Depersonalisation disorder (DPD) is a maladaptive coping response that has been found to adversely impact day to day functioning (van der Hart, 2021). Its main symptom is a feeling of unreality that is often triggered by severe stress, and which is thought to have its aetiology in early attachment dysfunction. Despite DPD being studied in both community and clinical settings, there is a paucity of research carried out in prisons, despite incarceration being one of the most stressful life experiences. No prison studies, to date, have qualitatively explored the link between maladaptive early attachment relations and DPD on carceral coping. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Approach (IPA), in depth narratives of DPD experiences, among young male prisoners (18-24 years) were carried out before, during, and after imprisonment. Using semi-structured interviews and personal drawings, data was coded into broad themes and analysed using NVivo software. Findings demonstrate that depersonalisation is a widely used maladaptive coping mechanism in prison adaptation. Moreover, a relationship was found to exist between depersonalisation and childhood disorganised attachment vulnerabilities among young male prisoners. It concludes that adult prisons are unsuitable rehabilitative institutions for young adult males because imported age-related maladaptive coping behaviours such as depersonalisation combined with the depriving prison environment mean that they rarely adjust and adapt to prisonisation.
As of July 2024, there were 8.046 prisoners aged 18-24 years in the UK (Gov.UK, 2024), of which, 96% are male (Ministry of Justice, 2024). Ever-decreasing prison accommodation mean that young adult males are increasingly being placed in a range of haphazard prison environments that consider little their specific educational, training and prior offending needs, or the necessary provision and resources to structure and purpose their rehabilitation (Howard League for Prison Reform, 2024). Only 6% of young adults, for instance, are held in youth offender institutions (YOI) which specifically cater for young adults, with most being detained in adult prisons throughout England and Wales (HMPSS, 2019).
Such statistics underpin outcomes, for young adults in prison, which are generally poor compared with those of older prisoners (those aged over 25). More than half of young adults who are given a custodial sentence reoffend within one year of being released, and up to two thirds reoffend within two years. Young adults have worse relationships with prison staff, are less likely to be motivated by behaviour management schemes and are more likely to be involved in violent incidents (HMIP, 2021). Despite incarceration creating pains for all prisoners (Fennimore et al., 2021; Sykes, 1958), young adults report more negatively on day-to-day living, including coping with overcrowding, victimisation, boredom, the loss of autonomy, social support and security (Mirowsky & Ross, 2017). These negative responses are particularly prevalent in the first few months of incarceration when prisoners go through a process known as entry-shock – an emotional struggle to understand the routines and culture of the prison environment (Crewe, 2011). Over time, entry shock is predicted to subside and replaced with a gradual conformity to the prisoner society (Dharmi et al., 2020). There is evidence, however, that for young adults this is rarely the case. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that young male prisoners will resort increasingly to violence, rehabilitation apathy, substance misuse, self-harming behaviours and others forms of avoidant coping, including DPD (Lader, 2000; Williams et al., 2012).
DPD disconnects an individual’s own thoughts and feelings, so that they come to feel trapped outside of themselves whilst the surrounding world takes on an unreal estrangement (van der Kolk, 2014)1. Attention, perception and memories for events become more difficult to process, leading to everyday functioning deficits, such as maintaining relationships, reading body language, frequent memory lapses and difficulty in focusing on instructions (McGee et al., 2021; Sierra, 2005). Not only does DPD have the propensity to affect the young prisoners attempts to adapt to prison life by disengaging them from rehabilitation opportunities, but prison staff often compound this sense of estrangement by misinterpreting DPD symptoms as the prisoner being deliberately anti-social and purposely railing against the establishment. It is these effects of depersonalisation that acts as a barrier to prison adaptation.
Why young men should be more susceptible to DPD in prison is open to debate, but Laws (2018: 7) believes that they often become, “disproportionately affected by the emotionality” inherent in modern carceral pains. A combination of age-related emotional immaturity (Cox, 2011), and deleterious attachment vulnerabilities (Ansbro, 2008), throw the depriving prison environment into sharp relief. Facer-Irwin (2019) suggests that by the age of 25, the adult prisoner will have either developed the emotional resilience to cope better with the strains of imprisonment thus reducing the need for DPD or have gone on to develop further complex withdrawal responses, that supersedes DPD, such as depression, personality disorder and PTSD.
