The Consolations of Going Back to Prison: What ‘Revolving Door’ Prisoners Think of Their Prospects

Abstract

Thirty-five in-depth, face-to-face interviews were carried out with sentenced male prisoners shortly before their release from prison. All but two of them had been incarcerated on at least one prior occasion, and had served an average of five previous prison sentences. A quarter of them had been flagged by the prison staff as being at risk for suicide or self-harm. The study was designed in partnership with the users' involvement group of the Revolving Doors Agency, a voluntary sector organization that provides services to ex-offenders with mental health problems. Although the principal objective in setting up the study was to explore the factors that influence help-seeking for mental distress, the respondents talked more generally about their problems, concerns, and expectations on leaving prison. Fifty-four percent of them were re-interviewed four to six weeks following their discharge date. While most faced multiple social problems, a dominant theme in their accounts was positive thinking about imprisonment combined with fatalism (or defensive-pessimism) about coping with obstacles such as homelessness or substance addictions, and distrust of “helping” professionals. This article discusses the contribution of such thinking patterns to the phenomenon of “revolving door” prison sentences.