Hybristophilia aside, it’s hard to know for certain what motivates prison workers to fall in with inmates and sometimes, as a result, make risky decisions. Speaking to CNN, Dr. Casey Jordan, Criminologist and Professor of Justice and Law Administration at Western Connecticut State University, said that in these instances, anxiety over aging could be a factor. “[T]he loss of excitement in their lives is somehow filled by the attention of a Bad Boy … they act just like a teenager and take unimaginable risks without any care of how it will end,” Jordan said.

Dr. Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Associate Professor of Psychology and of Psychiatry at Yale University, added (via CNN) that human behavior is complex and there may be many reasons why someone would choose to enter into a relationship with a convicted felon. It’s also possible that over time, free individuals who enter into romantic relationships will change their minds. “[D]epending on what motivated the behavior or psychiatric conditions they have, it absolutely could be when they’re out of that context, or something else happens in their life, that they realize the error of their ways,” Baskin-Sommers said.