Well, prisoners have tried suing, and it gets them nowhere as far as I’ve heard. When our leaders try to look as tough as possible towards criminals, and our judges do not give a damn, this is what happens. And its not like we can expect the sociopaths who are the criminals to decide that this is a bad thing that they must stop. How about prison officials? Can they design physical facilities that make prison rape much more difficult?
I despair on this one. America’s visceral hatred of its “criminal element” borders on the pathological, as hatred born of fear tends to do. We’ll get meaningful prison reform right after fully funded day care for low income mothers.
How? Step one: cancel the “War on Drugs”. An absurd number of people are in prison for fiddling about with the chemicals in their brains, or for facilitating same. I make no claim to panacea here, just damage control. If a $100 a day heroin habit costs $10, you may or may not see more junkies. You’ll damn sure see less crime.
Segregate by crime: actual violent offenders, or recidivists with a violent past, get sincere lockdown with little or no opportunity to injure one another, at least until they show that they can deal with General Population. Release petty criminals and such “third strike” victims as are plausible.
Prison rape isnt about sex, its about dominance and power, “you my bitch”, that sort of sickness. That we permit this sort of thing to happen speaks volumes about us as a people, and it aint good. Vengeance is ours, and beyond that, we flat dont give a shit. In the mean time, we pour in buckets of people with poor impulse control and marginal ethics and get back full bore psycopaths.
Maybe he Devil doesn’t buy your soul. Maybe he just gets you to sell him somebody else’s.
First, I think that inmates not serving a life sentence, or inmates with a possibility of parole who do have life sentences, should not be kept in contact with other prisoners. That’s just ridiculous. Take the one group of criminals with nothing to lose and throw them people with everything to lose.
At any rate, I am completely baffled that prison rape happens. I can understand how rape goes on here in the real world because the cops can’t be everywhere at once, but prison is supposed to be a controlled environment. I find it comepletely disappointing.
Secondly, I think that there is far too much socializing in prison. Prisoners should be allowed to converse with cellmates, and maybe they could let a few cells get together, but I think they should totally scrap the common area. I spent the weekend in jail, once. Gotta say that I learned more about crime in those two days then I ever could have anywhere else. Which is fine by me, apart from this infraction I am not a criminal, and certainly not a violent criminal, so the world wasn’t exactly made a worse place by that particular incident, but for every erl spending the weekend in jail there are quite a few others who are not so, well, upstanding (does this sound absurd? lol).
The conversation often turned to one man or another’s outright glee that he was going to be transferred to such-and-such a place, where he could enact some revenge on one guy, or where he could meet his homies, or whatever. Granted, rape wasn’t an issue where I was, it wasn’t a maximum security prison or anything, but if the lamest of jails has this element, what do the bigger jails have?
I shudder to think, I really do. I have a friend who was in a state prison for selling acid (five years, two served then parole), but I never did ask him what it was like.
It’s really, really. REALLY bad. Worse than you think. Read the links I gave.
The man I fell in love with, his name was Don. He was so incredibly jumpy, it was a house rule that I could NEVER surprise him in any way, never sneak up behind him, never touch him unexpectedly, nada. Because if I did, it was entirely possible I’d find myself with a busted nose or worse before he realized what he was doing.
Don had spent almost his entire adult life in a state of perpetual fear that someone was going to try and kill him. They all do. It’s the nature of prison life. (And Don was a guy who had made his rep already by killing a guy who tried to rape him, and still he didn’t feel safe.)
Watch “Oz” sometime. Yes, it’s a little over the top in the details, but it has the basic truth of it exactly right.
quote:**
Originally posted by Little Nemo
It’s not like we order people to extort, fight, rape, join gangs, or kill other prisoners. In fact, we make it clear to all incoming prisoners that we’re against these things.
**
quote:**
Originally posted by Stoid
I guess this means you are a corrections officer? Good to get your input.
