Becoming a victim

When people are behind bars for a long period, they become what people call institutionalized. They don’t know how things work and function on the outside. Because they are locked down they become so used to the daily routines that they would not know what to do without it. Those effects of long time incarceration are well shown in Rita Hayworth's shawshank redemption. The inmates of shawshank are put behind bars metaphorically but also literally.
Inmates are divided over different levels of isolation in the prison. An inmate could be serving his time in a regular cellblock, a highly secured cell or in isolation. A person who spends most of his time in isolation becomes institutionalized in a different way than a person that spends most of his time in a regular cell. In the book you can see that long time incarceration has effect on the prisoners. There are inmates that have isolated themselves and are hiding their true identities. From the inside they are insecure and they don’t know if they can function in the normal world on the outside. They became victims of the prison system. An Example of someone who became a victim of the prison system is Andy. Andy’s sense of hope is extremely admiring during his time in prison. Although he is in this horrible place where he spends most of his time in his prison cell, he still remains hopeful. Andy knows that freedom is coming closer every day, and that gives a man hope in this kind of place. This sense of hope is extremely admiring if you think of the fact that he was put in prison as an innocent man. In the book Andy says: “Before I came here, I was as straight as an arrow.” And that is exactly what long time incarceration does to people, they make people less straight then they were before. So when they are finally released they can’t function properly in the outside world. You can say that hope had a big effect on Andy during his time in prison. Another person who was in prison and is effected by the prison system is Red. Red is one of those persons who became a different person because of spending several years in shawshank. And when he came out, he didn’t know if he could function anymore in the outside world. That is an effect that long time incarceration has on humans. If someone is locked down for a long period they are so used to the system that they do not know how things function on the outside. Red sees Andy as a part of himself, the part that could escape from the prison. Freedom is something Red wants the most but at the same time he is frightened of it. You can say that people who have been in prison for a long time become frightened of the outside world. Freedom is something Red dreamed of for a long time, but he was frightened of it at the same time and when he was finally on parole he had trouble finding his way