Pains of Imprisonment
The Pains of Imprisonment, a chapter of The Society of Captives (Sykes 1958: 63-83), describe those deprivations in prison that most prisoners experience as particularly difficult to handle:
- deprivation of liberty
- of goods and services
- of autonomy
- of heterosexual relationships
- and of security.
Gresham Sykes (1958) argued that these pains, though not physically brutalizing, have the cumulative effect of destroying the psyche of the inmate. In order to avoid this destruction, inmates in prisons may be motivated to engage in deviance while incarcerated as a means of alleviating their pain. So bullying other inmates, involvement in gangs, buying items through the underground economy, and homosexual acts might all be motivated in fact by the need for some autonomy, liberty, security, goods and services, and sexual gratification.
A study by Ann Marie Rocheleau (2012) explored similar hardships to determine whether or not they are associated with involvement in serious prison misconduct and violence. The research included prisoners’ assessments of these prison hardships on self-report surveys administered to a random sample of 312 prisoners in medium and maximum security facilities in the Rhode Island Department of Correction as well as disciplinary data from the prison system’s database. Prisoners who found it particularly difficult to deal with missing their freedom, family, and possessions were more likely to be involved in serious misconduct, but not violence. However, prisoners who assessed boredom and concerns for their safety as very difficult to handle were more at risk for both serious misconduct and violence.