What “level” of officer are you? Do you make any policy? Or do you work in some other area of prison? Are you a member of any unions? (Factoid from memory: California’s corrections officer’s union was the single biggest contributor to the campaign to pass 3 Strikes. Hmmm)
What sort of prison do you work in? Min, Max, Supermax, what? What does your prison do to facilitate rehabilitation of inmates? What does your prison do to prevent or punish rape? What does your prison do to prevent other violence, drug use, drug smuggling, etc.?
“Making it clear we are against” them seems pretty vague.
Do you personally approve of the way your prison deals with the inmates? Do you feel good about the work you do and the way you do it?
None of the above is asked as an accusation. I’m sincerely inquiring about your experience, because while I certainly have opinions about our penal system in general, I have no idea what is going on in your particular prison.
stoid
**
It’s been a day and a half now, Little Nemo, and some of us would really like to know your answer to Stoid’s perfectly reasonable questions. Since, as erislover pointed out, prison is supposed to be a controlled environment, how does rape occur so often or at all? I for one would really like to know. If it isn’t the fault of the penal system, the wardens, the guards, then just who’s fault is it. Seems to me either prisoners are guarded or they’re not. Your disclaimer is too vague. If you haven’t bugged out of this thread already, shit or get off the pot. Please.
Um, DesertGeezer, Little Nemo’s post is posted just sixteen hours before yours: It’s pretty reasonable ot suppose that he posted right before he went to be, got up, went to work, and hasn’t had a chance to reply. I’m as eager as your are for a 1st person account, but let’s not make him defensive for no reason.
Here’s one more who does. It’s particularly appalling in these days of AIDS.
It’s also disgusting when comedians make jokes about it. It’s not funny.
I think this may say something about your opinions of conservatives.
I can’t think of anything to add about prison rape that hasn’t already been said.
I think wring expected some dissenting conservative voices because * somebody * has a “tough on crime” stance that often includes more prison, less education, therapy, work training and other “coddling” treatment in prison, and such someones tend to be conservatives.
And the fact is that the rape, torture, murder, drug abuse, racism, and general mayhem of prison life is all of a piece. If we are to walk the talk that everyone is giving here, then we must swallow our annoyance at “being nice” to the criminals ** * in order to serve the greater good of society itself. * **
We must demand, vote for, and support prison reform: training and education programs, socialization therapy, and strict enforcement of standards of behavior that include not forcibly raping each other. Said enforcement must include rewards, not just punishment. We have to set them up to win if we expect them to.
We must treat inmates like human beings with basic human rights and dignity, and show them a better way to be. You cannot treat people like animals, beating them down constantly, control their every movement, leave them with nothing better to do than abuse each other, then set them free with a shabby suit and $100 in their pocket and expect them to go forth and be productive members of society.
And when it galls us that this doesn’t look enough like punishment, remember that we do this ** entirely out of self-interest. **
Certainly there will always be a small percentage of hopelessly nasty people that are utterly irredeemable. But they are in fact a tiny minority of the people in prison, especially when they FIRST end up there. We CAN save them from themselves, from each other, and save ourselves from them.
We must, if we are to call ourselves a civilized society.
Stoid:
I’m with you on the rape in prison issue. I’m also against any crime being perpetrated on an inmate–to include murder or manslaughter–by another inmate.
Your description above about the “rep” is a tad disturbing.
**
I’m not sure how you set up a prison where inmates have basic human rights. Keeping in mind that basic human rights include things like freedom, privacy, free speech, etc. Now of course I would agree that they shouldn’t be subject to assault, rape, murder, or other forms of brutalization. They still have some rights afterall.
As for dignity, well, I don’t know how much dignity one has when someone can look up your asshole for contraband.
But I certainly think there needs to be different prison programs for different prisoners. First time offenders probably shouldn’t be sent to the same facilities with career criminals. The big problem as I see it comes down to cost. How much money is it going to cost for a radical change in the prison system? I guess they’d have to start pilot programs in certain states to see how it’ll work.
