Institutionalization Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The term institutionalization is typically used to describe an ongoing process by which individuals are intimately shaped by the institutional environment in which they live. Institutionalization within a prison/jail occurs when incarcerated individuals gradually become used to the many restrictions associated with institutional life. Understanding institutionalization is important, for it gives insight into the power of institutional environments to transform people. There has been considerable research documenting the many phases or stages incarcerated individuals experience as a part of the institutionalization process.

Institutionalization has been described since the 1960s as a process that completely encompasses an incarcerated individual’s life. Drawing on his own research of a range of institutions including monasteries, boarding schools, psychiatric hospitals, and prisons, Erving Goffman produced a typology of characteristics associated with what he considered to be a “total institution.” Some features include hierarchy, routine, rituals of degradation, initiation, and segregation. For Goffman, a total institution is a place of work and residence where similarly situated individuals, typically cut off from the larger society for a lengthy amount of time, live together in an enclosed and formally administered life.

Craig Haney, a social psychologist and researcher who studies the psychological effects of different forms of incarceration, discusses institutionalization as a process that includes some or all of the following psychological adaptations: (1) dependence on institutional structure and contingencies; (2) hypervigilance and interpersonal distrust; (3) alienation and psychological distancing; (4) social withdrawal and severe isolation; (5) incorporation of exploitative norms of prison culture; (6) diminished sense of self-worth and personal value; and (7) post-traumatic stress.

The first stage suggests that incarcerated individuals acquire a dependency for their institution—directly or indirectly—due to the prison system forcing them to adapt to their institutional boundaries. For inmates, the process of institutionalization includes limiting their routine activities and is implemented by the many rules and regulations embedded in prison life. Incarcerated individuals find themselves living in a very controlled environment. They are constantly watched, a feeling that further reinforces the totality of their institutional experience. Institutionalization therefore renders incarcerated individuals dependent on their regulated prison life. In turn, they gradually lose the capacity to rely on themselves or their close network of friends and family. Individuals who have been institutionalized for a long amount of time not only find it difficult to function independently but also find it problematic to relate to others.

As a further consequence of an inmate’s institutionalization, the second phase suggests that hypervigilance (being watchful of one’s surroundings), interpersonal distrust (being suspicious of others), and feelings of uncertainty (having doubt) are common. Prisons are dangerous, therefore, prisoners adopt a cautious persona where they are continuously on the lookout for potential harms done to either themselves or to someone close to them. As part of the institutionalization process, research has found that some prisoners actually learn to project a tough façade (harsh outward demeanor) that helps keep others at a distance. Many incarcerated individuals believe that without this threatening persona, they are likely to be victimized.

Richard McCorkle’s 1992 study of a maximum-security prison is a good example of different kinds of behavioral strategies prisoners use to help them navigate and survive their dangerous prison environment. This study found that fear led over 40 percent of inmates to avoid certain high-risk areas of the prison. About an equal number reported that, as a precaution against potential victimization, they purposefully spent more time in their prison cells. Additionally, roughly three-quarters of inmates reported that they had been forced to “get tough” with another prisoner to avoid victimization. Similarly, more than a quarter of all inmates said that they kept a “shank” or other weapon nearby to defend themselves if needed. These are just some of the typical behaviors inmates use to minimize their chance of victimization, another important aspect of institutionalization.

The third phase, alienation and psychological distancing, characterize the emotional overcontrol an incarcerated individual has toward his/her place in prison society. Incarcerated individuals find it cumbersome to control and/or suppress their varied emotional reactions to those institutional events surrounding them (e.g., prison violence, riots, lockdowns). In response, they isolate, demonstrate intense emotion, or become numb. This process of institutionalization thus includes alienation, which leads to social and emotional distancing, further contributing to a lack of positive relationships. Perhaps best characterized as a defense mechanism, this level of isolation makes any kind of emotional investment seem unpredictable and unmanageable. For some inmates, the reality of their exclusion becomes so extreme that they find themselves permanently distanced.

