The Importance of Social Support during Imprisonment: A Case of Malaysian Drug-Abuse Prisoners

Social support is one of the vital elements for achieving life satisfaction during imprisonment. This study aims to determine the importance of social support since the Malaysian prison population conquered by drug-abuse prisoners affected the prison climate and life satisfaction. The sample was randomly collected from the sampling frame, consisting of drug-abuse prisoners in Malaysian drug cases prison using a self-administered questionnaire. Data were analysed using the IBM-SPSS-AMOS version 25, the second-generation multivariate analysis method of the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings have been reaffirmed by bootstrapping methods. The research echoes that the relationship between the prison climate and life satisfaction is entirely mediated by social support. A study also indicates that social support is essential to transform prison climate and life satisfaction among drug-abuse prisoners. Practical contributions to the Malaysian Prison Department are proposed to design appropriate policies and strategies to improve prison climate and social support to fulfil drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction since Malaysian life satisfaction has become the government's priorities the 12 th Malaysia Plan (2021-2025).


Introduction
Unquestionably, the drug abuse epidemic has exploded exponentially all over the globe. With the globe's dynamics evolving today, the existence of a new synthetic drug and the sophisticated smuggling tactics by drug cartels placed enormous pressure to combat drug abuse (Nazira et al., 2019). One of the Twelfth Malaysia Plan (2021)(2022)(2023)(2024)(2025) is to improve Malaysian well-being by satisfying their life satisfaction (Economic Planning Unit, 2021). Regrettably, since the drug abuse epidemic among drug abusers have not been regularly tackled, this aspiration seems harsh to accomplish. Moreover, drug abuse has been sent to prison dominated the population, creating complexity to deal with the issue. As to date, 61.5% of the estimated 59,187 prisoners are related to drug abuse (Bilik Gerakan Ibu Pejabat Penjara Malaysia, 2021). The growing number of drug-abuse prisoners conquered the prison is a severe issue that needs to be remedied and wanted policymakers' extraordinary attention due to various unproductive human resources, which affected Malaysia's economic growth and development (Economic Planning Unit, 2018).
In order to cope with the circumstances, drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction seems to be an essential aspect of accomplishing the government aspiration, as they are part of Malaysian citizens. Nevertheless, low life satisfaction among prisoners derived from various issues, including ineffective treatment programs (Lee et al., 2021), inequality controlling communicable disease (Fazel & Baillargeon, 2011), drug-use issues in prison (Øiestad et al., 2019), high management cost (Bahagian Pengurusan Banduan IPPM, 2019), and lack of prison staff (Bahagian Sumber Manusia IPPM, 2020). Likewise, the problems arose as drug-abuse prisoners live isolated in custody and are particularly vulnerable to outside individuals (Baharudin et al., 2020b). Ergo, the government must ensure that prisoners' communities have satisfaction with their existing life.
In many nations, prison systems aim to provide treatment to connect in society and not commit crimes. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference in prison functionality in handling recovery, like education, training, and work to achieve such objectives (Allen et al., 2015). Previous research by Buunk et al (2016) reports that prisoners had high sadness and low life satisfaction. In truth, research in the population at enormous reported low life satisfaction could be an early warning sign of a potential mental issue and a long-term impact on the risk of suicide (Koivumaa-Honkanen et al., 2001). Indeed, prison overcrowding remains the most significant challenge to prison authority (Penal Reform International, 2018), affecting drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction.
In particular, the rise of drug-related offences entering the prison contributed to prison overcrowding (Bahagian Keselamatan dan Intelegen, 2019; Omar, 2001). Overcrowding occurs when a prison operates above official capacity (Krishnan, 2013), influencing the dayto-day prison function. The prison management faced obstacles for implement reformatory and rehabilitative initiatives as the number of prisoners beyond the prison capacity. Indeed, the shortage of space facilities, resources, and technical equipment has prevented the prison management from offering prisoners a full range of training, work, and educational opportunities . Overcrowding also brings about prisoners' violence, increased risk of infectious diseases, shortage of accommodation for living, and improper supervision by the authorities (Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, 2016). The scenario troubled prisoners' life satisfaction (MacDonald, 2018), especially among drug-abuse prisoners (Baharudin et al., 2020c), leading to unproductive citizens' failure to achieve their life satisfaction during imprisonment. Furthermore, the prisoners' life satisfaction is the prison management role's outcome from the different prison climate aspects . For example, traumatic incidents (Pavot & Diener, 2008) and severe anxiety, and low social interaction rates influenced prisoners' life satisfaction (Lindstedt et al., 2005). Likewise, prisoners with chronic and persistent behaviour disorders were more restricted to boost their life satisfaction. In contrast, higher well-being and life satisfaction levels can result in the greatness of resilience and quality of life, decreased emotional pain, and better adaptation to imprisonment (Baharudin et al., 2020a;Leidenfrost et al., 2016). Therefore, fulfilling drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction is essential by focusing on their prison climate and social support.
Notwithstanding, prison climate and social support analysis among drug-abuse prisoners are still underexplored to fulfil drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction. The research thereby seeks to determine the significance of social support that might contribute to positive life satisfaction among drug-abuse prisoners. Likewise, to understand the factors that affect drugabuse prisoners' life satisfaction, it will be necessary to investigate the factors that affect life satisfaction consisting of prison climate and social support.
In light of this, the dynamic security model is related to the prison climate. Prison climate does not only rely on passive security, derived from safety and security of cells, fences, walls, and devices, but also require dynamic security, concern on good relations between prisoner and prison officer, and prisoners' activities (Beijersbergen et al., 2014;Snacken, 2005). The model was drawn by Ian Dunbar based on his exploration of the United States and Swedish prison services in the 1980s (Brayford et al., 2010). During his assessment, Dunbar states dynamic security exists when the relationship and individualism come together in planned and purposeful activity, whether in a high or low-security setting resulting in a conducive prison climate (Brayford et al., 2010). Also, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conceptualises a dynamic security model as a combination of the individuals in prison, prisoner and prison officer relationship, and prison activity that needs to be practised by prison authority (Bryans, 2015). Simultaneously, the model points out that prison officers must retain their authority and distinction that concerns prisoners developing effective relationships and decreasing isolation (Worthington, 2012). Often, by being too close to prisoners, prison officers can become vulnerable to conditioning. Thus, they should be warm but not become friends with prisoners. In the context of this study, the relationship between both in prison climate provides social support to drug-abuse prisoners.