Current prison studies have largely focused DPD research on quantitative measures of its frequency, duration and severity (see for example, Saggino, 2018; Garofalo, 2017; Bennet et al., 2015; Dietrich, 2008; Akyuz et al., 2007; Moskowitz et al., 2005). Such studies, therefore, fail to provide an explanation as to why DPD is employed as a maladaptive coping mechanism, or where such a coping response originates. They do, however, highlight how common a phenomenon it is. Prevalence levels for DPD in prisons worldwide have been found to be comparable or higher than most other mental health issues including depression, border-line personality disorder and schizophrenia (Akyuz et al., 2007; Bennett et al., 2015; Briere et al., 2016; Garofalo C, Velotti P, Crocamo C, 2017). One major study, for example, identified 24% of male offenders and 27% of female offenders displaying pathological DPD symptomatology (Snow et al.,1996); whilst another identified 30.3% of inmates meeting criteria for a dissociative disorder (Mitchell, 2006). Similar prevalence rates of 25% have been found in New Zealand (Moskowitz, 2005), and a Canadian study, which found that 30.2% of their prisoner sample showed valid clinical profiles for dissociative disorder (Dietrich, 2008). Research has shown DPD to be particularly prevalent among young adult prisoners (Chaplo, 2015, Akyuz et al.,2007) with one study finding that 68.3% of 16–24-year-olds met the criteria for a dissociative disorder (Steiner, 2000).
Van der Kolk (2014: 149) contends, that the prisoners’ first use of depersonalisation is unlikely to be in a prison environment even though it comes to represent, “a hidden epidemic that ends up filling our jails”. DPD symptoms are undoubtedly triggered by prison strains, but the roots of this type of coping is most likely to be found in childhoods full of adversity (Slap, 2020). Despite life histories among young prisoners being varied, one commonality that unites the backgrounds of nearly all, is the destructive early loss, attachment disorganisation, and neglect, that they have faced during critical periods of their emotional and cognitive development (Fenimore & Jennings, 2021). Research by Silvern et al. (2012), for instance, found that 81.9% of young offenders sentenced to a prison term had been exposed to maltreatment or neglect in early childhood. Bob (2015) found that young offenders have disproportionately been witness to domestic violence, whilst Mazerolle & McGee (2020) highlight the significant impact, on the child, of parent’s misuse of alcohol and drugs. Further research by the Youth Justice Board (2008) found that 76% of those in their study reported an absent father, whilst 39% had been subject to a child protection plan because of actual or allegations of neglect or abuse (Schofield et al., 2012).
This link between early attachment disruption and DPD is an established one, with the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2018), finding up to 90% of dissociative disorders developing because of maladaptive coping behaviours in the formative years. Attachment disruption impacts the child’s ability to develop effective emotion regulation mechanisms and subsequently presents barriers for the child in developing resilience and identity stability (McGee et al., 2021). Caregivers who are inconsistent, create confusion and feelings of distrust in the child, rather than a stable and nurturing base. Due to the child’s continued dependence on their caregiver, they become effectively trapped, unable to fight or flight. The only option left for the child is to emotionally distance themselves from the caregiver despite wanting to be close to them (Hutchinson, 2018). It is this paradox that brings about dissociative coping responses. Liotti (1992) refers to it as fear-without-solution where frightening approach and retreat behavioural signals, given off by the caregiver, causes the child to become perpetually confused by how they should respond. Such affective inconsistency brings on intolerable distress for the child as they learn that their caregivers cannot be relied upon in times of need and are therefore forced, instead, to avoid such interactions through dissociative coping strategies.
Although more stable attachments in later childhood and through adolescence may help the growing child to rely less on depersonalised coping, it does not go away. Having become now hard-wired as a maladaptive response, DPD simply hides itself in a corner of the mind whilst continuing to actively play out the state of self, constantly testing tolerance to direct experiences (Golshani et al. 2020). As Laoide (2018: 515) argues,” once a protective coping mechanism such as dissociation has been learned, it becomes habituated and automatic, predominantly occurring unconsciously and most often in times of stress”. According to Fonagy et al. (2020) it is almost inevitable that within the emotional cauldron of the prison, controlling, inconsistent and paradoxical behaviours among staff and prisoners, go a long way in replicating contradictory approach-retreat experiences. Under these circumstances, it is easy to understand why DPD coping responses, coupled with age related emotional immaturity, mean that the young adult “appears to have an inability to either demonstrate change or be changed by interventions” (Cox, 2011: 608). Prison adaptation requires that inmates accept that they need to change, and in so doing, are willing to engage in developing social relations, take on routines, and participate pro-actively in prison life (Shenton & Smith, 2020). Van der Hart (2021: 73) doubts whether this can realistically be achieved for young men when prisons represent the “concrete and steel embodiments of suffocating and indifferent relationships that they have experienced in childhood”. As Willow (2011), argues, prison transports the young person back to their paradoxical early years, and without the mental resilience to escape the emotional reality of their situation, they come to feel the full force of the harsh, punitive, and uncaring nature of the criminal justice system. For Haney (2009), the once cocky, overconfident demeanour of the young man quickly becomes replaced with a frightened prisoner, that occasionally lashes out in anger but mainly sits quietly and responds with glazed eyes and a catatonic posture. Once on the prison wing, the counterculture of incarceration makes him reel against reality through ever increasing episodes of depersonalisation.
