze’ school of prison
effects) that the experience of imprisonment is somewhat irrelevant to
the process. Farrall (1995: 56) writes, ‘Most of the research suggests that
desistance “occurs” away from the criminal justice system. That is to say
that very few people actually desist as a result of intervention on the part
of the criminal justice system or its representatives.’ As a result, prison
effects researchers have largely ignored the growing body of research
on desistance from crime. This is more than a little ironic due to the fact
that desistance and recidivism (the outcome variable favoured in prison
effects research) are arguably two sides of the same coin.
Fortunately, a number of studies have sought to reverse this trend
and marry prison-recidivism research with studies of desistance from
crime (see Burnett and Maruna 2004; Bushway et al 2003; Hosser 2004;
Petersilia 2003). In particular, much of this research draws on Robert
Sampson and John Laub’s influential theory of informal social control,
which suggests that social bonds (in particular, employment and
marriage) may inhibit offending. Their longitudinal research on crime
over the life course suggests that the experience of imprisonment reduces
opportunities to achieve relational and economic stability and, therefore,
increase re-offending (see also Laub and Sampson 2003). Imprisonment
weakens these (already vulnerable) bonds, and makes them difficult to
re-establish, hence severing a significant source of legitimate or law-
abiding behaviour. Imprisonment thereby becomes part of the cycle of
delinquency and crime.
Although early offending behaviour precedes imprisonment,
Sampson and Laub show that those offenders with the ‘most to lose’
by offending had the best chance of positive recovery or change.
Imprisonment in youth and early adulthood had a negative effect on
later job and relationship stability, which were ‘negatively related to
continued involvement in crime over the life course’ (Sampson and Laub
1993: 248). This was related to length of incarceration and could not be
explained by individual differences such as previous criminal history,
excessive drinking, etc. These indirect but powerful criminogenic effects
of imprisonment on life course transitions are significant as ‘the effect
of confinement may be indirect and operative in a developmental,
cumulative process that reproduces itself over time’ (ibid.: 168).

Imprisonment and prison staff

Research on the effects of prison work upon staff has also been sparse.
The Zimbardo experiment found that power (especially its overuse) had

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dehumanising effects (Haney et al 1973). Other studies have documented

the destructive effects of power cultures (e.g. Gibbs 1991; Marquart 1986)
and the culture of masculinity characteristic of prison staff on prison
officers (Sim 1994). The features of prison life which may exacerbate
such conditions are greatly under-researched.
A significant contribution has recently been made to this literature by
Elaine Crawley, who has focused attention on the emotional dimensions
of prison work and on the power of ‘feeling rules’ to keep emotions in
check. She applies the notion of a ‘spoiled identity’ to prison staff, and
suggests that this effect is extended to prison officers’ families (Crawley
2004). Helen Arnold’s work on ‘identifying the high performing prison
officer’ is also taking this agenda further. Via a participant observation
study of new entrant prison officers undergoing training, and a follow-
up study, she finds that the process of becoming a prison officer brings
with it a range of emotions, and new emotion-management techniques.
Some of these techniques can lead to hardening, distancing and distrust.
The process of adaptation could lead to enduring changes in their
character and family life – to cynicism and a preparedness to respond to
danger (Arnold, this volume).

The road ahead

We hope that the chapters in this book stimulate renewed reflection on the
contemporary nature of imprisonment. In recent years, the management
of prisons has been radically transformed (Carlen, this volume; Irwin
and Owen, this volume), its operation reinvented (King, this volume),
and claims about its effectiveness have increased. Additionally, there is
a growing dissonance between an increasingly connected world and the
particular capacity of prisons to ‘cut off’ (Johnson, this volume). As John
Irwin and Barbara Owen argue, loss of agency and a sense of unfairness
constitute two of the significant harms caused by the prison (see Irwin
and Owen; Snacken, this volume). Other potential harms include social
dislocation, drug addiction, loss of authenticity, threats to safety, mental
illness and suicide (Liebling et al, this volume).
Despite these harms, and the apparent pains of prison life, one of the
paradoxes of modern penal life is the apparent lack of organised protest
among prisoners in newly configured, mega-institutions. Control is
finely calibrated, new forms of power are in operation, and prisoners
seem disconcertingly compliant in their behaviour, while expressing
deep discomfort with their own predicament and the failure of the prison
to show them a future (Irwin and Owen, this volume). As images of the

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prison become increasingly benign, its use continues to grow rapidly,

and its damaging effects seem to be of little interest to practitioners or
criminal justice research agencies.
Craig Haney (this volume) suggests that we need to reconsider the
problem that if criminal behaviour has roots in social/family background
and current social contexts, then a system that targets individuals is by
its very nature self-limiting. The current approach to crime control is, in
this sense, irrational. If the goal is crime reduction, we should pay more
attention to the contexts from which prisoners come, and into which
they are released.
The aim of this volume, like the conference on which it was based,
is to re-open the debate about prison effects in this new climate, and
to stimulate renewed research effort and collaboration in this area. A
second aim is to pay tribute to the work of Hans Toch, in recognition of
his major contribution to this field, and of his rigorous and humanistic
research approach (see e.g. Toch 1975, 1992, 1997, 2002). As Andrew
Coyle suggested in his opening comments at the conference, we believe
the best compliment we can pay to Hans Toch is to firmly restate the
limitations of the prison in accomplishing either criminal or social
justice.
Before proceeding, however, we need to ask whether the world really
needs another book on the effects of prison. It seems obvious to us, like
Nightingale before us, that if we want to reduce the harms (and the use)
of imprisonment, we need strong, careful research evidence exploring
different penal systems and practices, documenting not just ‘what
works’, but ‘what hurts’, and uncovering means of alleviating these
harms. Yet, conducting research of this kind does carry some risks, as
we have discovered in past reactions to our own work. For instance, do
we as prisons researchers not lend legitimacy to an institution thought
by many to be broadly illegitimate? After all, why focus research efforts
on making imprisonment less painful when we should be using our
energy to tear prisons down altogether?
Over 20 years ago, writing in The Pains of Imprisonment (Johnson
and Toch 1982), one of the most important predecessors to the present
collection, Toch himself wrestled with these ethical tensions inherent in
putting together a collection of this sort. Acknowledging that congested,
undersupplied, ‘warehouse’ prisons are morally indefensible, Toch
(1982: 41–2) asks, ‘Then why do we stipulate them? Are we gilding the
lily on the corpse of civilised society? Do we compromise with evil when
we talk of “coping”, “adaptation”, “amelioration” in prisons?’
In response to these hypothetical criticisms, Toch argues eloquently
that there are two, basic justifications for studying prison effects:

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One is that as inmates must cope, society must cope. While prisons
exist it does no good to cry without effect in the wilderness of
unresponsive public opinion. Assertive responding means doing
what we can with as much effect as possible … Prisons are not an
abstraction. They are a painful, tangible reality for … inmates [and]
their keepers … These fellow humans are stressed now, and must
be helped to survive.
(pp. 41–2)

Essentially, then, the first justification for researching prison effects is to

lessen the pains suffered by prisoners. Toch writes, ‘Given the obvious
hurt of prison pains, the most plausible argument for this research … is
the potential it offers for amelioration through insight’ (p. 41). Zamble
and Porporino (1988: 2) go one step further than this, arguing: ‘In
order to be sound and reasonable, the design and operation of prisons
should be based not on any particular theory or ideology, but on some
fundamental understanding of how imprisonment affects individuals.’
This ideal of designing prisons on the basis of empirical evidence on the
effects of imprisonment is, of course, a long way from being realised.
Yet, research on the effects of imprisonment is one of the few remaining
defences against a complete ‘race to the bottom’ in corrections, and, in
theory at least, should set limits on penal policies. If prisons are to exist
(and they do not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon), criminology
cannot simply stand back and wish them away. More research is needed,
and, as Nightingale argued 100 years ago, we need to continue to push
our findings under the noses of anyone who will read them. Quoting
Stan Cohen (2001: 296) in a different context, the known harms of
imprisonment ‘should be regular and accessible’ to the average citizen,
‘rolling in front of our eyes like the news headlines on the screens in
Times Square’.
Toch’s second justification for studying prison effects is perhaps less
immediately obvious. He writes:

The second issue is existential … Though prisons be adjudged

evil, human survival must be good. There are those – Frankl
(1959) and Bettelheim (1960) for example – who surmounted
the unspeakable evil of Nazi death camps. Such victories are
monuments to human resilience. They are worth studying and
emulating. Inmates too can conquer evil (ours and theirs) and they
must do so if the race – with its cruelty to itself – is to survive.
(p. 42)

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Thus, the point of studying prison effects is not just the need to
understand the potentially brutalising aspects of institutional living,
but also to document and learn from examples in which prisoners,
like Dostoevsky, have overcome these substantial social forces. Toch’s
dual reality of the pains of confinement and the enduring potential of
human transcendence characterises our own work (see e.g. Liebling
1992; Maruna 2001) as well as the diverse contributions to this volume.
Hence, it is most appropriate that we are dedicating this collection (as
we did the conference that proceeded it) to Professor Toch and his legacy
of humanistic inquiry into the effects of imprisonment.

Notes

1 Some of the ideas developed in this chapter have appeared in an earlier form
in Liebling 1999; Liebling and Price 2001; and Maruna and Toch, in press.
2 Like the previous books in Willan’s Cambridge Criminal Justice Series, this
volume has grown out of a two-day symposium at the University of
Cambridge sponsored by the Cropwood Trust. This particular Cropwood
Conference received additional funding from Cambridge’s Prisons Research
Centre.
3 An illustration of this general point is the use of stately homes or army
camps as prisons after the Second World War in England and Wales. As a
view that ‘you can’t train men for freedom in conditions of captivity’ came
to prominence, Victorian prisons began to be seen as unacceptable for the
delivery of a ‘treatment and training’ ideology.
4 Suggested remedies included purposeful work, activities and events;
participatory regimes; staff job satisfaction and positive staff attitudes
(Barton 1966: 63).
5 Sykes’ analysis provides the framework for several of the chapters to follow
(see Crewe; Einat; and Jewkes, this volume).
6 Jones and Fowles (1994), for example, argued that the Zimbardo experiment
was biased, and structured in a way that made the results inevitable.
7 On the other hand, specific concerns such as overcrowding were investigated
in some detail, and high degrees of sustained overcrowding were indeed
found to contribute to higher levels of disciplinary infractions, illness
complaints, deaths in custody and recidivism (Farrington and Nuttall 1980;
Cox et al 1984; Gaes 1985).
8 Synthesising the findings from 50 prison effects studies dating from 1958
involving over 300,000 prisoner subjects, Gendreau and colleagues argue
that there is no evidence that longer prison sentences could reduce recidivism
through specific deterrence, and substantial evidence that the relationship
works the other way around. Indeed, they found the higher the quality of
the study (including two randomised designs), the more likely it is to find

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a strong positive correlation between time spent in prison and likelihood of

recidivism (Gendreau et al 1999).

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 Introduction: The effects of imprisonment revisited

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 Part I

The Harms of Imprisonment:

Thawing Out the ‘Deep Freeze’
Paradigm

(07)Part 1.indd 31 06/06/2005 12:39:18