Prison Effects of in the Age

This article summarizes some of the negative psychological effects of impris-onment. It examines the psychological stressors—dehumanization, depri-vation, and danger—to which prisoners are exposed, and the process of prisonization by which they attempt to accommodate to their conditions of confinement. It also discusses the effects of two opposite prison extremes, overcrowding and solitary confinement, as well as the kind of vulnerabilities that many prisoners bring to prison that make the experience a form of re-traumatization for them. The article ends with a set of brief, programmatic but psychologically informed proposals for change. Keywords imprisonment, psychological effects, mass incarceration, prisonization Policies of mass imprisonment and the widespread use of “warehouse ” pris-ons have shifted the terms of the debate over the effects of incarceration from whether and how prisons can achieve the elusive goal of rehabilitation to ho