Berelowitz & Hibbert (2011) argue that the subsequent challenges faced by these young males in adjusting to prison life is overwhelming. Feeling extremely isolated and mistrustful of staff and other prisoners, they will be prone to derailing interventions, even for those specifically designed for them. Lacking the emotional maturity and resilience to react in the reasoned and disciplined manner that prison is requiring of them, they become alienated and made to feel even more marginalised. The disincentive to engage in open communication with others, leads to withdrawal from authentic social interactions, and before long, the young prisoner finds that they have created a permanent and unbridgeable void between themselves and others within the prison estate (Crewe et al., 2011). Shammas (2007) argues that some become depressed by this realisation, some angered, but as De Zuluta (2009) points out, either way, the young man appears to become stuck in a toxic cycle of reduced responsiveness to their prison existence. Recognising, for the first time, the synthesis between carceral strains and depersonalised coping as an imported vulnerability, is crucial in uncovering the additional psychological components of the pains of imprisonment that has specific relevance to young male adults.
Despite a wide array of quantitative studies into prison dissociation (see for example: Benton, 2020; Garofalo, 2017; Day, 2009; Akyuz et a., 2007; Brown et al., 2006), the current study was able to explore in detail the young person’s life leading up to, during and after their prison experience, therefore capturing a qualitative explanation of why depersonalisation is so common among imprisoned young men. One of the challenges of researching DPD qualitatively, is that symptoms may vary widely from individual to individual (Garafalo et al., 2017) and often those with DPD symptoms may not know or be able to explain what they are experiencing (Bennett et al., 2015). It was decided, therefore, that participants would be provided with an opportunity to draw their feelings alongside the interviews. A further challenge was that although feelings of unreality are commonly used as a shorthand to describe the phenomenon, individuals themselves, tend to describe DPD in metaphors, such as being trapped in a ‘bubble’, the world having become ‘foggy’ or like looking at the world through a ‘veil’ (Ray et al., 2021). Sufferers describe their emotions as being ‘dull’ so that they feel neither pleasure or pain; emotions wrapped in cotton so that they are lifeless, and strangers to themselves (Ruiz, 2008). These metaphors are often used to describe symptomatology of other mood disturbances such as depression, so it was necessary to ask several follow-up questions to ensure that what was being described was in fact DPD. It is also the case that despite the individual’s acute alteration in perception, they are consciously aware of the unreality of their change, which often acts as a catalyst for further stress and anxiety to arise (Harrington et al., 2021). There was a need for this to be constantly monitored, as frequently the interviewee would drift into episodes of DPD as they became more aware by their attempts to describe it.
The participant sample consisted of young men (18-25 years) who had been released from prison within the preceding twelve months and were currently on probation. Each participant was recruited through a ‘volunteers needed’ flyer posted several times on an online forum that supports ex-prisoners back into the community. The flyer included a request for participants to be voluntarily involved in a study that would focus on their prison experience and details about how to make contact (Jupp, 2013). As a sampling technique, voluntary participation has been criticised for being unrepresentative and biased towards a certain type of individual, however, the present study was only ever focused on developing knowledge and understanding of the subjective experiences of the individual, rather than attempting to make results applicable or generalisable (Berner, 2012). Those volunteers who responded to the flyer were invited to an individual ten-minute online meeting that outlined the rationale and scope of the research, as well as providing an opportunity for further questions. Their suitability as a participant was also assessed at this stage. Those chosen to participate were asked to sign an electronic informed consent letter and provided with a participant information sheet outlining the interview process and their right to withdraw before, during or up to four weeks after the conclusion of the interview. A biographical overview of the participants can be found in Appendices 1.
Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Approach (IPA), semi-structured interviews and participant drawings, were combined over an eight-month period, to develop life-course narratives around living with depersonalisation. IPA was chosen, because it enabled the researcher to better understand their experiences of complex, ambiguous and in many instances emotionally laden phenomena (Smith, 2015). By making use of a conversational interview style, each participant was asked to speak freely, whilst the researcher encouraged elaboration on anything of interest or that required clarification (Kvale & Brinkman, 2009). IPA was preferred over similar qualitative designs, such as Grounded theory, because it follows a structured and systematic coding formula that attempts to avoid researcher bias and centres analysis squarely on the subjective experiences of the individual. The sample size for an IPA study varies, but according to Crewell (2013) generally should not exceed more than fifteen. The rationale for choosing twelve, in this instance, was that it would include at least one individual from each identified demographic category (i.e., age, race and length of time in prison). It was subsequently found that ‘saturation’ of data, through repetition of shared experience, was quickly reached within the population chosen.
