Moral Injury, Post-incarceration Syndrome and Religious Coping Behind Bars

Having committed a crime and being convicted may shatter a person's integrity and identity. Perpetrators can suffer from moral injury and may develop serious mental health symptoms due to the hard time of incarnation which forces them to live in circumstances of permanent stress and fear. Whether or not these traumas are a result of one's own faults, moral injury and post-incarceration syndrome in perpetrators is an understudied but serious problem. This paper analysis the main characteristics and causes of the problem with the aim of investigating some of the most interesting religious ways of coping with trauma, by focussing on the typical occurrence of prison conversions. We distinguish two clusters of coping effects of such conversions related to the two clusters of causes of perpetrator trauma.
(1) Conversions and the connected forms of biographical reconstruction may foster "moral healing" and the restoration of identity and self-esteem in a environment aimed at de-individuation and stigmatisation. (2) Conversions and the feeling of dependence on a new "root reality" result in a felt liberation from the institutional powers that determine the life of a convicted person.