Social Support
The social convoy model is a systematic theoretical paradigm of social support (Kahn & Antonucci, 1980) employed in the study. The model has widely been used in numerous studies, such as among the elderly (Fuller et al., 2020), children and youth (Levitt, 2005), and living residents (Perkins et al., 2013). However, it is still under-explored in a prison context.
Collaboratively with social support, the social convoy model is critical in coping with drugabuse prisoner's various stressful daily circumstances, which is applicable as the theoretical basis for this study, focusing on investigating social support gained by drug-abuse prisoners from their friends, family, and others.
In conjunction with prior studies, this model often serves as a sensitising mechanism (Charmaz, 2006) and a primary source for the analysis, emphasising the importance and existence of the relationships among drug-abuse prisoners and their social support. The model also attempts to explain a heuristic structure for social relationship conceptualisation and comprehension (Fuller et al., 2020). In the context of the drug-abuse prisoners, the social convoy model explained social support depending on the network of social relationships based on the familiarity and intimacy of the relationships. Nevertheless, drug-abuse prisoners' social networks are changed due to being sentenced to prison because there is a possibility that certain adjustments and transitions will happen. For example, prisoners potentially experienced shame, psychological and physical changes arising from addicts, and the discovery of secrets that there is a loss, closeness, and alienation. The social convoy model is related to social support, consisting of three concentric circles surrounding drug-abuse prisoners. Each circle takes a unique degree of distance from the individual in attendance (Fuller et al., 2020). First, the inner circle is often seen as the most significant in giving beneficiaries of support. The inner circle is for the people for whom the drug-abuse prisoners experience the closest, which transactions and forms of support at this level connect and go beyond the role's requirements. Second, the middle circle, in which the individuals have a strong affinity and a strong connection than expected by their positions, are more distant than those in the inner circle. Third, the outer circle refers to the people not in a list of drug-abuse prisoners' inner and middle circle but still important in their lives. People will change their positions in these three circles (Fuller et al., 2020) depending on their relationship with the drug-abuse prisoners in daily life.
Drug-abuse prisoners establish relationships and social support from the social milieu. These people play a specific role, such as family members, friends, and others. In this role, drugabuse prisoners experience events as being part of a group or convoy. Negatively or positively, encounters that arise in the convoy setting might improve their understanding of each event's dynamics. The social convoy is also related to the functional and structural characteristics that differ based on the life cycle and affinity feeling significantly and predictable (Perkins et al., 2013). In this study, the social convoy model is practical as a theoretical lens for explaining and analysing the structure and perceived connectedness and appropriateness of drug-abuse prisoners' social support on their life satisfaction. Therefore, the social convoy model considers a crucial theoretical framework in social support for achieving drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction.