Two semi-structured interviews of between 60-90 minutes were carried out with each participant, roughly four weeks apart. They were recorded via Microsoft Teams and transcribed using dragon software. Validity of the interview questions were tested through a pilot study involving two undergraduate students who themselves experience DPD symptomatology. During the pilot study, four questions were subsequently revised because they were deemed ambiguous and in one instance a question was removed because it was found to be too emotionally laden. Typical questions asked included:
Can you describe a typical day whilst you were in prison?
What was it like where you lived growing up?
How would you describe your mental health and well-being during your prison sentence?
To what extent did your experiences of depersonalisation help or hinder your ability to cope and adjust to prison life?
In the main study, interviewees were also encouraged to participate in a self-drawing session at the end of their first interview. This was introduced as a way for subject participants to think more abstractly about their prison experiences and stimulate emotions that perhaps they may not have been able to describe in the interview (Virole et al., 2022). It also provided a useful way of triangulating the qualitative data (Cohenmiller, 2017). Once transcribed, the scripts were compared to the original recordings for accuracy and annotations were added based on non-verbal cues witnessed during the interviews such as the interviewee looking away, becoming emotional or entering/emerging from a DPD episode. Initial coding focused on the three primary categories of childhood experiences, the prison experience, and coping responses to imprisonment. These were then refined into a priori codes and analysed using Nvivo12 software. Analysis of the data was written into short paragraphs with direct quotations from the participants as evidence.
During the writing up of the study, the researcher had to be conscious of several potential limitations that might have affected the validity and reliability of the data. First, the former prisoners were reliant on providing retrospective accounts of their imprisonment. This placed high cognitive demand on their memory for events and potentially might have led participants to describe past attitudes and feelings that were more consistent with their current situation. Consequently, time was taken at the beginning of each interview, to encourage subject participants to ignore events that were currently happening in their lives. Second, participants were recruited from an online forum. This can be problematic because it infers selection bias. To help deal with any potential bias, the researcher was careful not to use recruitment materials that may have drawn participants to the study purely because of their interest in DPD or wider mental health issues. Third, the study focus was on young male prisoners only. This was largely decided on because the population of young female prisoners was so small, that finding a representative sample was beyond the scope of the present study. It is therefore inappropriate to attempt to generalise any findings to female prisoners.
This study explored young men’s adaptation to imprisonment through the lens of depersonalisation as a coping response. Two of the strongest themes to emerge was of the impact that early attachment dysfunction had on the interviewee’s development of DPD and how prison strains exacerbate this dissociative coping response.
Through first-hand accounts and drawings, the former prisoners presented a shared narrative of childhoods marked by unpredictability, contradiction, and inconsistency. As Daniel remarked, “mam would give off these weird mixed signals”. This was most frequently seen in behaviours where one moment the caregiver could be demanding of intimacy and expressions of love, only for them to suddenly switch and become both distant and hyper-critical. For Adam this felt, “like love on her [mother] terms (…) mostly I would have to wait to see what mood she were [sic] in before asking for a cuddle”. These inconsistent behaviours were often described in the context of the caregiver’s own health vulnerabilities, including alcohol and drug dependency or, the ongoing effects of being a victim to domestic violence. Mothers were predominately described as being a sole parent, working more than one job, and constantly having to fight to shield her children from poverty and the disadvantaged environment where most lived.
“Da [sic] was always angry, but he tried to push it down and refused to talk about it …he …kinda [sic] expected Ma to look after us most times when he was on the booze and always ended up lashing out at her (…) when he were sober, he could be loving, you know, all over us, demanding cuddles and the like”.
Self-drawing by Liam
Fathers were described by participants as being largely uninterested, absent or caught up in their own lives. Liam, for instance, spoke about his father, “just getting up and buggering off for weeks at a time (…) mam never could cope with that”. Daniel, whose father worked on oil rigs, spoke about him being, “gone for three months (…) and then was to be found most other times in the pub”. Lucas recalled vividly his father’s drug habits, “he was a dickhead, doped out his head, crashing on the sofa night after night (…) I was a nuisance to him that’s all, he all but said it himself”. Inevitably, given the fractious relationships that existed between parents, the interviewees witnessed many parental rows which often spilled over into domestic violence. As Paul described:
“He would shout at her until it came to blows (…) he were always sorry afterwards and says it won’t happen again, but it always did (…) they would row a lot about me (…) I thought it was all my fault (…) I thought about killing me sen (sic) “.
This sense of self-blame for their parents’ behaviour was commonly voiced, “most times, I thought it was something that I done (…) mam would hit me for anything (…) she would say sorry afters, but the damage had been done” (Liam). For Adam, this self-blame meant trying even harder to please his mother despite the rejection that he was frequently facing, “you’s [sic] try to be good, do stuff round the house, clean up and that (…) always asking her if I’ve been a good boy”. Freyd’s (2003) notion, of ‘betrayal blindness’ was very apparent during the interviews as illustrated in its most extreme by Scott:
“I think I was about five or six …mam had been depressed for a few days and was taking loads of pills …I spilt some pop over myself and she just flipped out, she dragged me upstairs and pulled my t-shirt off and started to run a bath …next thing she had pushed my head under the water and kept it there …I was struggling but she just kept it there …I don’t know how long for because I blacked out … afterwards I just kept saying sorry for being a naughty boy”.
