Prison presents an underlying answer to a problem our criminal justice system does not want to fix. Criminals are sent through the judicial process and sentenced on a crime that may not call for imprisonment. When they are sentenced to serve time in prison they lose most of their civilian rights. They arrive to the prison with a presented culture or civilian self, and have to take on what Erving Goffman, social ahtropologist, believes to be, the inmate's moral career (or mortification of the self), and become a "new institutional self". The inmates will experience a fundamental change of who they are. They are striped of all possessions, and given universal attire. Each inmate loses their uniqueness or own identity and are usually given a number in replace of their name. All these processes are Goffman's explanation of the inmate's entry ritual. The inmates are usually humiliated, and realize they will look just like the rest of the prison population. The inmates personal identity is no longer there's, and will remain in the hands of the prison authority until they are released (Mauer).
Throughout their prison term, inmates will experience dispossession, and will realize that life for them has changed dramatically. They are forced to demonstrate compliance with authority, and this could subject them to abuse. The inmates also lose security of their own body, which may result in brutal punishments, personal disfiguration, and at times, they may be infantilized. They lose all rights to privatization, and are constantly visible and exposed to the entire prison. This even applies to visitors and packages they receive. The inmates become exposed to new experiences, which in some cases can be unwanted. An example of this is the rooming situation and the environment they are surrounded by. They are confined with people of various ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds, which they may have distanced themselves from when they were in the civilian world.