The period of adaptation in the places of imprisonment is accompanied by the complex of experiencing as a «prison syndrome».

Aim of the study is to find out predictors of adaptation in prison.

A cohort of 70 inmates was studied by psychiatrists in prisons of Russia, all of them had committed crimes of violence.

A “prison syndrome” reveals the state of depression, hopelessness, melancholy on a house and relatives with sense of guilt before them, disbelief in the forces, impossibility to find former status, passivity, apathy, decline of vital tone and drawings, sleep disorders, loss of interests. Factors of successfull (or unsuccessfull) adaptation could be divided into two groups: subjective and objective. Subjective are personality features: age, emotional reactivity, special features traits such as a resourcefulness, ability to manipulate by interests and necessities of people, physical force, vital experience, «experience» of criminal activity, amount of previous convictions and serving the punishments, participation in the former crimes, including the relation of condemned to prisons administration, to the educating measures, to the prisons mode, labour, studies and feature of conduct in the period of investigation, court. The objective factors are behaviours term on the sentence, article of the criminal law, belonging to the informal group, system of relations and microclimate in prison, physical and psychical health of condemned.