This past Thursday we got to the unanimous conclusion that violence should not be a part of our prison system and that it can be prevented. At this point, I would like to shift the focus on a different aspect. Probably, all of you heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment. As a quick overview, Philip Zimbardo a Psychology Professor at Stanford University created a mock prison. All the participants in the study were college students who volunteered to be part of the project. The students chosen to be prisoners went through the whole process of being arrested, booked, fingerprinted, placed and held in a cell. Their hair was shaved and each prisoner was forced to wear a heavy chain bolted to their right ankle. The guards were also college students who did not receive special training, but were advised to maintain the law and order in prison. The experiment was stopped after only 6 days because the “guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” So my question is: Is it the setting that makes people violent, or people in a position of authority become violent?
Going back to our last week discussion about language, do you think that if we change the name of this institution and the people associated with it, we are taking away their authority? What would be the options of a new guard who doesn’t want to abuse his/her authority, if the other guards pressure him to go against his/her beliefs? Do you believe that more women correction officers may help reduce violence? Are prisoners more likely or less likely to comply with orders received from women correctional officers? Do you think that violence can be reduced and prisoners better rehabilitated if we create a more liberal prison model, such as prisons without cells and no tick walls (just some fences)? Is it even realistic to aim for a violence free prison system when we live in a violent world (the yesterday Binghampton shooting is just one example)?
Please feel free to take this in any direction you would like or to express your ideas and/or concerns on the topic.
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14 comments:
Octavia,
What a wonderful discussion you presented on this topic!! And what interesting questions you pose. I strongly agree with Professor Stein and have thought about this many times before. I strongly do not think that police officers or correction officers should only need a requirement of 60 credits. I believe that they should be required to have at the least a bachelor’s education. I can’t even imagine what they could learn in their major when 60 credits are mostly General Education requirements. I think it would be far fetched to have a prison system with simply some fences because of individuals that have committed such heinous acts as the Binghamton murders. However, I do think that this type of opportunity should exist for juveniles and citizens that have committed less serious offenses. To have a violent free prison is impossible because violence is part of our everyday society. However, this does not mean that we shouldn’t try to minimize the violence at the best of our capacity. One more thing I would like to add is that I don’t believe that Corrections would ever change their name to something less authoritative such as Guardians as Professor Reitz had mentioned. I don’t believe they would change their name because it would attract a different kind of staff. A type of staff that is more willing to help the inmates. I think that they try to maintain and attract staff that is less appealing to the inmates. This would be a huge step to help change the way prison systems are operating and I am for it!
Octavia, you remind us of how inadequate our class time is: so many interesting, unanswered questions! I'll throw a few thoughts out there (other than my argument about raising the pay, which I think is key). Maybe it is just the juxtaposition of our recent classes, but hearing President Travis talk about the inevitability of re-entry just before we talked about the problem of violence in prison led me to think of Herb Sturz's "double utility." Maybe a portion of all people working as "sherpas" (formerly known as "corrections officers") should be former inmates who have gone through training (of course). It would provide job opportunities for a hard-to-employ population and would bring to the environment a necessary understanding of the "point of view" of the incarcerated population. As Kerry-Ann so fantastically said last class, there is often a socio-economic connection between the populations (officers and inmates) and there is certainly a shared experience (including but not limited to the shared culture of violence that exists in/before/after the prison experience). I know that the knee-jerk reaction would be "the inmates are running the asylum!" but I'm advocating making them only a portion of the sherpa population. And maybe this actually happens somewhere -- so if any of you more involved in the CJ world know of an experiment/study, say so.
One additional thought about women in charge. My gut is that it would make a positive difference (and we read something last semester during Greta's week that indicated that female wardens create positive cultures in certain settings). But literature gives many examples of the "female of the species being deadlier than the male" (Kipling) and I'm going to teach a course next fall on "Desert Island Stories" (crass promotion alert). One of the works takes THE LORD OF FLIES and puts girls on the island rather than boys. It is the most violent, repulsive piece of fiction I have ever read. So much for our inner Martha Stewarts (herself a "formerly incarcerated citizen"!).
Both the setting and the power dynamic make prisons violent places. The nature of incarceration is so severe that of course it is met with resistance and a lack of cooperation leading to high tensions. Given its severity I think incarceration should be used as a last resort after alternative measures are taken. I also think the atmosphere within prisons needs to be changed. Rather than enabling idleness, prisons should encourage participation in groups, and programs and provide more opportunity for the improvement of the individuals incarcerated. Along with better training and benefits, corrections officer should take on a new attitude towards the people in their care. Perhaps this attitude should be that of case managers or social workers rather than as militaristic authoritarians.
