Addicted to Prison Life

While so many prison inmates are waiting to get release there are a few that will do anything to stay in there.
If released they will do what they have to get sent back. These people seem to be addicted to prison life. For them the addiction to stay confined with in the prison is very strong. These apparent prison addicts function better in prison life than they do on the outside in the real world. For these men and women, they have spent so long in the system that anything else is unfamiliar. It is this unfamiliar territory that has them committing more crimes. With the more crimes they commit the more they are able to preserve what seems to be the only way of life they know.

A lot of people feel that if we educate our inmates better they will be better able to cope in the real world and stop coming back. But for the inmates addicted to prison this is not the case. For them prison is home. A roof over their heads, hot meals and entertainment. Life is better behind bars than out. So they have to do what ever they can to stay there.

A survey done in 1991 by the U.S. Department of Justice on State Prison Inmates helps to support this theory. In 1991 10% of the 35% of parole violators returned to prison were returned for just a technical violation of the terms of their parole. Some of these inmates had their parole revoked for failure to appear to his or her parole officer. Some failed drug tests. These statistics help to support that some of these men and women are addicted to prison life, thus doing even minor things to get sent back.