Psychological Impact of Incarceration on Women Prisoners: A Review of Appraisal

Prison usually changes people as it alters their spatial, temporal, and bodily dimensions, although it weakens their emotional life and undermines their identity. Prison as a home of captives with its strict rules and an environment of distress are detrimental to the inmates. Prisons aim is to cure crime and criminal however their record has not been encouraging. Instead, prison does more harm to people than do good to them. So, the question arises here why do we need prison and what psychological impact prison does have on incarcerated women? Does it have a negative impact? Does it result in mental illness? These are a few questions whose answers we are looking into in this paper. A considerable amount of research has been directed to assess the impact of incarceration on prisoners after their release but very few studies have been done to look into their condition during incarceration. A systematic review of literature has been done in order to assess the prison environment and its psychological effect. The study also highlighted some of the negative impacts on the mental health of especially women prisoners and how to cope with them.