As Aaron explained, the response to these inconsistent, frightening and paradoxical behaviours was, “to go into freeze mode”; a form of passive reaction where the child made no effort to either move away or confront what was distressing them. It was largely through this freeze response that depersonalisation symptoms would begin to emerge. As Luke explained:
“She [mother] would be shouting at me and the fog would come over (…) kinda [sic] light-headed and it feels like I were floating from me body. Things would be slowing down round me, and she would go quiet in my head (…) just silence like my ears are not working right”.
“Dad threw a beer glass at me, hit me on the leg and smashed, blood pouring out of me (…) I could feel me (sic) pain moving away from me (sic) body (…) It felt like my head was leaving my body, no pain, no feelings, just dead”.
Self-drawing by Ben
In the absence of fight or flight, the depersonalised freeze response, became one of the few ways the child had of protecting himself. For Paul, this meant spending many hours emotionally distant even though he was rarely apart from his mother physically, “she were (sic) there if you know what I mean, but not there”. Since the dissociative state could not last forever, the child was faced with attempting to reconcile the dissonance of wanting to be close to mother but also contending with the potential emotional rejection that this may bring about. The answer was to develop an idealised version of their parent. As Elijah explained:
“you gets [sic] to using the good memories to pretend that Mammy wasn’t always this way, you’s [sic] know. Fact is, she could be very loving [es]pecially of Birthdays and Christmas times (…) it was the men that she were with that made her bad”.
Over time, the flip-flop between affection and rejection, becomes replaced by a bank of good memories that the child could retreat into when required. As Tristen explained:
“One of my best memories was her [mother] getting the crisps and pop in of a Friday because that was treat night like (…) mam would be great, laughing and joking, tickling us and making a big deal (…) I would try not remember later when she would start on the wine and then just get up and bugger off upstairs”.
The narrative presented in these accounts provide an emotional ‘roadmap’ of how the confusion and contradiction inherent in disorganised attachments affect a child’s sense of self, leading to the development of depersonalisation as a learned coping response. Through the experience of fear and emotional neglect, the child is unable to use those around them as a stable anchor bringing on Liotti’s (1992) fear-without-solution paradox. DPD circumscribes this, by temporarily allowing the child to manage the dissonance of having multiple, incompatible views of the caregiver, as both a source of protection and danger. Over time it becomes a hard-wired adaptive response that follows them into adulthood.
“When you first go in [prison] it’s like an assault on your senses, you don’t know which way to turn. The noise, smells, anger in there is overwhelming. I’s were (sic) in denial, zoning in and out all the time (…) escaping in me [sic] head”.
Self-drawing by Kyle.
Prison represents a petri-dish of potential stress triggers. For many of the young men, this stress first began with fear around their own security and safety. As Scott explained, “for those first few weeks I drank, sniffed or zoned out whenever I could, just to get away from it all (…) it gave me courage to show I was coping and able to look after me sen [sic]”. Although it’s not unusual for the entry-shock of imprisonment to bring on these types of maladaptive behaviours, after time, they are projected to subside as prison routines start to become more of a known quantity. The move towards prisonisation is meant to continue this affective journey, until the prisoner is ready to accept the prisoner society. For the young men, however, this was a status that few achieved.
Facing the same prison pains as older inmates, younger prisoners appeared to be disproportionately affected by the depriving carceral environment. The interviewees, for instance, spoke about the accumulating alienation they felt inside, and the acute trauma experienced through the loss of intimate contact with family and friends. They spoke about the lack of stimulation and monotony that led to intense boredom and of time standing still. The arbitrary nature of self-governance where prison rules appeared to change constantly and without warning. Underpinning all these strains, was an emerging realisation that prison was mimicking the high criticism, low emotional warmth that the young men had experienced and had dissociated against in their formative years. As Aaron remarked, “you were made to feel like a nobody, a non-person in there (…) treated like a kid”. In this situation, the real prison for these young inmates was all in the mind.
“They don’t care if you hurt, you [su]pposed to be tough mentally (…) the screws play with yer [sic] feelings by giving yer hope and then taking it away. It’s their rules and they keep changing them to suit …you never know where you are with them (…) it’s all mind games”
Self-drawing by Liam.