Marc
Frankly, I don’t understand why we have to rebuild the system from the bottom up to stop prison rape. Now, I’m not saying that the system ought not be signifigantly restructured, but I think there are better (though perhaps less emotional) arguements for that than “It’s the only way to stop prison rape!”
Even if you had unanimous consent about how the prison structure should be restructured (and equally well meaning people have made convinceing arguements for some very different things) it would take years to rebuild prisons–Like MGibson points out, you have to build pilot programs, and most of the suggestions require new physical facilities.
All that may need to be done, but prison rape needs to be stopped much sooner than that. Years is a long time to be raped daily. Now, I don’t know much about prisons, but I don’t understand why they don’t have closed-circut TV cameras everywhere that inmates gather. Known rapists should be isolated from the rest of the inmates. As far as I’m concerned, they should be isolated permanetly: put them in thier own cells and let them talk across the halls at each other, but don’t let them come into physical contact with the general population for years.
What are other things that can be done to stop prison rape quickly, not a decade down the road?
Sorry I haven’t posted earlier. I’ve been conducting direct reasearch on the current state of prisons in America (ie I’ve been at work).
For those who weren’t aware of this, I work in a prison and have been for the last twenty years. I would have mentioned this in my previous post but I thought it was genral knowledge. I work in security and I’m at what I guess you could call a middle management position. I don’t set all the policies where I work but I do have a lot of say over what happens on a day to day basis. I’ve worked at a variety of different prisons (the most famous being Attica). I currently work at a medium security prison with a strong emphasis on drug abuse treatment (although this program is currently being moved out from the prison I work in to others prisons in the state).
So here’s my basis summation of prison life; it sucks, but it’s not as bad as all that. Prison is not pleasent, but we do not go out of our way to make it less pleasent. Our goal is to keep things quiet and peaceful. But we are all dealing with hundreds of people , all of whom demonstrably are willing to break the law, confined in a small society. So a prison requires a lot of regimentation. Peace and quiet, in those circumstances, requires a high level of control.
On the subject of prison rapes, they happen but, in my experience, are far from universal. Obviously we’re not aware of every rape that occurs, but I have to believe we aren’t missing that many. Prisoners have a strong motive to conceal drug sales, but we catch drug dealers and users. If rapes happened as frequently as drugs are, we’d be catching rapists with the same frequency.
On the subject of rehabilitation, I’m all in favor of it. So is every other prison employee I’ve met. We’re working with prisoners every day; no one is more motive in wanting to make them better people than we are. The problem with rehabilitation is that no one knows how to do it. There are thousand of ideas and hundreds have been tried, but none has been shown to work with even a signifigant fraction of prisoners. The saying in prisons is that no one can rehabilitate a prisoner, the prisoner has to rehabilitate himself. All we can do is offer opportunities and advise, and believe me, we do that in abundence.
And now I’ll take questions form the audience.
I agree 100%. As I said above, in the prisons I’ve worked at, rapes do not occur frequently. So the system is working.
Answered the first three above (my actual job title is lieutenant).
I’m in a union although we’re not very political. The only time we’ve spoken out about passing laws is when they directly effect prison conditions.
As I said above, I currently work in a medium with a manadatory 12-step program for all prisoners.
All prisoners coming into the state system are given a copy of the state-wide rules. These include obvious things like murder, rape, theft, arson, escape and lesser crimes like smoking in a no-smoking area or tattooing. The prisoners also have it explained to them how the disciplinary system works (it’s a modified court system) and what possible penalties can be imposed (specified periods of loss of privileges or confinement for the most part). Beyond that, preventing these acts is basically police work.
The first question is a little broad to be answered even within a post this long. But I do generally feel good about my job; I’m doing something useful and I feel I do it well.
Unfortunately, it often is a matter of mapower, funding, and training. Like any other field, you get what you pay for. I work in New York which has one of the highest salary bases and most extensive training programs for employees. By no coincidence we also have one of the best prison systems in the nation. If we lowered what we were offering potential employees, we’d also have to lower our standards when we hired new employees.