These first three stages are followed by a fourth: social withdrawal and isolation. In this stage, prisoners believe that they are actually safer if they become disconnected from as many other individuals as possible. Such severe isolation is parallel to an inmate turning into a recluse (choosing to live in seclusion). Research has shown not only that long-term incarcerated individuals are more susceptible to this type of adaptation, but also that male and female groups both acknowledge their institutional experience as feeling cut off from society. Because of this, they adopt a range of attitudes to help them cope. For example, research consistently finds that individuals incarcerated for longer amounts of time appear to be withdrawn, humorless, emotionless, and lethargic.

In the fifth stage, incarcerated individuals sometimes embrace the informal norms of their institution, including those that are most violent. This typically occurs because prisoners are not given an alternative culture to participate in. For example, state correctional systems continue to cut rehabilitative and educational programming, thus depriving inmates of important positive and productive opportunities. Because of the severe lack of prosocial experiences offered, inmates resort to embracing the institutionalized prison culture as is. This response to institutionalization has serious ramifications for the functioning of the inmates as well as the institution as a whole. For instance, research completed by Richard McCorkle and his colleagues found that prisons that involved a greater percentage of prosocial programs related to education and vocational training were characterized by lower rates of prison violence overall.

In the sixth phase, due to institutionalization inmates might also experience a diminished sense of self-worth and personal value. Since incarcerated individuals are denied their basic rights of privacy, they experience a loss of control over their everyday activities. Not only are inmates forced to live in small, overcrowded (and oftentimes deteriorating) spaces, but also have little to no control over whom they are forced to share that space with. They have no say in when they go to bed, when they wake up, or when or what they must eat. Indeed, a diminished sense of self-worth results from their intense feelings of infantilization (being treated like a child, not allowed to do what they want, constantly being told what to do) and stigmatization (being treated like a disgrace, realizing their precarious social role as a prisoner). These feelings adequately portray the process of institutionalization.

In the seventh phase, inmates experience posttraumatic stress both during their sentence and particularly when they are released from custody. Thus, institutionalization consequently represents a type of traumatic stress that is oftentimes acute enough to produce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is important to acknowledge when current research suggests that a high percentage of incarcerated individuals have a history of past trauma and abuse. This means that institutionalization—all of the adaptive strategies utilized by inmates and discussed herein—represents an additional form of traumatization. That is, some inmates find that merely the time spent in an incarcerated setting triggers past memories and psychological reactions to such experiences.

The process of institutionalization has been studied by psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, and criminologists, among others, and involves an understanding of adaptations utilized by inmates as a response to the exclusion and confinement experienced while incarcerated. It is important to note that prisoners do not necessarily “choose” to submit to institutionalization, and— if and at what point it does occur—prisoners are usually not aware that it has happened. As Goffman and many others have suggested, the totality of the institutional setting can induce various psychological processes surrounding one’s adaptation to incarceration. From this develops the concept of institutionalization, a process by which inmates are shaped by the prison environment and become dependent upon its strict and often abrasive culture.

Bibliography:

Clemmer, Donald. The Prison Community. Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1940.
Goffman, Erving. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Doubleday, 1961.
Haney, Craig. “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment.” In Prison to Home: The Effect of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities. Commissioned Paper on the Impact of Incarceration and Reentry. Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2001.
Haney, Craig. Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonments. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006.
McCorkle, Richard C. “Personal Precautions to Violence in Prison.” Criminal Justice and Behavior, v.19/2 (1992).
McCorkle, Richard C., Terance D. Miethe, and Kriss A. Drass. “The Roots of Prison Violence: A Test of the Deprivation, Management, and Not-So-Total Institution Models.” Crime and Delinquency, v.41 (1995).
Travis, Jeremy and Michelle Waul, eds. Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2003.

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