“Do not renounce your wallet and prison” - says the popular wisdom. A person who has visited places not so distant will never be the same again. The atmosphere of the prison leaves a certain imprint on the personality of all its inhabitants.
How does a prison change a prisoner?
Being in prison radically changes the psychology, character and worldview of a person. These changes are often not for the better, even if the person becomes morally stronger. Solitary confinement can generally lead to insanity. After five years of imprisonment, irreversible changes in the psyche take place, the individuality of the personality is lost, the person takes prison attitudes for his own, and these attitudes sit very tightly.
Most repeat offenders have an unconscious need to be caught in order to go back to prison. In the wild, it is unusual for them, changeable, it is not clear how to behave and where to move on. Perhaps a certain status and authority was earned in prison, which was given with difficulty. In freedom, this status does not mean anything, society imposes the stigma of a former convict. Outwardly, people who have been in prison also change: they often have a cold, prickly look, many return with knocked out teeth and broken internal organs.
Psychological changes in prison staff
Correctional workers are also mentally deformed. Notable is the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which was conducted by American psychologists in the seventies of the last century. In the conditional prison, which was set up in the corridor of the university, volunteers played the roles of prisoners and warders. They quickly grasped their roles, and already on the second day of the experiment, dangerous conflicts began between the prisoners and the guards. A third of the guards showed sadistic tendencies. Due to the strongest shock, two prisoners had to be taken out of the experiment ahead of time; many developed emotional distress. The experiment was finished ahead of time. This experiment proved that the situation affects a person much more than his personal attitudes and upbringing.
Prison guards quickly become rude, tough, overbearing, while at the same time experiencing tremendous psychological stress and nervous stress.
Correctional workers often adopt inmate habits: jargon, musical preferences. They lose initiative, lose their ability to empathize, grow irritability, conflict, callousness. The extreme form of such mental deformation is assault, insults, rudeness, sadism of prison guards.