By the time a person enters prison, it’s usually too late to do anything. Social dynamics fucked that guy up long before we saw him. The answer isn’t reforming prison, it’s reforming society so less people go to prison.
Most people feel the goal of the law enforcement system (of which the penal system is just a part) is to reduce crime. By that standard, the system is working; crime is declining in this nation. Our current penal system isn’t giving us more criminals; the best evidence is that it’s giving us less.
As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m something of an anomaly on this issue. I’m a complete teetotaler who works in law enforcement and I favor the absolute and complete legalization of all drugs for adults.
We’re not fools. We segregate prisoners based on how we feel they will act in prison. Street crimes are one indication but not always an accurate one. A serial killer who murdered twenty elderly nuns might be completely harmless in an all male prison. Or a guy who is doing time for stealing a car might be a viscous sociopath.
That method’s been tried. Didn’t work. You can’t rehabilitate someone into society without letting them live in a society, even if it’s one compsed of other criminals.
The prison I work in has over 800 prisoners and less than 200 guards. Guards, unlike prisoners, work eight hour days and five day weeks. Plus we take sick days and vacations. The actual ratio of prisoner to guard is often over 50-1. In some cases it’s over 500-1.
I’ve found a simple rule to guide me in life; nothing on TV is accurate. This is certainly true in this case. The HBO series Oz (which I enjoy) is about as accurate in depicting the reality of prisons as The Love Boat was in depicting the reality of the cruise ship industry.
We do treat prisoners like human beings. They are human beings. Society may have put them out of sight inside in a prison and forgotten them but we see them every day.
But you’ve touched on one of the biggest paradoxes of prison life. You want “strict enforcement of standards of behavior” but not “control (of) their every movement”. Face facts, it’s a balance between the two and we have to work on it every day. Most prisoners generally approve when we strictly enforce the standards of other prisoners. It’s when we control their movements that they object.
Ummm, we do that. If a prisoner rapes another prisoner, we put him in a cell by himself and keep him there for a year or two. Restrictions on talking and physical contact are about what you’ve described.
And now let me conclude by both apologizing for the length of this post while simultaneously apologizing for the questions I haven’t answered. I think I’ve covered the main issues, but if there are other questions, I’ll try to answer them.
Little Nemo, you don’t owe us an apology for anything. I owe you an apology for my impatience and that “shit or get off the pot” crack. Your answers told me a lot I didn’t know before, and reassured me that some pretty decent people are administering our prisons. It’s got to be one of the most difficult jobs around. I’ll be interested to read anything else you have to say on the subject, but I promise to wait patiently for it.
I just wanted to thank Little Nemo for taking the time to post so much information on his job. An aspect of countering ignorance isn’t only ‘setting the facts straight’ in important areas, but also ‘filling in the blanks’ of general knowledge, and your post gave a perspective which I (and probably a huge percentage of the general population) wouldn’t otherwise get, except in fiction.
I defenately disagree with how the current system works. I don’t think the average prisoner should be subjected to rapes, beatings, and murders.
However, and I maybe landblasted for this, I think there is an exception:
Prisoners who are in prison for rape. I think it is a fair punishment for them to be raped. I guess it’s sort of Hammurabi of me to feel this way, but I do. Raping someone is a hideous life long affair and people who do this should be subjected to it themselves.
I realize there is no practical way of enforcing this punishment without effecting “innocent” people though.
Just my 2 cents.
And I would like to ask a question.
If one prisoner rapes another prisoner and threatens death(or worse) if rapee talks, how exactly do you find out about it, and how do you protect the rapee from the rest of the prison population if you do happen to find out about it? Prisoners who can’t keep their mouths shut tend to become “accident-prone” soon after, y’know.
But are we just fooling ourselves? Someone who has been sentenced to a lengthy stay in prison has probably already had multiple brushes with the law. They’ve had the opportunity to fly right and for whatever reason they did not. I would like to keep the door open to rehabilitation in prison. Ultimately I don’t think you can change someone for the better unless they want to change.