The overwhelming reaction to their dissonance, was a refusal to leave themselves open to victimisation or exploitation, by developing relationships with prison staff or other prisoners. As Lucas remarked, “you thinking [sic], what they want from you, in stir, guys only talked to you when’s they are on the take”. This meant that even after several weeks or even months conversations largely involved simple banter and superficial chit-chat; a situation that was not helped by a constant turnover of prisoners and prison staff and of frequently being moved from prison to prison. As time went on, the young prisoner, rather than emotionally opening up, became more reclusive, gathering in turn the wrath of prison staff who interpreted their reluctance to develop friendships as anti-social and intentionally obstructive, “the boss would say, what makes you so special that we should treat you differently, you need to grow a pair son” (Kyle). This had the effect of making the young inmate withdraw even further into themselves, generating an ever-increasing loop of anxiety that impacted on simple routines, “I didn’t even have the bottle to walk over to the shower rooms or collecting stuff on canteen day2” (Elijah).
Once prison visits were allowed, the young men felt they coped better, but it did not alleviate ongoing feelings of isolation. As Ritchie explained:
“Visits are a joke (…) you’s [sic] treated as though you’s [sic] are in a cattle market, pushed and prodded around the hall, told to sit down, keep your hands out your pockets (…) there’s no privacy (…) screws [prison staff] up and close in your business all the time …it wound me right up”.
Frustrations around the lack of physical contact and privacy in the visiting hall compounded the young prisoner’s sense of disempowerment, “you get’s [sic] to peck her on the cheek at the beginning and end, that’s it, rest of the time you are sat opposite each other with a table in between” (Ben). As Adam said, “I sat close enough to smell her perfume but not close enough to tell her stuff I needed to get off my chest”. The outcome was that rather than visits providing an opportunity for the young prisoner to purge emotions safely, it merely perpetuated feelings of alienation and detachment. As Scott explained, “once over, I would walk slowly back to my cage, lie on my bunk and go numb”.
“Trying to keep up this loving thing (…) when I only got to see her once a month (…) after each visit, we seemed further and further apart (…) I started to scrawl her from my mind thinking that she wasn’t interested anymore (…) doing Mamba3 and zoning out” (Kyle).
Lucas expressed this frustration most poignantly:
“when it’s over [visit] and your back on the landings you talk shit to the other cons [a]bout how it was good seeing the missus and all that (…) inside your burning up [be]cause you didn’t have more time with her, or could properly cuddle and stuff (…) trying to push her out your head but it’s going nowhere (…) later on your bunk, all you thinking is about where she now, does she still want you, that’s when the ‘fog’ starts to come over you”.
Compounding the lack of meaningful social contact, both within and outside of the walls, was an impoverished prison environment, where limited stimulation and resources made destructive rumination an ever-present danger.
“The sameness of it all …day after day the same walls, floor, the same fuckwits shouting through the windows, the same shit food, the same thoughts going round and round …18 hours in the coffin with shit all to do (…) no hope and no one there for you, is this really what prison was supposed to be about?”.
Self-drawing by Aaron.
Kyle describes being sat in an empty box, 6ft by 12ft, for 18 hours a day. This would present a challenge for even the most mentally resilient of people, but for young adult men used to easy access to time-compressing technology, prison represented a place where, “there was no escape, nowhere to escape too, no excitement, nothing” (Adam). As Ben explained:
“The slow sameness every single day leaves you isolated with your thoughts (…) that’s a scary thing, thinking over and over how you got there (…) dark thoughts take hold like a vice, the prison ends up in yer [sic] head (…) that’s when the D’s4 are at their worst”.
Unfortunately, once out of their cells, this lack of stimulation did not noticeably improve. Currently, only 40% of inmates at any one time are employed within the prison estate (House of Commons Select Committee, 2019). So, those unlucky not to have a regular job were forced either to continue spending their morning in their cells or sit around on the landings with little to do. Those that did work, faced a routinised conveyor-belt work system, that did little to improve their stimulation or provide skills training for life on the outside. Liam described a typical prison job:
“I sat sanding the edges of a small wooden block that would then be attached to a bird box for a shelf (…) I rubbed sandpaper up and down blocks of wood and then passed it to the next guy who put glue underneath and pressed it down onto the box (…) we then waited minutes for the next, that’s how it went until they called us back for line-up”.
“It were [sic] like a revolving door …you was trapped in your cage or trapped by the work they offered (…) there was no spontaneity apart from when fights broke out (…) stir is designed to grind you down (…) makes you become a nobody person with no respect or fight left in you …you literally die in there.”
Self drawing by Daniel.
Despite talk of education, and training opportunities being a central component of rehabilitation in prison, the reality was that a steadily rising prison population had effectively pushed security concerns to the top of the agenda. The interviewees reported that inadequate staffing levels, meant long waiting lists for a job or any kind of training. Boredom, the sense of isolation, and the lack of work becoming key drivers in their DPD experiences. As Kyle explained:
“So, fucking bored, everybody felt the same (…) it were heavy, like a thick blanket that just made you feel so fuckin [sic] depressed all the while (…) times, I didn’t have the energy to get out my bunk, that’s how bad it were”.
