Corruption in the prison system.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Is corruption in the prison system nearly - even a little , as bad as it is portrayed in the media & the news?

IMO, the amount of real inmate on inmate cruelty, rape, theft, beatings, murder, etc., can it be as bad it seems?

OK, TV is silly.
Movies are silly.
And so on.

But… (didn’t ya just know that was coming?)

Straight from the released inmates, of which I have only known a few but since I have known them long term. ( a little more likely to be based on fact? )

But…

I’m not really going to base much on their comments alone.
( “They say, " It is bad but not TV bad, more dishonest guards than you might expect, but not all that much murder, rape, etc., going unpunished, just that it is not made public.” ).

We have some members that know about or have worked in or are working in the correction system.

Does the constant showing of guards moving away so ‘in house bad stuff’ can / will be not witnessed?

My problem is not that the inmates are having it bad, but that some of the guards ( the whole system & it’s people) actually do give off the ‘you are bugs & deserve torture & killing,’ not only in actions but in displays of general attitude.

Now I hate the stupid untrue stuff they do with & portray of pilots & planes…
Mostly it is done because they are stupid, the public & everyone else is stupid, $$$ trumps all or it is too hard to do it right, etc. ( I can really rant about that stuff so, take this quest in that spirit )

I am sure there is a lot of that, but… what happens to (way too many ) of the white collar inmates that is not even attempted to be covered up. There seems to be no oversight at all. Kind of like the IRS checking on the IRS.

If there is only smoke, with no fire behind it, why is it so shoveled into our faces on nearly every law & order type show.

Is there really this kind of failure in the system? Bribes, threats against loved ones, just plain asshole people that gravitate to that job? What is the motivator for them to be that uncaring & cold or just corrupt?

I have seldom heard of any investigation into corruption of the systems that hold people who have be sentenced to these places. Are they that good & on the up & up? They do not let this happen at all?

My opinion of people in general has really suffered the older I get but this is so rampant in the media that I fear there is a reason I am being de-synthesized to these things.

I’m not much of a conspiracy nut but with what is being revealed about man’s inhumanity to man, as time goes on, I wonder what others think about the operators of US prisons? Good / bad???

If I have put this thread in the wrong place, would a mod please kick it with malice of forethought to where it should have been put in the first place. :smiley:

2

Do a google search for a guy who posts under the name of “HidingfromGoro”.
He’s a ex convict turned activist in exposing the abuses of the prison system.

He has some great threads on SomethingAwful.com, but I think you have to be a paying member there to search. And be prepared for some scary reading.

3

Staff who are crooked in the prison system will be caught, its as true as night follows day, and all the more certain if that corruption involves prisoners. I’ve know of a few who have ended up inside the razor wire.

As for allowing various things happening, its not a great idea because it cranks up the general violence and stress around the place. If a prisoner can get a tacit approval for some infraction, then it will be repeated and escalated until it hits the new limits.

Prisoners always test any limit to breaking point, the only sensible option is to ensure that tolerance limits stay low - prevention is always better than cure.

The impression that the public have of prison staff is that of individuals who have almost no humanity, harbour grudges, are strict and like to crush prisoners using martinet discipline. Well that is a quick way to get a riot, trying to out-macho prisoners is a fools errand because in effect you are trying to become a player in their world.

There are plenty of staff who do not go the extra mile, or find ingenious ways to use the rules to not do something - some of them spend so much of their day avoiding making decisions that they have little time left to work.

The fact is, prisons are horrendously expensive to run, over 80% of that running cost is in staff - why does that matter? Because if you could employ enough of them you could eliminate almost all prison violence but who wants to pay?

US prisons use lots of automatic gates, cameras and the like, this costs in terms of fixed investments but can run with fewer staff. UK prisons tend to have higher ratios of staff to prisoners but right now this is being heavily reworked. I predict that this will lead to a more hostile environment, but why should taxpayers care about that?

The result is that staff simply cannot be absolutely everywhere all the time, and prisoners will ensure that a watch out is maintained whilst they carry out their nastiness.

The answer is that almost all prisoners will be released on to the streets one day, and they will arrive there more violent and more angry. It really pays the public to fund the penal system properly, but of course little Joe is more worried about his little tax.

