Psychological Distress, Prisoner Characteristics, and System Experience in a Prison Population

Abstract

Studies of psychological symptoms and disorders among prison populations have yielded inconsistent findings. Whether psychological distress is "imported" into prison or develops as a result of "deprivation" remains a key question. This study examined psychological distress in relation to sociodemographic and legal processing characteristics of prisoners, with special attention paid to adjustment/deterioration over the length of incarceration. A one-time, cross-sectional survey design was used to collect data from a nonprobability sample of 263 prisoners (16% of institution population) in a medium security state prison in eastern Kentucky. Dependent variables included Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) scores. This analysis examined the bivariate relationships among sociode-mographic and legal processing variables and BSI inventory scores. Levels of psychological distress were generally high among the respondents. Being white and younger were positively correlated with reported distress levels. Length of adult life spent in prison and length of time served in current sentence were inversely related to distress levels. Findings suggest that low numbers of years spent behind bars and shorter length of time served made younger offenders particularly vulnerable to significant psychological distress. Implications for transitional programming are discussed.