After a while, this lack of stimulation created an environment of hyper-boredom, where the past and future became subsumed into an endless present that the prisoner had little or no control over. Participants reported experiencing such lethargy that it frequently induced episodes of DPD, “I became convinced that my body was stopping me from living (...) the only answer, to ‘detach’ and find somewhere else to be” (Paul). Lucas described being in his cell as, “time clinging to you like a rapist”. As Ritchie explained:
“Any attempts to fight it off just imprints it further into your psyche (…) an endless loop of nothingness that lasts from the moment you wake until you go back sleep (…) where do you go when there’s nothing …nothing now, nothing tomorrow (…) so’s you got to escape, either mamba or spice to just general trippin [sic], but it’s got to be done”.
This level of boredom induced sterility and a state of being where the loss of energy manifested in catatonic posture. As Scott explained, “you’s can’t even lift your head off your bunk, that’s how bad it gets”. Perversely, this situation contrasts abruptly with prisoner sentence plans where there is a requirement to pro-actively take responsibility for preparing for life on the outside by taking up rehabilitation opportunities. For Lucas this meant, “being shit-bored but no sleeping your time away (…) walk around with a smile plastered on your boat race [face] showing how fuckin [sic] rehabilitated you had become, that’s what we had to do”.
Self-governance and prisoner responsibility is an established feature of most prisons in the UK. It is an attempt to move away from the inflexible rules and hierarchies of power of earlier punishment models, towards prisoner empowerment, where an inmate can take individual responsibility for their offending histories (Crewe, 2011b: 456). Despite these good intentions, self-governance, from the interviewee’s perspective, represented a pseudo freedom, where invisible rules shifted arbitrarily. As Elijah remarked, “you never’s [sic] knew until it was too late that you had done wrong (…) new rules would be made up on the spot”. Ben, was able to give a concrete example of this when he asked to put a poster up in his cell:
“The boss gave me the thumbs up and came round later to see if I had anything to stick it up with (…) in the night we had a pad turnover, drugs found on the landing …the same boss went over to the poster angry like and ripped it down saying that it weren’t [sic] allowed (…) that’s how it were all the time”
These so-called grey rules both confused and disorientated, causing looping negative rumination and constant lapses into DPD, “you became mentally exhausted, fighting constantly to understand how to be in there (…) you end up zoning out to get away from it all” (Paul). As Scott said: “nobody had a fuckin [sic] clue what the rules we were supposed to be playing by looked like”. These rules were underpinned by a rational choice philosophy where decisions are made based on the prisoner being able to weigh the pros and cons of actions rather than considering emotional immaturity and trauma histories. As Scott explained about offender behavioural plans:
“OBP’s made out what happened before prison was my fault [be]cause I chose the life I led (…) but the drugs thing happened [be]cause dad left us, and mam drank herself to sleep every night with any bloke willing to pay for her booze, how’s that my fault?”
For Liam, the pretence around how prison had somehow rescued him, caused constant stress triggers, and slides into what he referred to as the “fug”:
“They tret (sic) like you were a child who was naughty (…) fuck em [sic] I would say, and the fug would start from there (…) then I was told that I wasn’t trying hard enough which made it worse”.
Rational choice theory contrives ‘active participation’ as something that every prisoner wants to be a part of regardless of life histories. As Scott explained:
“I needed help with demons in me [sic] head, what I got instead were TSP5, CSCP6, CALM7 you name it, but they didn’t help, I just got more and more down until I had no motivation for anything (…) made to do fucking victim awareness courses where I had to say what a bad person I had been”.
These courses were perhaps best summed up by Kyle:
“I kept saying that I were a victim too, I’m also damaged goods that needs help (…) later I was told that I didn’t learn enough from the anger management course and would have to repeat it. Obviously didn’t say the right things”.
Nearly two decades ago, the Chief Inspector of prisons (HMI Prisons, 2006: 9) reported that, “what will not work is simply to decant young adults into mainstream adult prison populations”. A recommendation that has since been constantly ignored. Through the ‘voices’ of the participants’ in this study, the purpose of imprisonment is clearly not being served for young men. Central to this, is a lack of understanding around the fact that adult prisons are unable to facilitate young men who are emotionally immature, lacking resilience, and very always import into prison with them attachment trauma vulnerabilities. Lacking the breadth of coping skills necessary to negotiate prison entry-shock and assimilate successfully into the carceral environment, they instead, become disproportionately affected by the emotionality of prison strains vented through maladaptive depersonalised responses. Given these deficits, there is a compelling argument that young men should not be sent into adult prisons in the first place, but if they are, a renewed debate around what purpose imprisonment serves for young adult men, and how the present system fails to deliver, needs to be had.
