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Organizations cooperating in the resocialization activities of penitentiary institutions, represent and lend credibility to the requirements and moral demands that provide the basis of coexistence between the individuals of a free society. Resocialization commences in the penitentiary institution and is continued after discharge. Without this process, there is a great chance that instead of social integration, resocialization focuses on prisonization, which refers to the “process wherein people incarcerated tend to take the elements of culture that are part-and-parcel to the institution (e.g. values, norms, beliefs) rather than the broader society (Clemmer, 1958, p. 299).” There is a strong correlation between the tasks of the inmate related to the specific world of the penitentiary system, its system of values and norms, and less to the civilian world “outside.”
In the past decades, there has been an increasing demand on penitentiary institutions not just in Hungary but elsewhere, to develop programmes that facilitate the retention and development of physical and mental skills which contribute to self-knowledge and can help inmates realize a life more in conformity with society’s requirements. The goal of education within the prison setting is to ensure that inmates are given the skills to enable them to pursue further training on release in order to live a “good and useful life,” as Walkin (2000) quotes in Watts (2010). Inmates are held within an artificial world in which the rules are different from those in the outside world. They have to follow all rules and regulations. These rules are intended to ensure safe custody, decent living conditions, and fair treatment during the incarceration. Also, the situation of inmates is distinctive due to the fact that their lives are built up of a chain of interrelated requirements: They act upon orders and are commanded to do each activity; the institution specifies requirements not only about what they should do, but also about how they should do it (Czenczer, 2008). Due to this unique circumstance, their perspectives and problems tend to be specific and narrowly defined, focusing mostly on the passing of time. Due to permanent exclusion from society, the inmates’ self-esteem and self-worth, living skills, and communication skills may decrease, but it should be emphasized that often this is so even when they arrive at prison. “Many prisoners are emotionally and mentally unstable with low self-esteem and negative, defensive attitudes…” (Watts, 2010, p. 62).
Non-governmental organizations, churches, and helpers work to help prisoners cope with these problems. The activities deployed by the institutions are closely related to those associated with everyday routines, with the goal of resolving tensions, developing character and self-knowledge, in addition to mitigating the prison’s incarcerating and isolating effect. “Their influence helps lower tensions within the institution and mitigate the prisonization impact, and a more direct and active relationship with the outside world promotes a more fruitful integration after discharge…” (Visher and Travis, 2003, p. 89). Reentry into society can be achieved if the inmate’s personality undergoes positive change, that is, during the term of the incarceration and punishment they develop an awareness of social usefulness, a feeling of responsibility for taking control of their own fate, they voluntarily and actively cooperate in shaping their life, and their independence increases. For this it is inevitable that the prisoner’s mental and physical condition as well as their general and professional knowledge are maintained and developed (Ruzsonyi, 2008).
A basic task of the penitentiary is to rule out and mitigate environmental effects enhancing antisocial propensities, as well as to delimit the opportunities to act upon antisocial needs. Ruzsonyi (2008) highlights the importance of mitigating disintegrational effects (prison harm). This primarily means “…the decrease of so-called “history” of damages (a history of victimization, a low level of intelligence, low qualification, illiteracy, functional illiteracy) and prison harm…” (Czenczer, 2008, p. 22).