Life Satisfaction
Life satisfaction is a cognitive evaluation of individuals' quality of life, and the integral component of subjective well-being (Diener et al., 1985) integrated with the individual goals, accomplishments, and healthy mental well-being (Koivumaa-Honkanen et al., 2001). In broad, life satisfaction is portrayed as having long-term functionality associated with the individual's behaviours, moods, and emotions related to life domains such as job satisfaction, marital status, and finances (Pavot & Diener, 2008). In other words, changes in life domains affect life satisfaction, in which among drug-abuse prisoners, changes from the world outside to prison affected their life satisfaction. Due to change, life satisfaction is often temporary until the individuals cope with the new life domain (Diener et al., 2013).
In many nations, prison management aims to provide related treatment programs to prepare prisoners connected with society and not commit crimes. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference in prison functionality in handling recovery, like education, training, and work to achieve such objectives (Allen et al., 2015). Although prison management faced obstacles providing prisoners' basic needs in line with the Nelson Mandela Rules' standard requirement, it emphasised that prisoners' basic needs should be similar to the community (Penal Reform International, 2020). Likewise, prison management's is also struggling to maintain prisoners' life satisfaction. Previous research by Buunk et al. (2016) poses that a high sadness and low life satisfaction among male prisoners, which affected their behaviour and became an early warning sign of a mental issue and the risk of suicide (Koivumaa-Honkanen et al., 2001).
Concerning this, this study linked the social comparison theory with drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction. Festinger introduced the theory in 1954 to study the individuals' adaptation performed of social cognitive by comparing with others (Ruggieri et al., 2020). The theory involves the psychological mechanisms by which individuals equate themselves with others. It is a hypothesis that there is a drive inside the individuals that allows them to obtain specific self-assessments by contrasting their opinions and abilities to others' opinions and abilities, which attempt to measure themselves (Myers, 2010). Because of the bitterness arising from the unfavourable social comparisons, individuals' can appear to shift towards materialism (Ruggieri et al., 2020).
For instance, if drug-abuse prisoners compared themselves to other better prisoners, they would probably feel distressed, representing their everyday life in prison. Otherwise, if the prisoners equate themselves with fewer resemblance prisoners, it reflects social comparison at the individual level (Gilbert & Meyer, 2003;Olivos et al., 2020;Ruggieri et al., 2020). Prisoners with high self-esteem can engage with other prisoners in prison in social comparison processes at the individual level, and the comparisons should allow them to redefine and improve their life satisfaction. This study is the overall perception of drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction based on their daily life during incarceration, which relates to the prison climate (Mohamad et al., 2017) and social support (Balogun, 2014). Thus, this study sought to explore life satisfaction among drug abuse prisoners' guidance through social comparison theory, which connected prison climate and social support.

