Is Azkaban as efficient as we think it is?

This post will be entirely related to the Harry Potter fandom. Join me as I take the famous Azkaban and start extracting points and signs that may be linked to psychological distress. I also wanted to include my critical opinion on the Ministry of Magic.

Azkaban Overview

The overview consists of basic points I wanted to make in order to get to theorizing what psychological effects Azkaban has on its inmates. Let's start by gathering enough information by looking at its origins.

• Azkaban is an official Wizard gaol.

• It is a castaway fortress on an island located in the North Sea. 

• Owners: the British Ministry of Magic took ownership of it sometime after its owner and inhabitant died leaving the place undiscovered until the concealment charms surrounding the property started to fade thus, turning the Ministry’s attention to it. 

• Its Origins: the fortress was built somewhere around the 15th Century and was once home to its former resident, a dark wizard by the name of Ekrizdis. The purpose of this dark and mysterious lot, in the time of its original resident, was used to lure muggles onto the premises where they would be brutally tortured and killed. Ekrizdis used concealment charms that kept it hidden and unknown and any muggle who’d sail across the location would unfortunately meet his-her untimely death as did other countless sailors.

Historical background and Further detailed Information

Once its owner passed away, the p lace was left neglected. By time, the concealment charms in its surroundings began to fade leaving the fortress visible to all and plottable. (seen also by muggles and initially included in maps if discovered) Eventually, the Ministry caught up with it and discovered it. Upon investigating the fortress, wizards found a number of barbaric remains of acts. One of those discoveries was none other than the Dementors themselves. The property remained abandoned and unchecked for a while, a number of years, maybe even decades. The international statue of Wizarding Secrecy (led by the International Confederation of Wizards whose law was to safeguard all the Wizarding community from muggles worldwide) however, changed all that. 

Note

Azkaban is quite a very complex establishment to explain and so I intend to do so by sketching out an overall breaking down of how Azkaban is run and also explore its living arrangements, conditions and servicing purpose as a prison. Below is a picture which I shall use to explain myself. The picture is taken from Pottermore and perfectly layers out an operational diagram of Azkaban. I will start from the bottom then work my way to the top cells and discuss numerous effects which I believe took place within the building in question. 

This picture was taken from Pottermore and slightly changed.

First up is Augustus Rookwood. He was first discovered to be a Death Eater because Igor Karkaroff exposed him and his position. He was said to be ruthless in combat and not hesitant to attacking. Temperance with the Ministry and its confidential affairs resulted into severe punishment as it made possible the chance to corrupt the Ministry and its resilient power. I would argue that the punishment could have been more severe because they tend to give harsher punishment when it involves those in control of the Ministry and the Ministry itself in any way but also, with a downfall of the Ministry and its sacred, established laws, everyone would be in serious danger. Another thing one should look to is that Rookwood concealed his criminal identity and managed to get away with a lot for a long time. Such breaking of rules also involves regulations given to all who do get employed as ministry workers meaning that he also broke laws which are tied to his job such as the privacy and leaking of highly restricted information that no employee is to reveal to anyone under any circumstances. Rookwood also didn’t just leak information to fellow Death Eaters, but also delivered news to Lord Voldemort who aimed to take down the Ministry. 

On the next level, there’s Dolohov. For those not too familiar with this one, Dolohov was actually a very loyal and skilled Death Eater. He was merciless and committed various atrocities with no remorse or hesitation. He was highly arrogant and had a habit of engaging in more than one opponent like some other Death Eaters did. He liked challenging powerful wizards as well and this significantly tells us that he had a kind of unaverred self-confidence. This Death Eater was cruel and tortured many. He was convicted of torturing muggles and the murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett. He was extremely powerful and, in my opinion, is considered to be one of the ‘inner-circle’ of Death Eaters, like the Lestranges. 

Then there’s Bellatrix and Rodolphus, most likely also Rabastan Lestrange. Let’s start with the brothers, shall we? Much like Bellatrix, they grew up in a household which prided itself on its blood purity. Their father was a supremacist and was one of the first Death Eaters and also a member of Tom Riddle’s gang in school. From my observation, I see them as having a personality disorder, including Bellatrix. This is a type of mental illness which includes having trouble perceiving people and surroundings, it affects any social situation and mainly affects ‘the self’. I see the brothers, and Bellatrix as having rigid and unhealthy patterns of thinking and behaving in any given environment. People who tend to have this disorder are described as having emotionless, blank and expressionless eye contact. The three of them were very sadistic, cruel and aggressive. Sadism may also be found in sexual environments where those with the disorder inflict pain on their victims and feel sexual pleasure from it. With their mentality already pretty much understood from my side, we can now look to their abilities and capabilities. At very young ages, the Lestranges, along with Barty Crouch Jr, managed to perform the cruciatus curse and torture the Aurors Alice and Frank Longbottom to an extreme. When calculating the exact ages of the three, including Barty Crouch Jr, who participated in the tortures, I got these as a rough sketch and result to how old they were when they carried out the crimes the committed.

