I get flashbacks about it … just how the violence is. One participant explained: “I’m trying to change my life and my thinking. Participants described experiencing flashbacks and being hypervigilant, even after release. Responses to witnessed violence behind bars can result in post-traumatic stress symptoms, like anxiety, depression, avoidance, hypersensitivity, hypervigilance, suicidality, flashbacks, and difficulty with emotional regulation. “I just kept pouring the bleach in it, and pouring the bleach in it, and then I would mop it.” As the authors succinctly state, “the burdens of violence are placed not just on the direct victims, but also on witnesses of violence.” “I used so much bleach in that bathroom … I just couldn’t look,” one participant recalled. Some participants were even forced into direct, involuntary participation, by being required to clean up blood after an attack or murder. Participants in Novisky and Peralta’s study discussed graphic, horrific acts of violence they had witnessed during their incarceration: stabbings, beatings, broken bones, and attacks with makeshift weapons. However, even inside their cells, people remain vulnerable to seeing or hearing violence and being victimized themselves. Novisky and Peralta’s findings echo previous research revealing that incarcerated people often “feel safer” in their private spaces, such as cells, or in a supervised or structured public space, such as a chapel, rather than in public spaces like showers, reception, or on their unit. By design, prisons offer few safe spaces where one can sneak away - and those that exist offer only a small measure of protection.
Violence behind bars is inescapable and traumatizing These traumatic events affect health and social function in ways that are not so different from the aftereffects faced by survivors of direct violence and war. They also described the lingering effects of witnessing these traumatic events, including hypervigilance, anxiety, depression, and avoidance. Participants in Novisky and Peralta’s study reported witnessing frequent, brutal acts of violence, including stabbings, attacks with scalding substances, multi-person assaults, and murder. However, studies like this provide insight into individual experiences and point to areas in need of further study. Because this is a qualitative (rather than quantitative) study based on extensive open-ended interviews, the results are not necessarily generalizable.
They find that prisons have become “exposure points” for extreme violence that undermines rehabilitation, reentry, and mental and physical health.
In their study - one of the first studies on this subject - Novisky and Peralta interview recently incarcerated people about their experiences with violence behind bars. But during their incarceration, many people become unwilling witnesses to horrific and traumatizing violence, as brought to light in a February publication by Professors Meghan Novisky and Robert Peralta. Most people in prison want to return home to their families without incident, and without adding time to their sentences by participating in further violence. And when it does receive public attention, a discussion of the effects on those forced to witness this violence is almost always absent. While these horrific stories received some media coverage, the plague of violence behind bars is often overlooked and ignored. That same month, people incarcerated in the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Massachusetts filed a lawsuit documenting allegations of abuse at the hands of correctional officers, including being tased, punched, and attacked by guard dogs. A civil rights lawyer reported in February that he was receiving 30 to 60 letters each week describing pervasive “beatings, stabbings, denial of medical care, and retaliation for grievances” in Florida state prisons. prisons - five people were killed in Mississippi state prisons over the course of one week. No escape: The trauma of witnessing violence in prison A recent study of recently incarcerated people finds that witnessing violence is a frequent and traumatizing experience in prison.Įarly this year - before COVID-19 began to tear through U.S.
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