Methodology
A cross-sectional research design is applied in this study, which targeted drug-abuse prisoners in Malaysian drug cases prison. The population of 1,460 drug-abuse prisoners charged under Section 39 C, Dangerous Drug Act 1952 (revised 1980) are related to this study, which later randomly selected 457 samples by applying the simple random sampling. The statistical analyses were performed to illustrate the model and test procedures using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method of IBM-SPSS-AMOS 25 for the essence of social support among drug-abuse prisoners in Malaysian drug cases prison. The measurements of this quantitative study were adapted from previous scholars. Prison climate was measured by Molleman & van der Broek (2014) that provides the scale of prisoners' surveys while social support and life satisfaction are measured by the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet et al., 1988) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985).

Validation Procedures
The structure of this study comprises of one construct of the exogenous, endogenous, and mediator. The study has three latent constructs: prison climate, social support, and life satisfaction. Prison climate and social support are the second-order constructs, while life satisfaction is a first-order construct. In particular, life satisfaction is an exogenous construct measured with three components: rights and rules, interaction with prison officers, and prison activities. The mediator construct of social support is measured by the components of friends, family, and others, while life satisfaction is the endogenous construct measured with four items. In addition, Path Analysis in SEM and Bootstrapping were used as the statistical analysis of this study. The conceptual framework is illustrated in Figure 1 that related to the hypothesis of this study:

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework
As shown in Figure 1, this study's conceptual framework was then translated into the Amos graphic, as shown in Figure 2, for data analysis by using the SEM method.

Figure 2: Framework of the Research
Drug-abuse prisoners in Malaysian drug cases prison are the study's target population based on the Malaysian Prison Department's list. In order to select respondents from the sampling frame, the study used a simple random sampling procedure. The respondent was given a selfadministered survey that later the data been analysed using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to validate the measurement model consist of validity (convergent validity, construct validity, and discriminant validity) and composite reliability before conducting the SEM (Awang et al., 2018). Moreover, the SEM is used to estimate the interrelationships between all constructs and test the study hypotheses, the role of social support as a mediator between the relationship between prison climate and life satisfaction. The measurement model in Figure 3 has achieved the required fitness indexes satisfactorily. Figure 3 illustrates the measurement model that has successfully achieved the necessary fitness indexes (ChiSq/df = 2.460, TLI = 0.953, CFI = 0.958, and RMSEA = 0.057) that achieved the construct validity (Awang et al., 2018;Mohamad et al., 2016;Shi et al., 2019).

Figure 3: Result of the Pooled-CFA
As presented in Table 1 illustrate the factor loading, the Composite Reliability (CR), and the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for prison climate, social support, and life satisfaction. The results indicate that the prison climate constructs consisting of three components, right and rules (rules), interaction with prison officers (interact), and prison activities (activity), achieved the level of CV and CR. Likewise, the social support constructs with three components consisting of friends, family, and others and the life satisfaction construct with four items consisting of L1, L2, L3, and L4 achieved CV and CR levels. Thus, the results proved that the factor loading for prison climate and social support components and life satisfaction items are higher than 0.60, which achieved the analysis requirement.  Table 2 shows that when its AVE's square root reaches its correlation value with other constructs in the model, the Discriminant Validity of the respective construct is achieved. (Awang et al., 2018;Hair et al., 2019). In those statements, when the diagonal values (in bold) are more significant than all of the other values in the row and column, Discriminant Validity is achieved. Whereas Table 2 illustrated the tabulated values that comply with the Discriminant Validity threshold. The analysis, therefore, demonstrates that Discriminant Validity is obtained for all constructs. Besides that, the present study's normality assessment was provided by looking at the value skewness and kurtosis for each item. The required level between -2.58 and 2.5 is reached since the skewness estimate ranges in this study are between -1.29 to 0.475, while kurtosis ranges between -1.12 and 1.136 (Hair et al., 2014). It is demonstrated that the data in this study been normally distributed

Data Analysis
The SEM method is performed for evaluating the study hypothesis by using the AMOS version 25. The SEM has corresponding points of interest that can assess the ties represented by indicator variables between latent constructs. In addition, correlations between measurement errors can also be considered, and the recursive relationship between constructs can be calculated.

