Dreaming about
prison

A prison takes away the two things most of us never think about until they're gone, which are the right to leave and the right to decide how you spend your day. So dreaming about prison usually means you feel that something has taken those from you. It might be a job you can't afford to quit, a role in your family, a debt, or a promise you made that has turned into a sentence. And sometimes the jailer is you, punishing yourself for something you still feel guilty about.

The dream usually tells you which. Did you know what you'd done, or were you locked up for nothing? Were you on your way in, already inside, or climbing over the wall? Those details, and the week you had before the dream, decide the reading.

What dreaming about prison means

Most prison dreams are about either guilt or being stuck, and a smaller, quieter group turns out to be about rest.

A situation you can't walk out of

The most common reading is confinement with no crime attached. You're in a cell and you have no idea why, which is how a long caring role, a contract or an exhausting relationship can feel from the inside. English talks about marriage as a "life sentence" and about "doing time" in a job, and the dream takes those jokes literally. Compared with dreams of being trapped in a room or a lift, prison adds rules, guards and a fixed term, so it fits situations with an end date you're counting down to.

Guilt that wants a verdict

If you knew exactly what you'd done, the dream is closer to a trial. Something you said, a lie, a betrayal or just a corner you cut at work has stayed with you, and the dream hands out the punishment you think you deserve. Ask whether the sentence felt fair, because a harsh one for a small offense is how a lot of people judge themselves.

Time out you secretly want

Now and then a prison dream feels oddly calm. The cell is quiet, nobody needs anything from you, meals arrive. If that was your dream, it may be pointing to overload more than to restriction, and the part of you that would take a locked door if it meant a week of peace.

Dreaming about going to jail

Going to jail is the most searched version, and the arrest is often the center of the dream, with the police at the door, the handcuffs and the walk out in front of colleagues or neighbors. That public moment is the key, and it's usually about being found out, a worry that people will discover something you've hidden (a mistake at work, a debt, a part of your past), even if it's nothing illegal. Being arrested for something you didn't do points the other way, to a sense of being blamed unfairly, at home or in the office.

Dreaming about being in prison

Already being inside, with no memory of the arrest, is the dream of a situation you've been living with for a while. Pay attention to the cell itself. A crowded cell suggests you feel stuck among people who are in the same boat (a team on a failing project, siblings caring for a parent), while solitary confinement points to loneliness or to being shut out of something. Many people dream of being in prison in the months after a big commitment, like a mortgage or a new baby, and that rarely means regret, just a mind getting used to a life with less room in it.

Dreaming about escaping from prison

Breaking out is a dream about wanting to end something before its time. How it went matters. A clean escape suggests you already know the way out and are close to taking it, while being caught at the wall can mean you doubt you'd get away with it, or fear what people would say. For more on the chase that often follows, see escaping.

Dreaming about visiting someone in prison

Seeing someone you know behind the glass is about how you see them right now. You might feel they're stuck and you can't reach them, or that they've done something and should pay for it. If the person really is in prison, the dream is simply your daily worry about them showing up at night, since dreams follow what you think about most during the day.^[1]

Dreaming about prison according to Jung and Freud

A prison is a building for keeping people out of sight, which is how both men's ideas get in.

Jung: who is in the next cell

The shadow, for Jung, is everything you've refused to own about yourself, pushed out of sight so thoroughly that it can turn up in a dream as a stranger.^[2] A prison dream is that idea in brick. Read through it, the question is less what you did than who is in the cell beside yours, and whether the guard locking the door was also you.

Freud: the sentence as a way out

For Freud a dream was a disguised wish,^[3] which looks hard to square with one that locks you up. The quiet cell is the easy case, a week nobody can ask anything of you, with a sentence to excuse it. Over a harsh sentence he would ask what the punishment buys, since once the term is served the thing you did is settled.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of prison in dreams

Prison in the Bible

The Bible's prisons are mostly places of unfair waiting. Joseph, jailed on a false accusation, ends up interpreting the dreams of two fellow prisoners, Pharaoh's butler and baker, and asks the butler to remember him when he's freed (he forgets, for two years).^[4] In Acts, Paul and Silas pray and sing in their cell at midnight before an earthquake throws the doors open.^[5] Read alongside a prison dream, both stories are about holding on through a sentence you didn't earn.

Questions to ask about your prison dream

The reading turns on why you were there and how you felt about it, so start with these.

• Did you know what you'd done, and was the sentence fair?
• Who arrested you, or who saw you being taken away?
• Were you alone, or with other prisoners you knew?
• Did the prison feel frightening, or strangely restful?
• What in your life feels like a sentence you're serving at the moment?

When you describe the dream to Oniri, it asks things like these first, because a cell you deserve and a cell you don't are two different dreams.