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Why Is No One Talking About Post Incarceration Syndrome?

The other night I was out on the balcony, getting some fresh air and just, thinking. I’ve recently started to get into researching the school-to-prison pipeline, when I came across this article online about Post Incarceration Syndrome (PICS). Quick breakdown, (to avoid going too far into detail), PICS is a mixed mental disorder with four clusters of symptoms:
  • Institutionalized / Antisocial Personality Traits
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
  • Social-Security Deprivation Syndrome
  • Reactive Substance Use Disorder


Again, not going into specific detail about any of those, but you should definitely check out the article when you get a chance. After reading over it, I started to think about myself and my jail experiences. I had never really thought about it until now, but to me it explained a lot. See, before I started on my little “outlaw” run, I wasn’t the way I am now. Meaning I wasn’t a homebody. Before I was out every weekend or chance I could get to go out. Didn’t matter where I was going, just as long as I wasn’t going to be sitting at home. Loved partying so much that I eventually became a promoter- had some pretty nice events too! However, now? Lol. I prefer the peace and quietness of being on the couch all day, or the company of a few close friends. Have a few brews with the fellas and kick back and shoot the breeze all night. It takes an entire army to get me out of the house now lol. But that made me start to think how my “Now” actions, were very similar to jail life.
Float with me on this….
While incarcerated, you’re stripped from all of your privacy. You can’t even use the bathroom without someone being able to see or hear you do you personal business. You shower in the public, with only a shower curtain separating you from splashing water on the same table that you eat on. There is no light switch because the guards control the lights. No solid doors to stop the sound from the youngins having a studio session with a live band or the older cats running a sports talk show at 3 am. You eat when food is brought to you, (breakfast is at 4am in Roxboro), sleep when you can, wish you could go outside and think about how much you’ve messed up and just ready to get out. Having always being watched, either by a camera, the CO or another inmate, you find yourself always on the lookout. Just because you know where you are, you have to stay on your toes. There is no relaxing in jail, and over a period of time, that really starts to mentally wear you down.
After having your privacy taken away for so long, that when you finally get out and get it back, you become somewhat overprotective of it. Erecting mental and emotional walls to stop anyone or anything from compromising it again. You now avoid crowds of people simply because of how the prison environment has trained you to believe that you must always watch your back. So used to being alone that any other form of human contact seems abnormal. Being locked away from the rest of the world, you start to learn how to really enjoy your own company-But that’s not always a good thing. It’s actually a pretty scary thought isn’t it? What’s even scarier is that no one is talking about it!
As a black male who battles with depression, and who has also seen how the jail industry operates, I’m guilty of it myself. I don’t talk about it; don’t mention it. Never wanted to get help with it. However, given the increasing number of inmates and prisons being built. How big of an epidemic mental health has become, wouldn’t now be the perfect time to bring it up? Wouldn’t now be the perfect time to talk about how inmates are being trained for public isolation? These jails, prisons and detention centers are being used as mental disorder breeding camps. The battle isn’t just stopping them from getting there, it’s making sure they get back to who they REALLY were when they get out.


-theComfyMisfit
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