Incarceration allows for removal from problems outside; however, a different set of challenges comes into the lives of the incarcerated individuals. Overcrowding, understaffing, prison culture and conflicts, as well as sometimes staff triggering of significantly tense situations contribute to negative experiences. Facilities meant to strengthen the address of the criminal deviance are highly debated, but overall serve to argue in favor of the ideas of abolitionism over broadening of incarceration practices.

Within the prison environment coping and adaptation behaviors result in tendencies to align group belonging based on age, sentence length, and overall similarities among each other. Violence and having to stand up to bullies are noted as daily realities for the prisoners. Affordance of minimum basic standard to prisoners is challenged by the overcrowding noted to be a cause of increase in violations of prisoner rights. Deterioration of prisoner mental health during the span of their sentence or during only still awaiting their trial makes resolve of prison crisis more difficult to achieve. Mental health supports found in prisons are quite often observed as inadequate and moreover also understaffed.

Furthermore, perplexing is the distancing from families and other support networks with some incarcerated finding contacts with their family more distressing than the actual lack of visitations before release. Social support tends to be found as important and assures that incarcerated individuals have supporting others available to them to better withstand stressful conditions and retain their wellbeing as opposed to remain in struggle with social isolation and lack of human interaction in correctional settings.

Simultaneously, inability to meet established standards of holding capacity raises concerns of interpersonal and intergroup tensions detrimental to mental health and overall health of the prisoners awaiting trial or serving their sentence. Instead of staff oversight, harm reduction and in some cases cultural sensitivity approaches, prisoners commonly experience lack of certainty and consistency, lack of communication and lack of choice. Communication – noted to necessitate provision of means to facilitate prisoners under stress – as an ability to reach staff and others and ability to receive adequate response as something forthcoming in prisons is often absent or inadequate. ¹

Male and female prisoner experiences can be similar and simultaneously significantly differ. As men resort to gym prison culture with attempts to withstand bullying through pumping iron and pursuing big and masculine physique, as well as deciding on shaved head for more stereotypically prison association from the very time of entering, women experience particular problems around their caring roles and separation experiences hence many women are single and primary caregivers when it comes to their lives. Ethical dilemmas around women in custody promote discussions around non-custodial sentences whenever could be found appropriate.

Harshness of prison conditions, toughness of the regime, treatment of prisoners and prisoner human rights need to be taken into account, as well as alternatives need to be explored as opposed to strictly deciding on a custodial sentence. Moreover, nature of the offence, the offender, circumstances that could be found mitigating, other considerations that could have been imposed on the offender and purpose of the sentence must be thoroughly considered. Cesare Beccaria’s work that set the foundations of classical criminological thought discussed the extents and approaches to imprisonment and punishment to conclude in unacceptability of barbarity, cruelty and overall unjustified severity of punishment as forms of address of crime within society to make the correctional and criminal justice system a spectacle deprived of reaching of true aims. ² Sentences that could include unpaid work, alcohol and drug treatment, rehabilitation activity requirement days in cases when non-custodially sentenced are engaged and talk about their problems, gambling, and other addictions, as well as community alternatives such as food bank participation could be found beneficial to reducing the strain on the penal system and the unnecessary elusion from purposes of correctional and criminal justice systems.

Life sentences are noted to contribute to complex groupings within prisons whereby some non-lifers align with and integrate into lifer culture hence should the person they have offended against did not survive the crime they have committed they would have been serving a life sentence themselves. Overall many prisoners are seen to resort to keeping their head down and focus on time served rather than engaging in chaos and nonsense.

Developmental activities made available in prisons are seen as generally positive resources for incarcerated people and allow them to focus more on things that the incarcerated are generally not accustomed to outside. While these tend to allow to self-reflect and enable changes to own life, the availability of those resources can once again vary based on severity of overcrowding and understaffing that overall dictate whether activities and other resources are delivered to reduce the risk of reoffending and facilitate comprehensive correctional services to individuals relocated from broader society.

Violence within the detentional and correctional facilities becomes described as the inevitable once incarcerated and pushed to the limit. Overhousing, guards inflicted pressure, triggered violence and bullying can set already vulnerable inmates against the guards and each other. Overall, such results in fights breaking out as opposed to a meaningful correctional experience envisioned by the incarcerational facilities and the penal system.

Silences around experiences, institutional failures, and incidents further add to the entirety of complexity of the detentional and correctional facilities. As much as silence can be voluntary or legal, forced or therapeautic, all of those point to a deeper and existential resorts to silence. Furthermore, studies conducted around women’s enactment of silence and the silence around their experience brought attention to the realities of notions of unworthiness, untellability and unbecoming. ³ Institutionalized penitentiary system raises questions of sufficiency of response rates to incidents, access to peer support workers to women in prison, lack of communication and address of lockdowns to facilitate more humane treatment of prisoners and space issues due to units that have been designed to hold 8-12 bunk beds, not equipped and not meant for the overcrowding ending up to hold 20 prisoners. In 2025, Ontario Ombudsman pointed out that the prison crisis has been a particular sound of the alarm in the past years. ⁴ Overall, damage significantly increases in times of incidents which occur due to prisoner behaviors themselves or some other disruptions and the coinciding searches. As a result, serious trauma is perpetrated upon the inmates. Non-responsiveness to the inquiries and requests for information bring up the concerns of prisoners continuously being left without communication about their condition in times of threat to their security, health and wellbeing such as assaults leave prisoners to guard for themselves. “I received a few calls from the women about an incident that occurred last night at about 800pm.”, says the support staff informer in communication with The Second Chance Foundation. “…apparently, a man jumped the fence”, continues. Concluding, “…entered the unit with a weapon. The women in the unit confronted him, and also got assaulted by him. The women fought him off and he exited the unit. They attempted to call MCCP…” [article author clarification: Main Communication and Control Post] “…but they in turn got disregarded.”

Extensive research on holding cells, detentional and correctional facilities that addresses the suicide rates and wellbeing of the incarcerated notes that issues in design result in potentially lethal environment around the globe. ⁵ Moreover, the type of committed crime does not reliably indicate individual’s likelihood of engagement in self-harm behaviors. ⁶ Systems such as environment, social, cultural and personality and extent of impulsivity, as well as Michael Grossman’s deprivation theory highlighting problems of racism, social isolation, loss of control and social stigma are all predetermining to extent of likelihood of self-harm. Environmental factors that pertain to trauma are further interlaced with situational perception and objective realities of surrounding experienced by the incarcerated individuals. Overall, these inevitably showcase the observed complexity and problematic of challenges faced by the correctional institutions and advancement toward attainment of a successful criminal justice system.