THE EXPERIENCE OF LONG-TERM IMPRISONMENT An Exploratory Investigation

THE management of long-term imprisonment is becoming increasingly important in the prison system, as penal policy shifts towards fewer and longer prison sentences. Cohen (1974) characterises this trend as being towards the development of "human warehouses", where people are " stored " rather than, to use Goflinan's phrase, " tinkered " with. However, there has been little systematic investigation of the psychological effects of such long-term " storage ". The present study was an exploration of some aspects of long term prisoners ' own experience of the psychological stresses in then- situation, and their methods of coping with them. The subjects were all inmates of a top-security prison, and were all serving life sentences or fixed terms of at least 10 years. They were divided into two matched groups: those who had already served at least eight years (the L or Late group) and those who had served less than eighteen months (the E or Early group). The groups were chosen in this way so that some assessment could b