Wizarding War 1 span: 1970-1981

Bellatrix 

Born: 1951

Age Range (between) 20-30

Rodolphus

(Bellatrix’s husband, who seems to be the second oldest)

Born: Pre-64

Age Range (between) estimated 7-17

Barty Crouch Jr

Born: 1962 

Age Range (between) 9-19

Rabastan

(Could have been the same age as Barty Crouch Jr but most likely was younger)

Born:Pre-64 and the younger Lestrange

Age Range (between) 7-17 

My assumptions are that they were ranging from ages 17-29 years old. Scary enough as it is, they may have even been younger than seventeen as it is also a possibility. Upon further research, I found that the both of the Lestrange brothers were around seventeen years of age by the end of the first wizarding war.

The way in which they tortured the Longbottoms served more than evidence of clear symptoms and signs of personality disorder. During their tortures, they must have felt a sense of fulfillment and joy, a pleasure in seeing them hurt, in breaking their bones even, who knows? They left the both in a deplorable condition and the height of their magic left profound, devastating and permanent effects which changed the lives of both Aurors and sent them to St.Mungo’s for the rest of their lives. Their cells were set in the perfect levels because they got enough share of cold waves and visits from Dementors.

Barty Crouch Jr, being imprisoned possibly a level above due to the shame his father felt that he brought to the family. I think his father went a bit too far with denouncing his son in the manner that he did. It almost felt as though he wanted to further please the crowd and give the on-lookers something to recognize, that is; his power. From this level up, the punishment found its seriousness in more frequent dementor visits which was just as bad but what I see is that the dementors were used in a very sick way when choosing how to imprison the criminals. If you found yourself in the bottom cells, you’d have a cold, wet environment with dementors sweeping past. If you were located any higher, these visits would be on a more constant basis. 

From Hagrid up depended on the number of incarcerations and attacks. Assaults were highly punishable, including counter-attacks on ministry officials and mass murderers were also sometimes preferably punished in higher cells. 

The fortress is cut off from any form of civilization or society and stands surrounded by nothing by an ocean which signifies that all sentenced to the prison were truly exiled. The location in which it exists has numerous concealment charms on it and, on top of all that, there also is an anti-apparition jinx, which rationally seems to be the only form of transportation out of Azkaban as flying around it with a broom was practically impossible and other methods out of the question. This may be a bit debatable as we have to take into consideration all possibilities of getting in and out of the prison. The dementors’ visits torment the inmates and slowly starts to ‘eat away’ at their sanity as their minds are no longer theirs to occupy and function, giving way to constraining the right to an uninvaded mindset. Thus, they could never re-socialize broken identities and remove criminal identities. The Ministry, therefore, is committing its own crimes against its community and its people. The Ministry gives us an indication that it imposes its dominant ideology, taking little care of how they favor some over others and how they partially are to blame for any form of crime especially big ones involving imprisonment and carrying out sentences. The dementors were the worst decision ever made which wrongfully took the sanity of all and the lives of some. They were stripped of their humanity as their conditions inside the prison included them battling the dementors out of their minds on a daily basis. Plausibly, their minds would be diluted in all sorts of bad memories of events which causes them to lose touch with reality and forget all other emotions and life-cycles such as childhood which, to most, is supposed to be nostalgic and, on the whole, good. Psychological insecurity begins to take place and sanity becomes insanity.

Prison changes people by altering spatial, temporal and bodily dimensions, weakening the emotional life of prisoners and heavily undermining their identity as they no longer seem to hold one. So, one naturally has to ask him-herself, what are the psychological impacts? Does it cause mental disorder? What is the link between the environment and the prisoner like? Etc. Prisoners are usually disassociated from their own bodies. Security measures within the prison have special requirements and one common example of this is, for instance, no mirrors. As psychologically phrased, inmates are deprived of the elements that forms the basis of social exchanges and identity recognition, that being, our face. Their only form of social exchange is potentially a dementor’s kiss which proves fatal and is deadly. One key factor of prisons is to eliminate any emotions leading its prisoners into emotional impasses since emotions cannot be disassociated from our identity and play a critical role in our psychological well-being. Paranoia also takes place and those affected by it become suspicious of their surroundings, even having the fear of not being free to actually think, not excluding the fact that these prisoners never get out of their cells resulting into loss of basic functioning. I assume once out of prison, due to the evident lack of proper imprisonment, there’d be new and more severe issues for them to combat including traumatization. In addition to this, prison would have served as only further breaking these identities and personalities causing them to be fragile, immobile and incapable of leading what is referred to as ‘a normal life’. 

To conclude, I would like to add that this is my personal sketch of what I think Azkaban prison actually did. As you may have already noticed, my argument on the subject is not so much of a positive one and, with good reason, I think the Ministry has had its fair share of mistakes that it’s made. I repeat what I stated earlier in this post, that the Ministry favors some over others for instance, look at Umbridge, although the Ministry took into account her ‘crimes’, they also were very gentle with their punishment and, of course, she was also protected by the Ministry itself because she was a senior undersecretary AND was also picked to be Hogwarts’ high inquisitor. (Did you hear that? Basically, the Ministry is stepping over whoever would have qualified for this position just cause Umbridge was recognized as a Ministry official. Not even the School Authority itself could have a say in that.) It is unfair to take life chances and opportunities at the expense of others and there is a visible imbalance that emerges. We can see two groups, those being the oppressors and the oppressed. You didn’t fail the system but the system certainly did fail you because it considers itself without considering your contribution to it being there in the first place. In other words, you gave more than you earned.

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