Trauma and Moral Injury

People don’t arrive at prison unharmed. They carry wounds from childhood, combat, neglect, and the legal process itself. This chapter documents staggering post-traumatic stress levels in American prisons and asks: Why do systems claiming to address harm respond to trauma symptoms with punishment? In Shakespeare’s Hamlet , a prince’s grief gets labeled “unmanly” and dangerous, catalogued by spies. In Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street , a Chicana girl watches police cruise past houses where screaming echoes through walls. Four centuries separate these stories, yet both expose the same truth: institutions designed to heal often deepen wounds, challenging assumptions about punishment.