Changing the titles and the way we refer to prisons, prisoners, and corrections officers might eventually effect the conception of such institutions and people. These institutions and people do function within society and, although somewhat removed, have very strong ties to both the communities surrounding them and the communities of those incarcerated and working there. I am also troubled by the labeling or grading of prisoners according to the violence of their offenses. While I do acknowledge that some crimes are more severe and aggressive than others, assigning such labels should not be necessary in properly run detention centers. They may also have the effect of a self fulfilling prophecy, making those labeled violent more behave in accordance with their title, and the corrections officers react more harshly.
(I am just coping with losing my post, twice, so work with me!)
Thanks Octavia for a great post! I think that we all agree this much that needs to change about our prisons!
While I agree with Greta that prisons need to be used as a last resort and that there needs to be a reduction in idleness, I also think that much of these programs should be geared towards the family.
To quote (paraphrase) President Jeremy Travis, programs do not really change or form who one is, that is what happens in the family/home. Therefore, I think that programs should not only be made to include the family (and friends, whatever one's network happens to be), but also that the invasive (and often embarrassing) routine of getting into the prison should be somewhat amended so that this is not a major deterrent to those visiting. Many studies have shown that those in contact with family on the outside have a lesser change of recidivating, so what is it that programs maintaining these connections are cut (which I had learned last semester at LAC).
While going through some paperwork at NDS, I came across TONS of files on a murder case. The client, while in prison, was told (by another inmate), “most people in here get out and have no one. Either no one wants them around or they don’t want to be around anyone, so they runaway”. This client did not want that to happen to him, so he started doing whatever he could while in prison in attempt to prevent this from happening.
Second, I feel that much about the environment needs to change. I agree with what everyone has said about the environment so far, but I think there are simple things that can make big changes (especially psychologically). In the Legal Action Center’s Blueprint for Criminal Justice reform, they advised that the atmosphere of parole offices/waiting rooms be changed. They stated that the current atmosphere only deters rehabilitation by being markedly institutional. Thus, I believe that the same should be done to our prisons and jails. What harm could come from doing away with the sterile, “no frills” motif and replacing it with one that is inviting and comforting? I guess I support the liberal, rehabilitative model.
Octavia,
Such a rich post with so many interesting questions. First I think that there is this myth that violence is necessary for control; we see this not only in prisons but in political systems, intimate and familial relationships. I see the utilization of prisons as representing what society may call legitimate violence for mantaining control and order. However, as Kerry-Ann, Renee and I spoke after class, we saw prisons as modern days forms of control over the poor, especially minorities.
Education: In situations of power and control, I disagree with the comments made that more education will somehow humanize individuals. Education sometimes may do exactly the opposite. Education is a broad topic and we have seen with the controversy over the role of APA in Guantanamo that education of psychology and how to break people down psychologically was systematically used for torture. Propaganda is never based on just lies but a kernel of truth. How can we also forget, the invisible hand of power, the true elite, are among the most educated.
However, I think that education that mirrors the Vera Seminar and the ISP courses and John Jay is actually a gift becuase 99% of the world never gets a chance to discuss ethics, humanizing, the psychology behind perpetrating, the role of the invisible hand and probably the most powerful thing that we have learned-Things are never black and white and the victim may be the oppressor.
The role of language is tied to dehumanizing the person, the individual. This happens within prisons when inmates are given numbers and all of them wear one uniform, it is to strip someone of their individuality. Again such tactics of dehumanizing have been used in history during the Holocaust, the Vietnam War and in the "War on Terror"
Women: This is so interesting to me that we speak of women. I also do not necessarily agree that if more women will reduce violence. If women are granted the opportunity, women can be as violent. I looked at the role of female guards at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in a book called "One of the Guys" in which women participated wholeheartedly in the torture. Matter of fact the general in charge of Abu Ghraib was a woman. Therefore I think we should be cautious of thinking that placing women within the prison system will somehow humanize the system. In addition just becuase women are not given the social permission of being physically violent does not mean that women do not find other ways to inflict violence on someone.
What a great topic - I can't believe I missed out what was surely a fantastic conversation! When I read through our reading, the first thing I thought of was the education requirement to become police/correction officers. I agree with Liz that a stronger education requirement can help reduce violence by expanding the viewpoints of officers. Education is the invisible hand of power, but I think higher education would help distribute that power.