4

I guess I just don’t understand why we allow inmates to have any unsupervised contact at all, and why we allow them to bunk together. Surely 1 small room per person is nearly as cheap as 1 per 2 people…
It just makes my stomach turn to think of how generally acceptable prison rape is to the American public

5

“Rooms?” Where have you been? This is what a federal prison looks like these days.

Prison rape, at least the forcible kind, is essentially a myth. No available cite, but this comes from statements made by actual prisoners, including Tommy Chong, as well as one or two members of this very board. “Coercive” rape does happen, but as for prison sex in general, the reasoning I most often hear is, “There’s plenty of willing participants.”

6

Not sure if this is quite what you were asking about, but there was an article in the New Yorker recently about corruption in the Baltimore jail. Apparently gangs were running the place. Several female guards were impregnated by inmates and were smuggling drugs and weapons in.

7

All I know is that I once knew a guy who was a severe pothead. He went to jail for a few days for unpaid traffic fines and when he got out he told us that while inside he had never smoked so much pot in his life. (Medium-sized Ontario city, around 1991.)

8

Jails are not prisons. Jails are run by the county, usually by the county sheriff. They generally contain some folks who have not been convicted of any crime (at least not yet) and other people awaiting trial. If you’re serving time in a jail, that generally means you’ve been convicted of a misdemeanor, or a felony with a penalty of less than 1 year’s confinement. The rules in jails vary from jail to jail, as does the degree of supervision and enforcement.

Prisons generally contain only folks convicted of felonies with sentences longer than a year, are run by the state or the Feds for the most part (speaking of the US), and generally run things bit more tightly than most jails. Again, it varies from state to state. The Federal system is a unique beast in its own right.

The degree of corruption I’ve seen in prison is pretty equal to what I’ve seen in the corporate world, the academic world, and any other place where many folks are pushed together in close quarters. The degree of potential violence and abuse tends to be rather greater just due to the nature of the folks involved; convicted felons and people designated to manage convicted felons. It can be quite ugly and unjust, but it’s not like it is portrayed in the popular media. Most workers try to do their jobs in a safe, humane way. Most inmates want to stay out of trouble and maintain or increase their privileges.

9

That’s basically true. It has happened from time to time but the prison rape culture meme is just literary shorthand. It works in the context of the story. Plain old regular assault is much more prevalent and understandable when you are dealing with a bunch of criminals.

From my visits and friendships with multiple COs (and acquaintance with inmates) I can say that mostly the inmates and COs want to be left alone. Boredom is much more prevalent than any violence.

Of course there have been a few instances of prisons being run with criminal neglect. And there certainly have been bad COs. They mostly don’t last because they make everyone’s job harder.

10

I concur.
Unfortunately I have several relatives who are or were “guests of the state” and one who did a ten-year federal bid for drug dealing, and they tell me that while there are occasional rapes, they are mostly the result of people borrowing money or drugs and then not being able to pay for them.

The fear of AIDS and hepatitis C and the weakness that those illnesses would engender makes most convicts afraid to force themselves on someone. After all, the weak are preyed upon in prison, so nobody wants to get sick there if they don’t have to.

As far as prison corruption: Correctional officers are often paid poor wages. Coupled with the fact that they are looked down upon by other members of law enforcement and by the public in general, it makes it easy to see why many would many would consider taking bribes or smuggling in drugs or other items to prisoners.

Also, people aren’t too concerned with the conditions in prison. Most people will never go or know someone who will so what happens in prison is largely left to the entertainment media and their imaginations. When prison costs start eating into their state’s budgets and other programs that they DO care about are affected they’ll become concerned.

Until then…

11

Most sexual assaults on inmates are committed by staff. Obviously fans of power-mad thugs like to pretend it doesn’t happen.

12

Cite, please?

13

I personally knew two people who were murdered in prison. The one in federal prison, a young man, was hit on the head with a frying pan in the kitchen. Nobody saw anything.

The other was stomped to death in a state security facility for the criminally insane. That case is being dealt with.

Both of them were killed by other prisoners.