The Effects of Imprisonment

Edited by Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna
Portland, Oregon: Willan Publishing, 2005

In the midst of calls in Canada and elsewhere to lock up more people, a central question remains about the effects of incarceration on inmates. This excellent edited text by Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna is most timely and well-crafted in its fresh handling of this critical and enduring issue. It offers commentary from the genre’s top writers, and also showcases several upcoming young scholars with varied theoretical approaches and exciting new research agendas. It is a definite “must-read” for those wishing to stay current in the field, and has promise as a reader for an upper-level or graduate seminar in penology.

The effect of incarceration is an important topic because public opinion and policy can be influenced by perceptions of the prison experience. If correctional institutions provide a neutral or even comfortable existence, then certainly increased use of custody seems palatable and becomes easier to justify harsher regimes (e.g., crowding, double-bunking, more cell time, less programs). Conversely, harmful effects resulting from custody support the provision of more humane prison environments by less restrictive policies and more programming, not to mention greater use of community alternatives.

The editors introduce their readers to the historical context of the prison effects debate, and articulate their own central thesis, that prisons are indeed harmful places. They summarize the early deprivation (prisons make people worse) positions of pioneers like Clemmer and Sykes, and outline the skepticism arising from research in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Psychological assessments and health studies from this era challenged the notion that correctional institutions were inherently stressful and debilitating (with the possible exception of suicide). The 1990’s saw a move back to a more critical examination of the prison and its deleterious nature, and the editors identify a number of fruitful areas for research, some of which have been pursed by contributors to their text. The mental and physical health of elderly inmates, HIV transmission, post-traumatic stress and family experiences are all new and vital areas of inquiry. The impact of different regimes on staff, of course, ultimately influences their treatment of inmates, and thus prison effects on corrections workers promises to be an important focus for those interested in prison management.

The first section of the text is an eclectic mix of new research and traditional positions updated for the twenty-first century. Using small depth-interview samples, Jamieson and Grounds provide insight into the coping styles of the wrongfully convicted, political prisoners from the United Kingdom, and Canadian lifers. Qualitative prisoner accounts identify pains of imprisonment not conceived of by prior researchers. The emotional distancing from loved ones (and inmates) that is used for day to day coping, and the loss of “time” by inmates are harsh consequences of incarceration. I was pleased to see Craig Haney and John Irwin (with Barbara Owen), two of the most renowned writers in the prison effects field for many years, make contributions that provide a “where we’ve been, where we should go” update based on their wealth of experience. Haney provides historical context and critiques his fellow psychologists for ignoring the emerging research on contextual effects (family, neighbourhood) on individual behaviour and its likely influence in prisons. Irwin and Owen make feisty inmate advocates, concerned among other things, about the anger, frustration and sense of injustice engendered by the capricious behaviour of criminal justice agents. They outline some of the general differences in “prison pains” between males and females and identify the growing number of long term inmates as a priority for future study.

Those more interested in practical management questions will enjoy King’s discussion of the pros and cons of super max prisons. In her comparative piece, Candace Krushnitt considers the influence of the new (more punitive) penality on prison regimes. Her comparison of United Kingdom prison and United States female correctional facilities favours the UK: from management on down, corrections staff show a greater belief in rehabilitation. This positive staff attitude correlates with prisoners demonstrating more motivation towards a constructive use of their incarceration.

Section two “revisits the society of captives”, and updates the research on prison life on a number of critical fronts. Ben Crewe’s British qualitative prison study indicates reveals that there is no longer any grand adherence to an unspoken inmate code. Institutions seem influenced by post-modern culture: inmate behaviour is less group oriented and more individualistic and situational; even “ratting” is now acceptable in some instances. Tomer Einat’s analysis of argot shows how language can help us understand the day to day motivations of human action in the prison. Initial entry into prison is a critical time, but we know little about this period. Hence Harvey’s description of the liminal state young adults endure when first entering prison is an important contribution to the literature. Two strong quantitative pieces show that management matters in the operation of prisons. Sonja Snacken compares four Belgian prisons and finds that liberal regimes produce less, not more violence between inmates and between inmates and staff. Alison Liebling and her colleagues use inmate surveys of 10 UK prisons and to illustrate how the prison environment (shaped by management and staff) impacts the distress level of inmates. The insidious decay brought about by the monotony of prison life is often missed by researchers more focused on salacious studies of sex and violence. Johnson outlines the mental numbness caused by inmates’ constant television viewing (increasing with warehouse prisons with no programs), reminding us that some pains are more subtle than others.

The third section examines coping strategies in prison. Crawley and Sparks outline the particular challenges that the elderly face in prison, and note the lack of preparation in most jurisdictions to this burgeoning proportion of the inmate population. Jewkes draws parallels between the terminally ill and life-sentenced prisoners, and identifies the agency that some (but not all) inmates exercise to manage their situation. Section four concludes with a look at the effect of the prison on other social actors. Arnold’s preliminary findings on the effects of prison on correctional officers provide insight into how individuals make the transition into their occupational role of CO, and the work situations that push them to assume an emotional distance when they work. Carlen paints a pessimistic picture of contemporary prison operation, arguing that the new managerialism and its “compliance culture” increases bureaucratic rule enforcement and does not improve fairness or consistency. In a methodological review piece, Murray sets a rigorous research agenda for the effects of imprisonment on families, an area where little good work has been done. Probably the preeminent writer in the prison effects field, Hans Toch, provides the afterword. His idea of building more a treatment role into the correctional officer function is not new, but certainly has its merits.

Despite its admirable quality, some of the traditional criticisms of prison effects research can be directed at this volume. Some of the studies use small qualitative samples, and contributors focus at times on atypical groups such as political prisoners, wrongfully convicted, and the very elderly. The comparison of the general inmate population to the terminally ill and prisoners of war is a stretch. These criticisms pale, however, against the noteworthy contributions this book makes to the literature. The qualitative approach incorporated in many chapters makes the oppressiveness of prison life much more salient, and captures abstractions such as the meaning “time” has for inmates, and the liminal phase experienced by newcomers, in a way that quantitative methods cannot. The editors are also to be commended for a collection that integrates contemporary theory, qualitative inquiry and several first-rate quantitative pieces with a strong comparative perspective.