My second suggestion would be similar to Greta's: introduce more rehabilitative and vocational programs in order to aid prisoners in reforming their life not just lock them up and throw away the key.
And Prof. Reitz, is the book you're talking about called John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins?
People by nature are cruel and malicious and given the right circumstances our natural characteristics can manifest into an ugly beast. The prison system is a perfect recipe for this kind of disaster. People go to prison on the premise that they have done something bad and therefore need to be punished. They are regarded at this point as outcasts, both by society and by the prison guards. To the prison guards, society does not care about these “bad prisoners” or what happens to them, therefore, why should they? Furthermore, these prisons are normally in remote areas, away from “law abiding citizens” which helps to foster a sense of detachment or isolation, further straining the relationship between prisoners and guards. Take for example, Lord of the Flies, where a bunch of youth stranded on an island and were without laws, committed some of the most heinous acts against each other. We can even consider the recent stampeded that happened last November on Black Friday at the Wal-Mart in Long Island that killed one man. Or even the most recent stampeded that happened at the audition of Americas Next Top Model, hosted by Tyra Banks, which landed six people in the hospital. Also, one can even consider how people react when they are waiting in a long line to be served, whether at the restaurant or grocery store. Now we must remember that these aforementioned circumstances involve people who are not prisoners, yet the reactions, whether subtle or extreme are not completely civilized. My point is, just as we teach a baby to share and not to hit others, so must we teach people to act civilized, because it does not come naturally.
Though education alone cannot bring positive results, there need to be incentives, such as people who are in prisons truly believing that when they are released there will be opportunities for them and that their release is contingent about their good behavior. Likewise, for prison guards who may believe that no one is watching, need to be reminded by society that society cares about these prisoners because it has a vested interest, since these prisoners will be reentering into the community at large.
I agree with Darakshan- I don't think education will change the amount of violence, It may change the type of violence.
In fact, I am stubbornly convinced (like I said in class) that as long as we operate prisons and jails we will have violence. (not just violence- a lot of really terrible, cruel, unjustifiable institutional abuse) It doesn't matter in my mind whether or not we have Sherpas, women, mice (hitchhiker's guide, anyone?), or yoga instructors running the show.
I hate violence. I'm an educated progressive minded "let's-all-hold-hands-and-talk-about-the-problem" type. I wouldn't last a week as a CO. Put me in a situation with an inmate bent on trying to get under my skin eight hours a day five days a week, AND- since CO's often have their own pecking order- where my superiors are waiting for me to screw up- see that I don't turn into the devil himself. I couldn't do it. Maybe there are many fabulous CO's who are much stronger than I am, but we see some crack from the outside. (who the hell knows what its really like when no one is watching, especially if you are young and pretty or have a big mouth)
That is why I am a strong advocate of confining as few people as we can as a society. Open the cell doors for non-violent drug offenders, those in jails or convicted of vice crimes. If we do this, however, we need to open the doors to very many more community based organizations. (Only then do I say, bring out the Sherpas)
- Speaking of Sherpas, I don't know if anyone else was a fan of Zefrank's video blog, but he did a whole bit about using fear as a tactic to draw support for oppressive regimes. He choses to refer to "warlords" as "fuzzy bunnies". He smiles: "try ruling with fear as a fuzzy bunny"
Yes, Ridhi, the book is John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins -- have you read it? In what class, pray tell, was such deviant reading assigned!?!
Dear Vera Fellows,
I’m not sure anyone will see this post since I took so long to get to it. But once again, I want to extend kudos to all of you for another set of thoughtful comments, inspired by Octavia’s lead and questions…..
I’ve decided to use Darakshan’s format using subheads of Education and Gender to put in my two cents on some of the issues raised. My thinking coincides with many of Darakshan’s points so I won’t elaborate too much!
Education: In my view, education is a necessary but insufficient condition for the kind of social change/social transformation that’s really needed to make any kind of substantive difference. Just as you can’t get ahead without education, getting an education in and of itself is no guarantee for success. Awareness (education) alone does not guarantee enlightened social policies or practices. Our beliefs about this are steeped in Enlightenment thinking—and is deeply engrained in our (Western) world-view.
Don’t get me wrong. I think knowledge and awareness and education are essential, but as I’ve just stated, that alone will not bring about more humane, reasonable, or rational policy. And to Darakshan’s point that “99% of the world never gets a chance to discuss” the kinds of things we do in this course (including making more visible the “invisible hand of power”), I need to say that this is exactly what drives my desire to be an educator and what is behind the design of every course I teach.
