This book is the report of a collaborative effort. Frank Porporino and I arrived at the starting point for our work together by very different routes. Originally trained as an experimental psychologist, I had become in- creasingly restive within the confines of the laboratory, and spent a sab- batical year in the equivalent of a clinical internship. I then spent some time as a part-time consultant in a local penitentiary. Most of my time in the institution was spent with inmates with a variety of problems, probably about 50 individuals over the course of a year. Although this was far fewer than a full-time psychologist in the system might encounter, it served as a quick cram course on problem prisoners and prisoner problems. Very quickly my stereotypes about convicts were shown to be virtually useless. I learned that the criminal classes included all levels of society, and that the behavior of prisoners was the same as that of other human beings in a difficult environment.
1 Introduction.- Theory and Context: Understanding the Causes of Behavior.- Interaction and Action.- Sociological Analyses of Imprisonment.- Psychological Effects of Imprisonment.- Other Consequences of Imprisonment.- Coping Theory.- 2 The Study: Design, Methods, Materials.- Aims: What This Study Tried to Accomplish.- Design Overview.- Setting.- Measures and Materials.- 3 Subjects: Selection and Characteristics.- Selection and Recruitment.- Characteristics: Sentences, Offenses, Criminal History.- Social and Economic Background.- Personal History.- 4 Lifestyle and Behavior on the Outside.- Time and Planning.- Socialization.- Criminal Activities.- 5 Problems and Coping on the Outside.- The Problems of Subjects.- First Impressions of Coping.- Categories of Coping Responses.- The Quality of Coping.- Relationships Between Measurement Types.- Some Hypotheses.- 6 The Impact of Imprisonment.- Disruptions.- Negative Effects.- Positive Effects.- 7 Coping in Prison.- Problems in Prison.- Coping in Prison: Categories.- The Quality of Coping in Prison.- Coping and Previous Imprisonment.- 8 The Impact of Imprisonment. II-Changes over Time.- Test-Retest Correlations.- Short-Term Changes.- The Closing Window.- Summary: Behavior and Coping After Acclimation.- One Year Later.- Summary: The Effects of Longer-term Imprisonment.- 9 Circumstances: Some Major Personal and Environmental Variables.- Differences Across Institutions.- Length of Sentence.- 10 Predicting Adaptation.- Outcome Criteria.- Core Variables and Simple Correlations.- Predictive Analyses.- Some Consequences.- 11 Conclusions: What Prisons Do and Don't Do.- What Prisons Do Not Do: The Breaking Ground.- What Prisons Do: The Deep Freeze.- Changing the Prison Experience.- References.- Appendices.- Author Index.