This debate must start with an admission that the criminal justice system presently fails to recognise young adulthood as a distinctive developmental phase. Currently, young prisoners reaching the chronological age of 18 are presumed to have transitioned from childhood to full adulthood overnight. Despite criminologists, psychologists, educationalists and sociologists all arguing that 18–25-year-olds will continue brain maturation, they are immediately treated in the same way as all other adult prisoners regardless of any specific barriers to integration, treatment, or rehabilitation that they might encounter in custody. Alongside this, is a further refusal to accept that early trauma histories, experienced by most young men in prison, are likely to not only slow emotional maturation further, but present difficulties in emotionally coping with prison life. The capacity for emotion regulation begins to develop early in life when interactions between the caregiver and child, help build the child’s repertoire of coping skills. This development encompasses an ability, awareness, understanding and acceptance of one’s own emotional state; an ability to control behaviours when experiencing distress, as well as having the maturity to use contextually appropriate coping strategies in different situations. Disruptions in these early attachment relationships increase the risk of severance in emotion regulatory abilities, and becomes marked by difficulties in goal directed behaviour, and an over reliance on destructive avoidant coping strategies. DPD means the young adult prisoner becomes more and more emotionally alienated from the prison environment and depersonalised from relationships within that environment.
Perhaps the greatest fear is that as the young prisoner continues to employ these maladaptive coping mechanisms, without intervention, there is the danger that it will lead to a further deterioration in mental health outcomes and the possible onset of other more pervasive disorders such as depression and PTSD. Research suggests, that the presence of DPD may be a predictor for the subsequent development of other psychopathologies (Foa et al.,1996; Koopman et al., 1994; Marmar et al.,1994; Spigel,1991; Terr, 1991; Weiss et al., 1995) either as a pre-existing risk factor (Murray et al., 2002); or a ‘sign-post’ to the later onset of other psychopathologies (Ditlevsen and Elklit, 2010). Maladaptive dissociative symptoms are highly comorbid.
Tackling these challenges is not easy. However, good practice already exists in some prisons that may point the way. There is presently a clear division between the type and quality of custodial intervention available for adolescents up to the age of 18 years and those deemed to be adults after this point. For the former, most rehabilitation and resettlement intervention comes under the auspices of Youth Offender Teams (YOT’s) who use ‘Asset Plus’; an assessment and planning interventions framework developed by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) to carry out mental health and prior trauma assessments (Smith, 2017). The purpose of this framework is to allow all interventions to be carried out holistically and followed through from the young person’s point of entry into the youth justice system to resettlement on release. It is client-centred, trauma-informed, and brings together a range of care, health, and educational professionals. Through small group and one-to-one focused therapy, attempts are made to re-build the young person’s confidence and resilience by forging new relationships with their families and tackling previous adverse experiences. Fundamental to this therapeutic framework is a recognition that young people caught up in the criminal justice system, are not only still emotionally immature, but they will only be able to move on once the demons from their past have been addressed (Smith, 2017).
For the young adult, who happens to be aged 18 but under the age of 25, no such holistic rehabilitation programmes are available, even though they are likely to have benefited from them in the past. Therefore, they quickly become both marginalised in terms of limited opportunities for ongoing intervention opportunities, and a lost voice as to how the pains of imprisonment may disproportionately affect them. This results in oppositional behaviours which include an unwillingness to engage in what is perceived as pointless rational-orientated rehabilitation programmes. Any move, therefore, to extend holistic interventions to this age cohort can only benefit the criminal justice system.
More generally, there needs to be a greater recognition that carceral strains are more likely to disproportionately harm younger adults than older prisoners. Simple practical steps can be taken to help ease these pains. Boredom, for instance, is experienced by all prisoners’, but becomes exacerbated for young adults because of their pre-prison reliance on new technology. Greater access to secure internet services, in-cell telephones and gaming platforms have already been rolled out in other countries and has proven to be an effective way of managing the social isolation that young prisoners experience. Likewise, rational choice as a governance model is not an effective incentive for this age group, as it often results in the young inmate ‘dropping out’. A move towards an empowering system of governance, where mutually agreed actions and sentence planning between the young adult and prison authorities needs to be implemented instead. This begins with an admission that many adult offender behaviour programmes are unsuitable. The Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) system should become exempt for young adults, with full privileges being provided on entry, along with an active prison ‘wallet’. Privileges should only then be removed if the inmate consistently fails their sentence plan or for more serious infractions. Finally, there must be a greater emphasis on a ‘keyworker’ system that nurtures and supports the young adult through entry shock. Although this already exists in some prisons, its take-up is still patchy and varies in quality. A prisoner mentoring scheme would be a useful starting point, where trusted older inmates are willing to socially support young men. This has proven to be effective in those prisons who have trialled it and should become a mainstream policy attached to each sentence plan.
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