Schlegel 1

Addie Schlegel

AP Seminar - 4A

Mrs. Overton

February 26, 2019

Word Count: 1,216

The Psychological Effects of Being Falsely Incarcerated

Being wrongly imprisoned is cruel, but not many people understand the effect that it has

on a person’s mental well being. For-profit, or private, prisons significantly add to this rate of

false imprisonment. “Traditionally, private prisons were paid to hold an inmate, and little

attention was paid to later outcomes,” says an article written by Brett Burkhardt, an Assistant

Professor at Oregon State (Burkhardt). Namely, prisons are being paid to have more inmates who

stay longer. This encourages those financially benefiting to convict inmates without trying to

properly establish their innocence. It also causes prison staff to punish inmates for miniscule

things in order to lengthen their sentence. There are incredible injustices that occur in private

prisons that need acknowledgement. These prison systems disregard ethical treatment of humans

and do everything with one goal in mind: make as much money as possible.

Laura Appleman, the Associate Dean at Willamette University, writes, “For-profit

prisons, jails, and alternative corrections present a disturbing commodification of the criminal

justice system” (Appleman). For-profit prisons represent some of the worst in the justice system.

“The personal challenges posed and psychological harms inflicted in the course of incarceration

have grown over the last several decades in the United States. The trends include increasingly

harsh policies and conditions of confinement as well as the de-emphasis on rehabilitation as a

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goal of incarceration. As a result, the ordinary adaptive process of prisonization has become

extraordinarily prolonged and intense. Among other things, this means that prisoners face more

difficult and problematic transitions as they return to the free world” (Haney). Instead of

preparing prisoners with proper experience, knowledge, and skills to go into the world and make

a successful life for themselves after incarceration, they are coming out with mental and physical

wounds too deep to heal.

Another issue seen within the justice system is the occurrence of false convictions. Many

people place their faith and trust in the justice system to give fair punishment to those who

deserve it. An organization called ​The Innocence Project​ works to find convicts who were

falsely accused and give them justice that the government failed to. “To date, 362 people in the

United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 20 who served time on death

row,” reports ​The​ ​Innocence Project​ staff. While 362 people may not seem like a lot in reference

to the 2.4 million people that, at any given time, are in prison, that is 362 innocent lives affected.

The effects that being in prison has on the rest of someone’s life is shocking. It influences every

aspect of their lives; careers, families, housing. That number represents the number that have

proven innocent, not even how many people are innocent yet still incarcerated (The Innocence).

False convictions seem nearly impossible with the amount of technology, cameras, DNA

testing and eyewitness testimony that is available. False convictions are surprisingly not as

impossible as some believe. “Bias is a significant and often unrecognized problem in

science-dependent cases. One of the things that we always need to address when we talk about

bias is that no one is immune. There is nothing about law or medical school that makes a person

immune to bias. Having bias does not make you a bad person, it makes you a person. We all
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have implicit bias. We can not keep ourselves from having it; it is, by definition, unintentional.

What is important is to recognize it and try to minimize its effects” (Judson). Bias plays such a

huge role in why some people are convicted for things they did not do. Having a biased jury or

judge can affect whether a person is convicted. “Police practices related to eyewitness

identifications and interrogations have drawn the most criticism, along with questionable

forensic evidence and shoddy laboratory practices” says Professor Kay Levine and Ronald

Wright (Levine). Eyewitness testimonies are not always accurate and sometimes the main

evidence a case is resting on. If that eyewitness testimony is inaccurate, due to the imperfection

of memory, the entire case and conviction could be wrong. That one conviction has the potential

to ruin that person’s life forever.

Additionally, the psychological effects of prison are detrimental. Prisons use brutal

methods of imprisonment that cause extreme emotional, physical, and mental suffering. “Inmates

confined in (solitary confinement) have endured symptoms ranging from hallucinations and

perceptual distortions to self mutilation and suicidal ideation. Walking past these inmates, one

can observe babbling, shrieking, and the banging of prisoners’ bodies against the walls of their

cells. There is no disputing that this method of confinement has a terrible effect on prisoners’

well-being, and yet because it inflicts mental harm, rather than physical harm, courts have

largely turned a blind eye” an article written by ​Harvard University ​says. Inmates tend to “go

crazy” because of their conditions and environment. These effects do not disappear when an

inmate is set free. This treatment leaves a permanent scar on who they are (The Psychology).

