Browsing by Subject "psykologiset vaikutukset"

Introduction: The purpose of this review is to create understanding of how the barriers to basic need fulfilment in closed prisons may contribute to the adverse psychological effects of imprisonment. It is well established imprisonment can be psychologically detrimental to some inmates but the mechanisms behind the effect are not well known especially due to the lack of controlled longitudinal research in prison environments. This review gathers together the most common pains of imprisonment found in international research and examines them through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in order to establish a preliminary understanding of possible mechanisms behind the detrimental effects. Methods: The research was conducted as a literature review going through research articles in the fields of psychology, medicine, and criminology. The literature was searched through Google Scholar using keywords psychological effects, psychological impacts, psychological wellbeing, incarceration, imprisonment, prison ja pains and imprisonment. In addition, the reference lists of found articles were used to find other relevant sources. Furthermore, the basic information about prison population was searched directly from the publications of World Health Organization and Finnish Criminal Sanctions Agency. Results and conclusions: The circumstances during imprisonment seem to threaten all five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Thus, comparing prison conditions with Maslow’s theory points out that the difficulty of fulfilling the basic needs can at least to some extent explain the adverse psychological effects of imprisonment. Furthermore, as inmates have very few ways to improve their possibilities of basic need fulfilment, the aspirations to do so may lead to harmful behaviour like violence, which further deprives the opportunities of need fulfilment and contributes to harmful prison culture.