Collective Trauma in Jails and Prisons

By: Anonymous

Incarcerated people often find themselves in prison due to childhood trauma that has followed them and made their lives particularly challenging. For some, the trauma was rooted in the family; for others, the schools or other institutions. These challenges – social, emotional, medical, and economic – can have l ed to the transgressions that landed them in prison. Mental health issues are plentiful in prisons, with high numbers of incarcerated individuals prescribed psychiatric medications that sometimes help, sometimes harm, and sometimes have little impact. Too, there are people in prison with lesser traumas, similar to those of us who are not incarcerated, so we should not assume that all incarcerated people are rife with individual trauma.

That being said, no matter what the individual trauma that incarcerated people may bring with them to the prison facility, it is collective trauma that bonds them once they are there. 

While I have never been incarcerated, and cannot speak from experience, as an educator who teaches in a prison, I have been told of the challenging circumstances that incarcerated people face on a daily basis. To begin with, being locked into a cage with absolutely no autonomy is dehumanizing. Incarcerated individuals tell of the degradation they feel because although they are adults, they are treated like children, being told at what time to eat (and what to eat), what to wear, when to shower, and when to be where they need to be at any given moment. 

Independent thought is discouraged as is any effort to stand up for oneself. Incarcerated people are separated from their loved ones and for those who are parents, this is particularly painful, as this separation also renders family members of the incarcerated powerless and heartbroken, exacerbating the shared trauma of families and communities. One of the more egregious complaints heard by incarcerated people is the total lack of privacy, even while bathing, at which time guards can wander through the showers. Frequent strip searches add another layer to feelings of violation and lack of control over one's own body. Those who inhabit jails and particularly prisons feel delegitimized as people and this feeling grows over time, despite one’s ability to adapt. 

Human relationships deteriorate inside of the walls of a prison: people become fearful of whom to trust and whom to confide in. Worse, the guards’ treatment of incarcerated people can be hostile and cruel. Those inside of jails and prisons are referred to by their last name or ID number, with attempts at individuality crushed. The jangling of the guards’ keys, commands being shouted at them all day long, coupled with the bickering among other incarcerated people is nerve wracking and an assault to any modicum of personal space or privacy. Incarcerated people are made to feel, as one formerly incarcerated person told me, “like monsters.” 

This particularly unfortunate set of circumstances faced by all incarcerated people is the base for collective trauma. Whatever their situations may have been prior to coming to prison, whether they held a prestigious job or were unhoused, they are all exposed to the harshness of the prison world.

For those working with incarcerated individuals, it is important not only to understand the individual traumas faced by these people, but the way that their collective trauma affects their day-to-day lives, their sense of purpose or lack thereof, and their ability to persist. Finding ways to support healing becomes a vital challenge.

Through focused training in collective trauma and healing, professionals and volunteers who work with incarcerated people can become acquainted with how best to undergird their work with empathy and strategies for bringing humanity to a place where there is so little. 

Collective Trauma in Schools by Esta Montano, Ed. D.

Esta Montano is a veteran educator who has worked as an ESL/Bilingual teacher and school and district administrator. She was also the director of the Office of English Language Acquisition and Academic Achievement at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

Those of us who are educators are long familiar with terms such as “trauma informed pedagogy” or “trauma sensitive classrooms.” We are aware that many of our students bring their own traumas in their figurative backpacks, and although we do not need to know the specific trauma that each child has experienced, it is critical to understand that trauma affects access to learning as well as a child’s overall wellbeing. We know that ignoring trauma is not in our students’ best interests nor in our own.

Having worked in urban schools for nearly 30 years, I believed that while not an expert,  I was, nonetheless, fairly well versed in how trauma affected my students and able to create trauma informed environments for youth and children. I was not aware, however, of the term collective trauma. It has been in learning about collective trauma that I have deepened my knowledge of how this phenomenon can and does affect teaching and learning and the overall school environment.

In simple terms, collective trauma, while related to individual trauma, refers to entire groups or populations of individuals who are simultaneously affected by similar events which cause trauma and therefore, harm, at the group level. By providing a few examples, I aim to give you an understanding of how collective trauma can be impacting your classroom or school building, without you even realizing it. 

Perhaps most easy to understand at the current moment is the manner in which ICE raids are affecting our students. If you work in a school district with large numbers of immigrant children, (or those who are the children of immigrants), you have seen the destruction that the fear of family separation has caused. At present, this does not just affect undocumented immigrants, but all immigrants who are in ICE’s crosshairs. If your classroom is composed of a number of immigrant children, you may have noticed their irregular attendance, inability to concentrate, dysregulation, weepiness, or high levels of distraction. Children who fear arriving home to find that their caregivers have been taken away lose their ability to focus, and when this shared experience affects more than a few children in your charge, then you are effectively dealing with collective trauma. This will make teaching more trying for you, as you struggle to deliver instruction to children who are living a nightmare.

Another way in which collective trauma can affect your students is neighborhood violence. If some or all of your students live in an area where weapons are prevalent, then they may have been exposed to the violence that guns can visit upon them and their families. Children who are not allowed to venture outside of their homes for fear of what might happen develop a collective mentality, or trauma, characterized by terror. While some children may try to normalize gun violence as a defense mechanism, others will come to school somewhat jumpy and ill-at-ease. Should you have a critical mass of children in your classroom who are affected by this situation, you may notice behaviors that can be directly attributed to it.