Now what about lawsuits against the state for those raped or otherwise harmed in prison? I don’t think inmates who are harmed by other prisoners automatically have a case against the state.
Marc
With all due respect to Little Nemo, I think coerced sex in prison is pretty common**. I don’t, however, believe that the movie set view (of the sadistic guard smiling as he walks away from the shower room) is common at all (not nonexistant, but certainly not common).
I believe that guards, generall attempt to keep control, but by the numbers involved, and the amount of space that is covered, and the fact that the prisoners have a lot of time on their hands to figure ways around things, means that much goes on w/o the knowledge of the guards.
MGibson, not all persons sentenced to life have had multiple brushes w/the law. Most have, but with the WOD, in MI for example, there was the lifer law that meant anyone convicted of possession of a certain amount of cocaine had to be sentenced to LWOP. IIRC, comedian Tim Allen just skated by this by getting charged in Federal court vs. State.
Also, regarding rehabilitation, for some folks, it takes time and again. Ask around to people who’ve attempted to quit smoking - how often did they try and fail? Or loose weight? etc. A couple of ‘attempts’ to fly right doesn’t mean that they’ll never do so. I agree that with violent criminals, I’m not really all that interested generally speaking (reserving the right to make individual exceptions), in allowing them a genereous learning curve, but for the average property offender, at over $28 grand per year to keep 'em housed, and going up as they age, I’m willing to be a bit more flexible.
anyhow, what to do?
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Throughly investigate any claims, devise a protective custody arrangement that isn’t punitive in nature.
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re-assess the sentencing guidelines/parole system. I’ve seen some horrific sentences come down (one a first time offender, had been living w/his girlfriend, she broke up w/him, he broke back into the apartment, did some damage to the contents - he was sentenced to 10 - 20 years. Did 8, after appeals had twice directed the judge to resentence him; another, had a string of property offense, mostly joy riding, they sentenced him to probation and he did it again, and this time they sentenced him to 10- 14 years, did 8. Again, gee, ya think a year in county jail maybe first? or a shorter sentence?? by way of contrast, I just found a Criminal Sexual Conduct 2nd degree which means pentration, involving a child under the age of 13, perp was over 40 years, he got a year in the county plus probation
) -
do a better job at assesment in the intake system. In Michigan, the prisoners are seperated by security level (makes sense), and to a degree, age, infirmity, crime (there’s a sex offenders unit or two, a couple of prisons mainly house relatively young offenders, and there’s specific units for those with serious mental healt issues, physical issues). However, there’s also folks with developmental disabilities who’re housed in GP. They’re fodder for the games.
I think there’s other signs to look for, regarding rape, as well. Medical attention requests, there’s got to be physical signs around as well.
** reasons I believe it’s more common: I’ve worked w/offenders on the outside for 25 years, because I’m female, they don’t generally tell me about the events, however, from conversations male collegues have had, plus some other cues I’ve seen from the guys, I believe that most get to experience it in the male setting. It’s not unheard of in the female prisons, either, where there’s also the issue of contact w/guards. - not that guards commonly have contact w/prisoners… )
Haven’t read all of the responses to this thread yet, but I have to say that what makes the situation even WORSE is that trying to fight back against a would-be rapist (and I don’t mean via organized protest–I mean using physical force to deter a would-be attacker) only gets you in more trouble.
My mom and I were talking recently about how my cousin (who did a couple of years for smaller robberies, i.e. convenience stores) kept screwing up his chance at early parole by getting into fights with other prisoners who were trying to rape him (OK, granted, this is his story, and could be somewhat fabricated, but I believe him).
I said I didn’t blame him–“Protect your ass at all costs,” I cried.
“Pfffffffffft!” my (71-year-old) mother retorted. “I say relax and enjoy it until you can get outta there.”
:eek:
At any rate, there certainly doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory way out of the situation, partly due to the fact that people do figure that prison rape is just one of the “lumps” you have to take for breaking the law.