Toxic Masculinity as a Barrier to Mental Health Treatment in Prisons

The culture of maximum-security prison, for example, values attributes relating to the alpha male and look up to toughness and insensitivity, who practices hostility and manipulation toward both other inmates and prison staff. Passive behaviors, feministic qualities, softness of character, and signs of emotional pains are frown upon and view as weakness (Clear, Cole, Petrosino, Reisig,

The data for this project was collected by administering an anonymous survey to incarcerated juveniles at (name of facility), the (name) receiving center and at the NAACP office in Sacramento, California. The survey asked for gender and parental status (incarcerated versus not incarcerated). Participants were given a paper survey and a pencil to complete the survey. See Appendix for a copy of the survey.

This paper explores the topic of mental health within prisons and how it affects the inmates. The report of my findings were through research of twelve articles, two credible website sources, and a published textbook.

Overall, the United States prison system and society’s view of African Americans needs to change. People need to make sure that the mistakes society has made in the past do not repeat themselves. In order to fix many of the existing problems it is important to focus on reforming the prison system. Doing so would prevent many future cases of injustice and racial

In today’s society, discrimination is an issue that is considered to be a thing of the past. In a country with such diversity it is hard to believe that people living in the “land of the free” face issues of racism. This paper will focus specifically on the social problem of mass incarceration of minority groups and how the criminal justice system targets these groups. Although this social problem can be linked to specifically African Americans, the impacts of mass incarceration can be felt by almost everyone. I have chosen three articles that focus on how the criminal justice system is masking mass imprisonment a major problem in minority communities.

Male prisoners also continue to make up the majority of the prison population. However, women prisoner rates have been on the rise and have exceeded that of male growth rates since 1995. In fact, due to the increase of the women prison population, various issues have arisen which require women to be treated differently from men. Such issues correctional facility’s face because of this increase include program delivery, housing conditions, medical care, staffing, and security (American Corrections, 2016). These problems are in part due to the different social and economic differences women are faced with in prison and while preparing for their release back to society.

Mass Incarceration in the United States has been a large topic of choice because rapid growth in the prison and jail populations, the long sentences the inmates face, and the inability for some inmates to incorporate themselves back into society. Since the 1970’s the U.S. prison population quadrupled from 158 to 635 people per 100,000, causing the U.S. to gain the title of country with the highest incarceration rate. (Massoglia, Firebaugh, & Warner, 2013, p. 142; Muller, 2012) As the growth of the U.S prison and jail population rapidly increased, so did the growth of the three major contributors to that population – African Americans, Hispanics, and whites – with African American and

Society has often struggled with how to help prisoners once they are released back into civilization. The number of prisoners in the American prison population has grown considerably in the last couple of decades. For many prisoners the process of arrest, incarceration and release is a continuous cycle, there is very little hope of them living in civilization for a long period of time. There is also a high a retention rate of the returning offenders. A large portion of these prisoners are minorities of African Americans and Hispanics face more time in jail or prison is extremely high. The success rate of offenders is measured by how long one can avoid being incarcerated and not by being reintegrated into civilization. These issues have become a national crisis in Joan Petersilia book titled “When Prisoners come home: Parole and prisoner reentry,” she address these issues head on. The main purpose of this book focuses on how to help prisoners once they have been released out of prison. Petersilia gives efforts for future reform to alter the in prison experience, change prison release, revocation practices, revise post prison services and supervision as well as a working with the community to enhance informal social control. These are efforts that represent a better policy towards reform of prisoners and re-entry in the system. The book goes into great detail about the suggestions Petersilia makes and why it is necessary for change.

All societal groups are affected by the issue of imprisonment, but it is a far more likely occurrence among marginalized cultural groups, particularly African Americans. As the United States celebrates the nation's triumph over race with the selection of Barack Obama as the first African American male president, a majority of young black males in major American cities are locked behind bars, or categorized felons for life (Alexander, 2010, p. 1). Bonczar and Beck (1997) report that:

However, evidence indicates that growing incarceration has significantly increased poverty and negatively impacts the socioeconomic opportunities for prisoner’s families upon release (Wacquant, 2010). Because African-American men are disproportionately incarcerated, increased numbers of African-American women have increased ties to prison members. The result is that African-American women disproportionately experience the effects that mass incarceration produces on social and economic success. African-American women are forced to struggle with the economic loss and stresses caused by mass incarceration and poverty (DeFina and Hannon, 2013).

When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.

The marginalized population that will be discussed within this research paper will be male prisoners found within the United States correctional facilities. In Prince and Coleman journal article, “Narrative of Neglect: Texas Prisons for Men” (2011), the authors make it obvious that all male individuals found in prisons, regardless of race, are subjected to harsh conditions that include both neglect and abuse, as well as a number of other circumstances. They do this by giving the reader a detailed history of Texas’s state penitentiary system. Prince and Coleman’s article (2011) explores the continuing pattern of neglect and abuse found in these prisons starting with 2011 when the article was published, and going back 183 years to the 1800s.

It is reported regularly that violence is a serious problem in Australian jails as well. A West Australian survey found that ‘prisons are dangerous places where the threat of violence is ever present.’ (Goulding, 2007) When prisoners are living in a constant state of fear they are more likely to deal with this by becoming perpetrators themselves due to the relentless exposure. The interviews conducted by Goulding demonstrated that inmates had a casual attitude to violence on account of their constant exposure to it. One inmate reported, ‘Before, I'd have to struggle to act violently. Now, 1 have to struggle not to.’

Furthermore, this fact is very important because it contributes to the stereotype that men are more violent than women, therefore should have higher rates of violence in prison. Since male prisoners undergo more physical injury and have more excessive force tactics use on them they become more aggressive. As a consequence they stop being the victims and start becoming the perpetrators (Johnson & Johnson, 2006). This is a key factor that contributes to why violent rates

Levels of deprivation remain fairly constant in many institutions and yet violence can erupt suddenly, for seemingly little reason. The deprivation model also doesn’t take into account gender differences. Scholars have reported that female offenders develop stronger bonds with their other members of their social groups rather than identify with the prisoner subculture, and thus explanations for female aggression in prisons may be qualitatively different from those for male inmates.