When all of this information is taken into account, one can only assume that the effects of

prison on people who were wrongly convicted can be just as, if not more, severe. Studies have
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been conducted on the psychological effects on individuals once they were found innocent and

freed. “A sample of 18 men was taken. The assessments revealed evidence of substantial

psychiatric morbidity. Fourteen men met the diagnostic criteria for ‘enduring personality change

following catastrophic experience,’ 12 met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),

and most reported additional mood and anxiety disorders. The difficulties were similar to those

described of war veterans. Possible explanations for these effects are discussed: specific

traumatic features of miscarriage of justice and long-term imprisonment both appear to

contribute to the post-release psychological problems,” an author for the Canadian Journal of

Criminology wrote (Grounds). The finding from this study that stands out is that people who

were wrongly convicted show similar psychological signs to war veterans. Most know about the

effect of war on soldiers and everyone knows that the cause of it sticks with those veterans for

the rest of their lives. The same occurs for ex-convicts who were found innocent. Author James

Dawson interviewed several falsely imprisoned convicts and in an article of his, wrote about one

of the men named Michael. Michael was diagnosed with PTSD and feels that “the prison system

failed to provide the right support for him. Even after clearing his name and being released on

appeal in 2002, little was done to help him transition into life on the outside.” Not only was he

stuck with a mental illness that he did not have going into prison, his career, family life, and

sense of self was damaged (Dawson).

Privatized prisons treat inmates like objects, not humans. They inmates’ their sentences

without moral and factual reasons because it benefits them economically. Private prisons do

nothing to help rehabilitate convicts into everyday life and leaves the ex-convicts with

irreversible mental illnesses, typically PTSD. It is far too easy for people to be wrongly
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convicted because of eyewitness testimony and faulty biases ingrained in the lawyers, judges,

and jury. The American prison system is flawed, unjust and in need of restoration. Being

convicted of a crime that that individual did not commit leaves seemingly invisible, but deep and

harmful scars.
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Sources

Appleman, Laura I. “Cashing in on Convicts: Privatization, Punishment, and the People and the

People.” Utah Law Review, vol. 2018, no. 3, May 2018, pp. 579–637. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,custuid&custid=s8455861&

db=a9h&AN=130845297&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed January 3, 2019.

Burkhardt, Brett C. “Private Prisons, Explained.” ​The Conversation​, The Conversation,

December 10, 2018, 9:03pm, theconversation.com/private-prisons-explained-73038.

Accessed January 9, 2019.

Dawson, James. “The Lifelong Repercussions of Being Falsely Imprisoned.” ​Vice​, Vice News,

May 26, 2016, 8:00pm,

www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gkw73/mental-health-wrongful-imprisonment-miscarriages

-of-justice-organisation. Accessed January 9, 2019.

Grounds, Adrian. “Current Issue.” ​University of Toronto Press Journals,​ Vol. 46, Issue 2, pp.

165-182, September 19, 2006,

www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/cjccj.46.2.165?journalCode=cjccj. Accessed

January 9, 2019.

Haney, Craig. “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison

Adjustment.” ​ASPE​, The US Department of Health and Human Services, December 1,

2001,

aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-incarceration-implications-post-prison-a

djustment. Accessed January 9, 2019.

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Judson, Katherine. “Bias, Subjectivity, and Wrongful Convictions.” University of Michigan

Journal of Law Reform, vol. 50, no. 3, Spring 2017, pp. 779–794. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,custuid&custid=s8455861&

db=a9h&AN=122777843&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed January 7, 2019.

Levine, Kay L., and Ronald F. Wright. “Prosecutor Risk, Maturation, and Wrongful Conviction

Practice.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 42, no. 3, Summer 2017, pp. 648–676. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1111/lsi.12209.

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,custuid&custid=s8455

861&db=a9h&AN=124562606&site=ehost-live&scope=site​ Accessed January 7, 2019.

The Innocence Project Team. “Exonerate.” Innocence Project,

www.innocenceproject.org/exonerate/. Accessed January 7, 2019.

“The Psychology of Cruelty: Recognizing Grave Mental Harm in American Prisons.” Harvard

Law Review, vol. 128, no. 4, February 2015, pp. 1250–1271. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,custuid&custid=s8455861&

db=bth&AN=100940301&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed January 3, 2019