Corona Daily 457: Prisons Change People

New York’s governor Cuomo objects to the term ‘shelter-in-place’ used by some American states. That term implies a shooter on a rampage. Cuomo prefers to give ‘stay-at-home’ orders. Without caring for semantics, most of the world uses the word ‘lockdown’. Lockdown is part of prison vocabulary. Currently, nearly 4 billion people, half of the world, is locked down, essentially held prisoners.

True, this is house arrest, or home confinement, a milder form. Some countries use smart phones to tag and monitor people - mandatory in China, anonymously aggregated in Belgium, and voluntary in South Korea.

In a sense, our confinement is worse than the traditional prisoner’s. We have been punished without a trial for no crime of ours. We have been confined without an end date, our term indefinite. Inmates are fed by the State in prison. Here, we have to fend for ourselves, try and get enough supplies for our families. The mask is a constant reminder of our situation.

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Yesterday, I wrote about a Russian billionaire who committed suicide because he was unable to cope with the situation. It is useful to know the research that studies the way prisons change people. I will mention a few highlights.

It is shown the most damaging factor for prisoners is the loss of their life in the outside world, rather than the prison conditions. When first-time prisoners start their sentence, life becomes sedentary; they stop physical exercise, sit or lie in bed for more than 9 hours a day, don’t know what to do with the hours-time passes very slowly. The first month is marked by a preoccupation with safety, a sense of losing freedom and control, feeling of uncertainty, separation and loss. They can easily give up drinking and smoking. All other worries are so overwhelming in their mind they don’t miss sex. But they miss physical human warmth. (Hugging, kissing, handholding).

The process of adapting is called ‘prisonisation’. That process is filled with chronic stress and sleep disturbance. It can affect certain brain functions, such as planning, attention, working memory. After three months of imprisonment, there may be significant deterioration in self-control and attention.

Longer imprisonment may lead to emotional withdrawal, depression, suicidal thoughts or actions, increasing hostility, delusions, panic, madness, phobias, substance abuse and self-destructive behavior. A long imprisonment alters the prisoner for ever. As one ex-prisoner said: “I act like I’m still in prison, I mean you are not a light switch or a water faucet. You can’t just turn something off. When you’ve done something for a certain amount of time, it becomes part of you.”

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Worldwide governments need to take lessons from this, and ensure the confinement doesn’t become too long. In order to save the vulnerable, we don’t want nations becoming mental asylums.

And as individuals, we should be aware of such studies, so that we can avoid the pitfalls of confinement.

Ravi