Examining the Mental Health of Prisoners in Washington’s Intensive Management Units

• In Event: My Hole Life: Living and Working in Solitary Confinement In the Mass Incarceration Era

Abstract

When inmates are placed in solitary confinement they are physically segregated from the rest of the prison population and lose out on many “privileges” including, but not limited to, educational opportunities, contact visitation, and access/ability to purchase store items like snacks or hygiene products. The loss of “privileges” coupled with the physical and social isolation inmates endure has been shown to inflict psychological trauma on confined inmates (e.g., Haney, 2003). In the state of Washington, inmates found guilty of certain infractable offenses are sentenced to serve time in an Intensive Management Unit (IMU) and must complete a program, or series of programs (classes), such as Anger and Stress Management in order to be released back to mainline. Due to security risks and limited availability, class populations are often small and create long wait lists meaning that inmates often spend several months in the IMU before actually beginning their program. Drawing from 104 in-depth interviews with inmates in the five IMU’s across the state of Washington, this paper explores the impact that solitary confinement has on inmate’s mental health and mental stability. Using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), an instrument developed to provide a highly efficient, rapid evaluation procedure for assessing symptom change in psychiatric patients, we examine whether or not appropriate conclusions about inmate’s mental health can be drawn when solely using this tool. Our findings indicate that the mental health struggles that inmates experience cannot adequately be captured by such time-constrained and static instruments—although the BPRS is meant to yield a comprehensive description of major symptom characteristics. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Authors

• Gabriela Gonzalez, University of California, Irvine

• Melissa Barragan, University of California, Irvine