Racial trauma can also affect those who suffer from it at the collective level. Schools that have a significant number of Black and Brown students without their comprising the majority will no doubt be affected by daily microaggressions and other forms of bias and discrimination. Schools that prioritize the needs and feelings of white, middle class students are not designed for children of color, and this systemic mismatch takes an enormous toll on the children who are impacted by it. Educators often wonder, as Beverly Daniel Tatum noted in her book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, racial trauma has directly affected this population and “sitting together” is one way to seek collective strength and healing. I use the title of this book to draw attention to this seemingly innocent but common bias that demonstrates how many white teachers fail to understand this collective coping mechanism in the face of racial trauma.

As you observe your students’ behaviors, try to reframe your understanding of trauma to include collective trauma. This shift in thinking can be instrumental in helping you to better respond to your students and the collective obstacles that may be affecting their capacity to engage and learn.Description text goes here

by Susan Sered

The Institutional Circuit

Trauma and PTSD are mantras running through nearly all my conversations with marginalized and criminalized women in the Boston metropolitan area over the past fifteen years. Most of the forty or so women I have come to know describe themselves as living with trauma and PTSD, or even as “being PTSD” (sic.). They speak fluently about the traumatic experiences they have had and how those experiences shape their lives. Trauma and PTSD, for many, has become a core component of personal identity.

Most of the women have spent years cycling through the institutional circuit made up of medical, correctional, welfare, and social service agencies and programs. They have been in individual and group therapy, outpatient and inpatient therapeutic programs, and myriad “trauma informed” institutions from the time they were children well up into their forties. Their self-descriptions as trauma victims echo the language and assessments of the many therapists, caseworkers, attorneys, clinicians, housing specialists, probation officers, prison staff, etc. who treat (or punish) criminalized and marginalized women for their individual problems.

The Appeal of Trauma

I don’t want to minimize the trauma these women experienced over their lives. Many were sexually abused as children, or physically abused or neglected. Many were out on the own at young ages, vulnerable to exploitation by older men, boyfriends, and drug dealers. They have dealt with homelessness, loss of custody of their children, repeated sexual violations, serious illnesses and injuries. They also deal with arrests and incarceration which in and of itself exacerbates trauma through strip-searches, lack of privacy, pervasive yelling and threats, and family separation. I have written about these and other horrors throughout my website.

In this essay, I want to zoom in on a particular issue: The way the women, as well as their therapeutic mentors, talk about trauma. The language of trauma offers confirmation that the horrors one has experienced are indeed true and horrible, and many women find comfort or even pride in that acknowledgment. At the same time, trauma discourse individualizes the problems both in retrospect and in the present. I commonly heard sentences like, “The therapist told me that I have to learn not to make bad decisions.” “I learned I have a habit of choosing the wrong men.” “I have to stop being a ‘shit magnet.'” And, most problematically, "I have to stop blaming others or 'the system' for my problems."

There is a lot to unpack in these declarations, but for now I want to emphasize the individualizing framework for talking about their experiences. In prison and drug treatment centers and homeless shelters women spend nights and days with other women who suffered in similar ways. Yet the message drilled in nearly every therapeutic encounter is that it’s wrong to blame your suffering on others or on systems (that’s “denial”) and that it’s best to avoid getting wrapped up in other women’s misery. Repeatedly I’d hear statements like this from a woman just out of treatment or jail: “I need to focus on me. Like on an airplane you need to put the oxygen mask on yourself first. My weakness is that always try to take care of others and get distracted by their problems, but to get better I have to come first. It’s me time.” [This is an amalgam of phrases and sentences I’ve heard from many women.]

For most marginalized and criminalized women there are no good choices when so many outcomes are determined by factors beyond their control (such as changes in funding for specific types of housing programs, SSI payments that are insufficient to live one.) And being a ‘shit magnet’ may be unavoidable when you lack secure housing. But contrary to the therapeutic wisdom, there often is great value in helping others – that’s how one builds social capital (a safety net) that can be drawn on during the really hard times. Unfortunately, throughout the circuit of therapeutic and corrective institutions and programs these connections are identified as “unhealthy” and women are told to work only on themselves.

Collective Trauma: A New Model

In contrast, collective trauma recognizes that experiences of violence and disruption often impact groups or populations – and not simply unfortunate individuals. These experiences may lead to long-term health and social challenges at both individual and community levels. Recognition of collective trauma allows for deeper understanding of how identifiable social forces (for example, gender-based violence) harm whole communities or populations. Thus, rather than seeing oneself as an especially unlucky ‘shit magnet’ who always makes bad decisions, one can join with others and explore the social structures and policies and circumstances that traumatize whole groups or communities. Most importantly, that recognition is the first step to meaningful collective healing.

There is a lot more work to do both in terms of understanding and developing this model, and in terms of teaching and disseminating it. But for the first time in a long time I feel that I’m able to use language that makes sense: collective trauma acknowledges both individual pain and the collective nature of the sources, experiences, and solutions to pain. That acknowledgment facilitates respect and compassion for individuals together with a commitment to working together to address the social policies and structures that continue to hurt and traumatize.

Prison Education - Google Slides