Total institutions are a closed social system where life is organized around strict norms, rules, and schedules. Individuals are taken out of society, removed from their old social roles, and put into an environment where their daily lives are completely controlled by an authority. Overall, they are created for the purpose of caring for a group of people who are unable to do so themselves, or to protect society from the potential harm that the population within the institution could do. Prisons are an example of total institutions because they have total say over the lives of their inmates and its inhabitants are isolated from the rest of society. Due to this complete control, people in total institutions like prisons can have their values and beliefs drastically changed through a process of resocialization. While being imprisoned, incarcerated individuals can experience identity formation to inmate subculture, harm to their identity, and after being released, their prisoner identity can cause recidivism and reentry.
During their incarceration, inmates can experience a form of identity formation to adhere to the subculture within prisons. Criminologists refer to this form of socialization as prisonization. This socializes people to be prisoners distinguishes prisonization as a criminalizing process where prisoners often learn how to refine criminal participation from other inmates or are compelled to become gang members (Lopez, 2016). Hierarchies are also often formed within the prison environment. During daily interactions and the meanings that prisoners have toward prison and serving time, prisoners create social selves for themselves. These identities end up directing them towards different positions within the prison social structure. The social structural positions that prisoners occupy help solidify their prison identity (Hawver, 2019). People are changed in deep and lasting ways by prison environments and often take these identities back into their communities when they are released (Lopez, 2016).
There are consequences to prisonization where there ends up being harm to the individual’s identity. Former inmates can struggle to enter back into society for this reason. They often have high rates of depression, anxiety, and overall social uncertainty caused by the stress inducing situations experienced while imprisoned. Since there is a stigma around being a former inmate, these symptoms can be interpreted less sympathetically by society (Schnittker, 2014). Pains of imprisonment are something experienced during incarceration and have been linked to negative changes in one’s identity. For women, the absence of friends and family, specifically children, is especially distressing and makes it hard for them to adjust to prison and can worsen or cause mental health issues. These prison experiences can lead to loss of purpose in life and negative self-perceptions (Hoskins and Cobbina, 2020).
Since an individual’s identity is changed and harmed while being imprisoned, they often face struggles with recidivism and reentry into prisons. Being released from prison is a form of sudden change in social position and people with deeply ingrained prison habits confront new patterns of daily life in the outside world. This can be distressing and make it difficult to function in different social situations. This can cause exclusion from the labor force and other institutions. All of this can cause recidivism in an individual that will put them back into the prison system (Martin, 2017). Studies of criminal behavior often indicate that criminal thinking style is one of the strongest predictors of future involvement in criminal activity (Boduszek et al., 2013). Prisonization can exemplify criminal thinking so released individuals have higher chances of engaging in criminal conduct.
Prisons are total institutions that remove its population from society and have complete control over the inmates’ lives. They can have lasting and profound impacts on an individual’s identity and sense of self. One impact is the process of prisonization as inmates conform to prison subculture. Incarcerated individuals can also experience harm to their identity and for that reason, struggle with recidivism and reentry into the criminal justice system.
Reference Page
Boduszek, D., Adamson, G., Shevlin, M., Hyland, P., & Bourke, A. (2013). The Role of Criminal Social Identity in the Relationship between Criminal Friends and Criminal Thinking Style within a Sample of Recidivistic Prisoners. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 23(1), 14–28. https://doi-org.proxy.longwood.edu/10.1080/10911359.2013.737289
Hawver, T. J. (2019). Symbolic Interactionism Meets Goffman in Prison: An Autoethnography of Prisoner Identity Formation. Sociological Imagination, 54(2), 44–55. https://web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.longwood.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewervid=34&sid=ce19c1d5-3973-4782-9952-e6e281062c3e%40redis
Hoskins, K. M., & Cobbina, J. E. (2020). It Depends on the Situation: Women’s Identity Transformation in Prison, Jail, and Substance Abuse Treatment Settings. Feminist Criminology, 15(3), 340–358. https://doi-org.proxy.longwood.edu/10.1177/1557085119878268
Lopez, A. P. (2016). The Collateral Consequences of Prisonization: Racial Sorting, Carceral Identity, and Community Criminalization. Sociology Compass, 10(1), 12–23. https://doi-org.proxy.longwood.edu/10.1111/soc4.12342
Martin, L. (2018). “Free but Still Walking the Yard”: Prisonization and the Problems of Reentry. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 47(5), 671–694. https://doi-org.proxy.longwood.edu/10.1177/0891241617737814
Schnittker, J. (2014). The Psychological Dimensions and the Social Consequences of Incarceration. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 651, 122–138. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24541697