What Is Prison Mentality?

One of the most alarming aspects of this book is the author’s mentality. Throughout the book, Hassine appears to be quite the well-rounded individual. He specifically regarded the prison mentality by saying: “If you throw a prisoner in a dark cave, he’ll learn how to see. In fact, if you give him enough rats, he’ll get fat. You can try feeding him cockroaches to punish him more, but he’ll eventually get fat on those too. As some inmates boast, ‘What doesn’t kill me, only makes me stronger (Hassine, Irwin, Bernard, McCleary, & Wright, 1999).” This quote displays Hassine being highly self-aware of his environment. As the book progressed, so did a sense of realization of the predicament that Hassine is in, in terms of incarceration. As Hassine described in the quote above, prisonization is a process, a difficult process, but is one that can be adaptable. The way Hassine described the prisonization mentality was approaching the topic with a more human perspective. This book gave me more insight to the inmate’s mentality correlating to the prison structure. While taking

Prior to conviction, Hassine had invested a majority of his time in studying and practicing the law. Thus, had given the audience a highly educated impression, even before grasping the material of the book. While reading, Hassine appeared to be very knowledgeable and highly intellectual when he spoke with and analyzed his situations. For instance, Hassine addressed the readers: “You live in a normal world with all of its normal worries, such as whether your train will be on time or whether you will be late for work. A brief glimpse of our frantic faces may disturb your normal world for a moment. Will you assume that everything is really alright and go back to reading your newspaper? Or will you try to get help to those passengers who, in final analysis, are fellow human beings on the train of life (Hassine, Irwin, Bernard, McCleary, & Wright,