Institutional Adaptation of Long term Prisoners

An Approach from Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

Long term prisoners are often forgotten by public as they are in the prison over long periods of time and seldom become a research subject. There were widely shared discussions on the adversary effects, such as psychological deterioration, due to their long-term imprisonment. However, in recent western analyses, questions are raised; even if adversary occurs, would it be the direct result of the long-term imprisonment or it be caused by individual traits that are associated with prisoners before imprisonment? The current analysis tests the impact of the length of imprisonment on prisoners' subjective well-being in a Japanese prison. Different models are produced for prisoners who serve determinate sentence and indeterminate sentence as they are detected different. Although the period of imprisonment has negligible effects on the subjective well-being of for determinant sentence prisoners, it has significant negative effects on prisoners with indeterminate sentence. However, the explanatory power of each model is very small. It suggests length of long-term imprisonment has very limited effects on adaptation of prisoners. It is argued that further research is necessary to follow long-term inmates’ within individual change and to test non-linear relationships among constructs.