Prisoners' coping strategies in Portugal

Abstract

[Excerpt] Introduction: Incarceration is one of the most stressful life experiences, rating as high as the death of a close family member (Holmes and Rahe 1967). The pains of imprisonment (Sykes 1958) include several conditions against human nature that require modification of basic life patterns and induce a highly challenging lifestyle. Inmates have to manage stress and still adapt to a new environment that they have little control over as the institutional regime enforce a total control over time, space, activities, and relationships (Goffman 1961). Besides the routine, stigma and discipline imposed by the institution, prisoners are subjected to the norms and values of the inmate subculture, that regulate social roles through ways of mockery, rejection, and force (Jewkes 2005). Not surprisingly, imprisonment often results in adjustment problems like violence, self-harm, and attempted suicide, especially for first-time and more vulnerable prisoners (Adams 1992; Mitchell and Shaw 2011). [...]