Modifications of the Prison Environment – Postulates Inspired by Evolutionary Psychology

The conditions of imprisonment in Polish prisons make it difficult to achieve the goals of penitentiary social rehabilitation. Adaptation to prison conditions, which occurs especially as a result of long-term stay in a closed-type prison, results in disadaptation to the conditions in freedom and usually leads to degradation of the prisoner’s personality. An important reason for this is the unnaturalness of a environment. It is almost totally incompatible with human nature due to its radical difference from the environment in which the human mind evolved. In the article, the authors present an initial evolutionary oriented diagnosis of environmental factors responsible for low effectiveness of penitentiary social rehabilitation. The article contains also suggestions of modifications that may increase the level of its effectiveness.