Result
The interpretation of the R2 (coefficient of multiple determination) outputs of the model illustrated in Figure 3 is explained in Table 3. Similarly, Figure 4 shows the standardised regression path coefficient, and Figure 5 shows the regression path coefficient (unstandardised).    For checking the mediator impact of the hypothesis, the findings in Table 4 are used. The study employed the traditional procedure to analyse social support's mediating effect between prison climate and life satisfaction, as illustrated in Figure 6. The regression coefficient β1 (prison climate to life satisfaction) is not significant, although the other two hypotheses testing for regression coefficients β3 (prison climate to social support) and β2 (social support to life satisfaction) are significant. As suggested by Awang et al. (2018), the result proves that the role of social support is a full mediator, as explained in Table 5. Thus, social support fully mediates the relationship between prison climate and life satisfaction.    Lee et al., 2021;MacDonald, 2018). Because of those issues, the prison climate is not related to fulfilling drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction. Besides, many researchers have stressed that the essence of social support is the mediator in numerous studies (Li et al., 2018;Rahmat et al., 2019;Skowronski & Talik, 2020;Yang et al., 2019). A current study also identifies that social support played a mediator role in the relationship between prison climate and life satisfaction. More specifically, the form of mediation effects was full mediation. The result speaks that prison climate was meaningless for drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction.
Conversely, the attendance of social support as a mediator makes the relationship meaningful. Social support is a vital element for drug-abuse prisoners during incarceration to fulfil their life satisfaction. A current study reveals that life satisfaction declines when they meet a low prison climate level, which can be improved through social support that keeps drug-abuse prisoners motivated even in unfavourable situations. However, it has also been shown that the prison climate has not positively affected life satisfaction. Overall, a study reveals that social support acts as a mediator in the association between the prison climate and life satisfaction.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The purpose of this article was to assess the mediating role of social support in linking prison climate and life satisfaction among drug-abuse prisoners as far as the Malaysian Prison Department is concerned. The study found that social support plays an essential role in the stated relationships. Findings suggested that drug-abuse prisoners in drug cases prison who gained positive social support were satisfied with their lives. The present study also showed an insignificant relationship between prison climate and life satisfaction that can be improved by providing proper social support to the drug-abuse prisoners to fulfil their life satisfaction. Hence, the study's findings confirmed that social support plays a vital role as a mediator between the relationship of prison climate and life satisfaction. Thus, a recent study suggesting the Malaysian Prison Department should enhance social support and improve the prison climate aspect that potentially drives the drug-abuse prisoners to live in prison to fulfil their life satisfaction during imprisonment.
The study's findings contributed to the theoretical and contextual contribution that benefited the Malaysian Prison Department in the sustainable management of drug-abuse prisoners. By applying the model of the study leading to superior intelligence and successful decisionmaking in responding to drug-abuse prisoners' needs and ensuring good order and discipline, which is related to their prison climate, social support and life satisfaction. This study also contributes to the importance of social support, highlighted as one of the critical psychosocial factors that linked prison climate and drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction. Prison authority could stimulate and sustain the prison climate by planning, designing, and developing related strategies such as upgrading accommodation, maintaining basic needs, and strengthening prisoners' rights and rules. Apart from this, it is essential for prison management to improve prisoners' social support of friends, family, and prison officers to fulfil drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction.

Limitation
A recent study's drawbacks are that it emphasises life satisfaction because drug-abuse prisoners in drug case prison. Life satisfaction also impacts other prison settings such as juvenile, crime cases, prison officers, and foreign prisoners. The surveys were also spread across peninsular Malaysia to selected respondents, but not to Sabah and Sarawak, which vary in demographics that do not represent Malaysia's whole. Also, this study used the quantitative method, in which a method of qualitative and mixed-mode is practical to measure drug-abuse prisoners' life satisfaction. For that reason, for more definitive results, the future study should include what was stated in the current study.

Suggestions
Future studies should employ the same model in other residential facilities, such as drug treatment facilities run by private and government. The outcome may slightly differ because of the uniqueness of the climate compared to the current study. Future researchers suggest using other dependent constructs such as personality, resilience, and motivation since it is beneficial and potentially linked with social support and life satisfaction.