Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2019-20/Truth in the Prison System

Introduction

The concept of prison arose in the 18th century as an institution that aimed to replace the capital punishment system, by punishing individuals who have committed illegal offenses whilst simultaneously aiming to reform them. The United States has the highest incarceration rates globally, with approximately 1,471,200 individuals imprisoned in 2018. While incarceration rates have generally decreased since 2017, the effectiveness of the American penal system in achieving criminal reform and reducing crime is still controversial: a study showed nearly "two-thirds of all prisoners are rearrested within three years of release".

Orleans Prison Parish. Louisiana held the record for the most incarcerations per capita for nearly two decades, until 2017, when it was overtaken by Oklahoma.

Different disciplines view the effectiveness of rehabilitation differently, thus providing multiple perspectives about the success of prison rehabilitation.

Sociology and Prison Group Behaviour

Stanton Wheeler used the concept of 'prisonization' to illustrate the impact of prison socialisation on rehabilitation. He argues that prisoners undergo “prisonization” when they assimilate into the prison culture, resulting in a difficult rehabilitation process. Prisoners internalise a criminal outlook and are less likely to follow the conventional value and moral system, especially as their time in prison increases, based on empirical research on prisoner conformity levels to ‘good’ values and norms. Since they risk being alienated from other inmates by conforming to staff rules, they would mostly choose non-conformity to rules. However, prior to release, conformity increases.

Additionally, Donald Cressey uses the Theory of Differential Association to argue that the best way to reform criminals is to integrate them into noncriminal groups so they inherit the desired values of a law-abiding citizen. He extends this theory to explain that the behaviour exhibited by a felon is not solely a product of group interactions but an inherent characteristic of the group itself. By this reasoning, the ideal approach to reform criminals requires an attempt to change the entire group behaviour which subsequently alters individual behaviour. Consequently, individual therapy and counselling is not sufficient to alter the group’s culture. A backwards approach is taken whereby the whole group is reformed to alter individual behaviour.

Economics and the Cost of Prison

Rather than evaluating the efficiency of the institution using recidivism rates, economists focus more on economic reintegration as an indicator of the success of prison systems. Earned incomes which are obtained by the successful incorporation of criminals back into the labour market provide financial stability, which economists argue will inherently reduce recidivism by dis-incentivising the desire to commit crime.

Statistics show that "incarceration reduces average lifetime income growth by one-third", highlighting how imprisonment makes economic reintegration harder; the prison system actually prevents future national economic growth by causing a deterioration of human capital. An analysis of work and opportunity before and after incarceration showed that 55% of prisoners have a reported income after release. Even of those with an income, it is often less than that of an individual with a full-time job paid at minimum wage.

Economics also highlights the cost of prisons. The direct cost - equivalent to the amount taxpayers pay - is estimated to be $80 billion a year in the US, whereas indirect cost is between $500 billion to $1 trillion per year. Economics provides a widened understanding of the complete economic cost of prisons which includes opportunity costs such as the "foregone wages of incarcerated persons, increased infant mortality, and increased criminality of children with incarcerated parents, and higher welfare costs associated with families of incarcerated parents".

Psychology and the Effects of Institutionalisation

A block of solitary confinement cells. It has been well-documented that solitary confinement can cause extreme detrimental effects in inmates, including panic attacks, depression and paranoia, and some suffer hallucinations.

It can be argued that prisons are effective at preventing crime due to deterrence theory, as individuals weigh the possibility of incarceration versus their desire to pursue criminal activity. However, evidence suggests that once imprisoned, inmates are more likely to reoffend as the prison institution socializes them towards heightened criminality through peer influence or the ‘hardening’ necessary to integrate within the unpredictable prison environment.

The effects of institutionalization present significant obstacles to post-prison adjustment, from the disabling consequences of ‘prisonization’ to exacerbated mental illness from lack of proper treatment that focus on the needs of the individual rather than as a group. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 56% of state prisoners have a mental health issue, with only 1 in 3 having received treatment since incarceration. Prisoners face a difficult transition after release and have a 13-fold increase in risk of death from cardiovascular disease, homicide, suicide, and drug overdose in the first two weeks after prison release as compared to a similar demographic sample. Prison victimization, nonviolent or violent, also contributed to depressive and post-traumatic stress symptoms, made worse by the inescapability of the prison environment.

Conclusion

The main tension evident between sociology and psychology is the approach in criminal reform that each discipline advocates for. Sociology focuses on reforming the group, while psychology advocates for an individual-based approach. Furthermore, they have different constructions of truth due to different approaches of defining 'efficacy'. Sociology judges the good/bad behaviour of inmates, while psychology looks at well-being - emphasizing the poor mental health consequences of imprisonment. These varying versions of truth create contrasting conclusions about the success of prisons, where sociology seems to support the prison system while psychology does not.

Embedded in sociology’s approach to prisoner rehabilitation is a social constructionist view, which contrasts with psychology’s interpretivist view of addressing prisoners’ psychological well-being. Social constructionism is anti-essentialist, opposing the idea that a person has a discoverable nature which is what traditional psychology understands. Sociology, by proposing group rehabilitation of prisoners, reveals its social constructionist focus on the process of social interaction that creates certain phenomena or forms of knowledge.

Social constructionism also views knowledge as historically and culturally specific, distinct from psychology’s view that human nature can be universalised. This can be problematic if psychology tries to obtain truth by using a methodology that establishes conclusions based on group generalizations that cannot always successfully be extrapolated to all individuals.

In contrast to both psychology and sociology, which advocate for behavioral and mental reform, economics instead emphasizes rehabilitation for the sake of reintegration into the workforce. It takes a more positivist approach as it attempts to establish a conclusion through empirical observation and analysis. This perspective differs from other more qualitative-based disciplines that measure the success of the prison system by evaluating inmate behaviour, rather than the cost and contributions they may have on the economy before and after incarceration.

However, it is often difficult to measure such costs, made evident by the controversial National Institute of Justice report published by Edwin Zedlewski in 1987. His cost-benefit analysis was described as ‘fatally flawed’ by experts who argued that Zedlewski assigned inflated social costs to crimes, producing skewed results. Thus, even in a quantitative-based discipline like economics, it is difficult to obtain conclusive truths because of the inherent bias present in methodological approaches when assigning costs.

Each discipline alone fails to capture the complexity of the discussion surrounding prison efficacy. Variations in how each discipline measures success in prisons leads to clashes surrounding whether the modern-punishment system is successful. Hence, with each discipline highlighting a unique but important perspective, analysing this issue through an interdisciplinary lens is crucial to provide a complete picture.