Most typical jail inmates are problem-prone due to poverty, lack of education, unemployment, and minority group status. Jail prisoners are faced with four interrelated problem areas: the transition from street to jail which itself is a limbo situation, maintaining links with family and friends, securing stability and sometimes safety in a chaotic situation, and finding activities to fill otherwise empty time. Some jailed men experience a crisis of abandonment if they lack family support. In evaluating his resources, a man may uncover more debits than credits which further diminish an already failing sense of adequacy. Men whose lives have centered on drugs and alcohol are especially prone to such negative self-assessments. Other causes of depression are thinking of opportunities missed while spending idle time in jail and inadequate knowledge about the case and its possible outcome. Self-alienation crises characterized by breaks with reality, hallucinations, and abysmally low self-esteem are not uncommon in jail, particularly among those who are psychologically unstable. Persons cope with jail by forming groups to offer peer support and information, assuming an aggressive manly stance, or engineering transfer to a less threatening setting such as the mental observation block. The stress of jails could be reduced by promulgating minimum standards that address basic jail conditions, increasing client-attorney interactions, involving defendants in plea bargaining or eliminating the process, and revising the money bail system. The paper includes 8 footnotes and 34 references.