Image courtesy jjie.org By Dianne Frazee-Walker. "Not 'guards'," admonishes Hoidal gently, when I use the term. A truly innovative, thought-provoking and engaging text, Why Prison? Our tax money is spent building and maintaining these institutions and supporting what goes on inside them. Cigarettes have helped prisoners manage their stress and boredom in the absence of other more meaningful supports. The entire argument for private prisons rests on cost-savings. If they can't, they find themselves in protective custody which translates as months of numbing isolation in solitary confinement. Prison education also breaks down racial and ethnic barriers that are often a cause of tension and violence in prisons, significantly improves relations between staff members and the incarcerated, and dramatically enhances the prisoners’ self-esteem. Inevitably someone comments (and not always politely) that I'm "soft on crime," that I don't care about victims. IN PRISON.....You can watch TV and play games. By Christopher Zoukis, MBA | November 21, 2014. Sleep. Here’s how. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that we take better care … Suggest that the way to end recidivism is to reform the prison system, and you might be accused of caring more about criminals than the crimes they commit. Why Scandinavian Prisons Are Superior 'Open' prisons, in which detainees are allowed to live like regular citizens, should be a model for the U.S. Doran Larson September 24, 2013. Thanks for the A2A. But the human costs -- to inmates, correctional officers, victims and society in general -- are too high to be ignored. Community and Intergenerational Benefits They are often overcrowded and smelly with the soup of open toilets, the effluence of crammed together bodies under stress with little or no physical or personal space. Bastoy prisoners … But private companies still loom over their time there. Private prisons are the problem, not the solution. Training in real employable occupations is essential. Another good news is that open prisons in the country are witnessing a measured shift in their upkeep. Prison reform is focused on ensuring public safety and restoration for those impacted by crime through the creation of a constructive culture within our prison system. While it is good that dealers and users are off the streets, perhaps it may be more beneficial to send them to a drug rehabilitation center. Studies have shown that 31 percent of correctional officers meet "the criteria for full PTSD" (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder); that the average life expectancy is 58 years old, and that correctional officers have a 39 percent higher suicide rate than any other occupation. What are prisons for? That’s a big question which requires a long answer. The reformed prisons of the 1800s, with their new emphasis on rehabilitation, were invented to destroy the criminal personality and bring to life a new law-abiding identity. They are used for taking away a person's freedom, as a punishment for breaking laws. Good prison research is a commitment, not a ‘hit-and-run.’ Perhaps it is time for researchers to reframe their approach and move away from ideas that are saturated with normative ideologies that are based on notions of law and order, and instead begin to see prison research as … Découvrez comment nous utilisons vos informations dans notre Politique relative à la vie privée et notre Politique relative aux cookies. Prison overcrowding stems from long sentences and many minor crimes resulting in prison terms. But it goes beyond the everyday level of physical discomfort for COs. A prison (also known as a jail or gaol (dated, British and Australian English), penitentiary (American English), detention center (or centre if outside the US), correction center (American English), correctional facility, lock-up or remand center) is a facility in which inmates (or prisoners) are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state. You can call it soft. Even those of us who are not personally caught in the web of incarceration are affected by the prison system. AT WORK.....You get rewarded for good behavior with more work. Critics have long questioned the quality of private prisons and the promises of economic benefits where they are built. Of course, the economic watchdogs will howl. It's happened to me. Huge floor fans only moved the suffocating air around, offering no relief, and only adding to the noise. They are, in this country at least, cramped, depressing and often violent. As temperatures soared, the heat in the hallways and cell blocks of the older buildings of the prison where I taught (luckily with an air conditioner supplied by the school program) was insufferable. The prospect of prison is a … Original appeared in Gandhi's Be Magazine. You can read the winning (and excellent) essays here. The noise is deafening. AT WORK.....You must carry around a security card and unlock and open all the doors yourself. Private prisons are certainly direct beneficiaries of more prisoners and longer sentences. Teacher, Author, "I Don't Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup", Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter. For example California spends on average $47,421 per inmate a year while the average spent per student a year is only $11,420. Since the ‘War on Drugs’ began, many prisons have become filled because of drug-related offenders. (A telling tweet is going around Twitter that sums it up for many states, "The people of CA are tired of Cadillac prisons & jalopy schools. We need to create prison conditions, both physical and psychological, that encourage cooperation on all sides and that supports change as opposed to conflict and calcification of negative behavior. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? The need to be hyper-vigilant, the defensive stance engendered by the institutionalized hostility of the prison power structure -- "us" and "them"; the keepers and the kept -- takes its toll not only on COs, but also on their families. And support services must be established that help ex-offenders meet the demands of "going straight.". It is less often said what it means for a prison to “work”. We know that the majority of prisoners serve time in publicly run systems. Colored people who commit the same crimes are not treated the same way as white people would be. Today is National Voter Registration Day! Given our present prison system with its emphasis on punishment and retribution, everybody suffers. And even so, while the U.S. prison system should exert some amount of punishment, our prisons irrationally exert it on prisoners to the point where it counterproductively causes more harm than good. When you look at these conditions honestly, without the filter of righteousness --"that's what they get for breaking the law" -- how could you not see that the present system (the very thing people insist will deter crime) only breeds anger and resentment, hostility and hopelessness in offenders, and finally leads to more crime? But are they good for our society? In the UK prisons try to help prisoners get some skills that make it easier for them to fit back into society as law abiding citizens.