In a scholarly article I wrote with a John Jay graduate (Antigona Kukaj was a student in one of my classes; the title of the article is “Reflections on Teaching Social Violence in an Age of Genocide and a Time of War”), I wrote the following:
PREPARING TO TEACH SOCIAL VIOLENCE: AN EDUCATOR’S MOTIVATIONS (ALISSE WATERSTON)
In a discussion on “Speaking Truth to Power with Books” the great activist–scholar–teacher Howard Zinn told an audience of anthropologists that “the most crucial issue with regard to writing is: What in the world does it do? What effect does it have? Does it help change the world?” Zinn posed the same questions about teaching: “The first decision a writer has to make, it’s like the first decision a teacher has to make,” he said. “Why am I doing this? And in what way is it going to help people, or am I doing it just to advance myself professionally?” These questions inform a pedagogical approach in which scholar-educators are committed to making the world a better place and to conceiving of and creating “a future built on different principles than the present.”
Women: I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that it is more about the social conditions that give rise to behavior rather than some essentialist quality such as gender. Primo Levi, the brilliant memoirist of the Holocaust, wrote about human behavior among the prisoners in the concentration camps—behavior that we might not consider “moral” or “upstanding” (see his piece called “The Grey Zone” in The Drowned and the Saved—just brilliant). BUT he points out, “…the GREATEST responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the….state; the concurrent guilt on the part of the individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate” (emphasis mine). How different is any prison? It seems to me the point was very well made in the Stanford Prison Experiment (http://www.prisonexp.org/) in which the researchers purposefully chose ordinary young men—not those prone to violence or aggression—and showed how under the right conditions, anyone can become the oppressor, can become violent and virulent, and engage in dehumanizing behavior. This does not mean to say that I believe human beings are essentially violent in nature (that old essentialist argument given a big boost by Thomas Hobbes in the 17th and more recently by socio-biologists). It does mean that I believe that human beings have the capacity for altruism and selfishness, to live peacefully with justice and be violent—and that it is the social conditions that shape which behavior is more likely to be present and which will recede to the background.
I wonder what our world would look like if society were organized around a human rights framework rather than a competitive market-place framework. It’s funny. As I was writing this, I just received this article in my email: “The City that Ended Hunger” http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=3330&utm_source=15apr09&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=i11_Belo
I do not agree that we are cruel and malicious by nature. I do believe we have some violent instincts (for example, hunting to eat, wanting to push someone back who shoves us first) but I do not believe that our need to be cruel and control others (in this case, through violence) is natural. Our class discussion and all of the posts bring to light an argument I’ve had in my mind over and over: does the setting make the person, the person make the setting, or is it a combination of both? Seeking “higher caliber” individuals to take corrections officer positions in order to improve the prison environment seems to ignore the impact of the environment itself on a person’s character. (I also wonder what might happen to all of the people who typically become correctional officers once they are no longer qualified according to the new criteria.) Then again, recruiting more educated individuals might change the environment inside the prison so that it does not have such a negative impact on employees. Whatever the answer is, a gap needs to be bridged between prison reformers on the “outside” and employees within the prison. Both of these groups should be working together to achieve change. We need to hire individuals with goals to improve the functioning of prisons, not with a goal of controlling prisoners.
I do recommend reading the book that was mentioned in class: “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing” by Conover. It discusses (among many things) the training that new corrections officers go through, and I was completely blown away by the techniques (or lack thereof) taught to new officers.
I will not comment at length, although this week's post is well timed for me. I happen to be teaching the Zimbardo experiment in my "Moral and Ethical Dilemmas in CRJ" course this very moment. I wholeheartedly believe that the circumstance shapes the narrative more than any supposedly characterological trait of the actor-as my favorite shrink, Harry Stack Sullivan, said in the 1940s, "we are all more simply human than otherwise". HOWEVER, that does not mean that individual, as well as systemic, solutions don't exist.
I urge you to read "The Good Jailer" about Jeanne Woodford, the first female warden of San Quentin prison in california (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/magazine/the-good-jailer.html?pagewanted=all). Warden Woodford has changed the tenor of the institution in important ways. Clearly, this won't matter much in the long run if there are not changes outside the institution, but that should not take away from the impact of individual repair.
When I posted the questions in my blog, I tried to figure out what the answers would be. Reading through your posts I realized, once more, that in the criminal justice field there is no such thing as a true, single, universal answer. Thank you for your well thought out ideas and answers.
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