(Other countries too, but I’m more familiar with the US and I don’t want to say something unfactual about other countries’ prison systems-- feel free to reply about them though.)
It’s clear that there’s a vast problem in the US in terms of prisoner safety-- physical abuse and rape are commonplace* and have practically come to be an ‘expected’ component of the prison experience.
That in mind, why are prisoners still kept together? Is there an argument that ending this practice would increase isolation? I find it hard to believe that that risk would outweigh the massive violence occurring in prisons today.
I know this topic seems a little close to veering into GD territory, but I’m really interested just in knowing what the rationale is, not in debating it.
*“An internal departmental survey of corrections officers in a southern state (provided to Human Rights Watch on the condition that the state not be identified) found that line officers – those charged with the direct supervision of inmates – estimated that roughly one-fifth of all prisoners were being coerced into participation in inmate-on-inmate sex. Interestingly, higher-ranking officials – those at the supervisory level – tended to give lower estimates of the frequency of abuse, while inmates themselves gave much higher estimates: the two groups cited victimization rates of roughly one-eighth and one-third, respectively. Although the author of the survey was careful to note that it was not conducted in accordance with scientific standards, and thus its findings may not be perfectly reliable, the basic conclusions are still striking. Even taking only the lowest of the three estimates of coerced sexual activity – and even framing that one conservatively – more than one in ten inmates in the prisons surveyed was subject to sexual abuse.” http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report1.html#_1_5
In the longer term, individual cells make it much easier to manage a prison, if someone gets violent, you have only one to deal with, fire damage can be more easily controlled, bullying is reduced, so are suicides and you can ensure that prisoners are able to hang on to their possessions which in turn leads to good order.
I can think of so many reasons why individual cells are way better, from welfare to security and good order, that it seems inconcievable to me that prisoners arekept in multiple place accommadation.
We had 4 person dorms where I work and they were endless trouble, now the units have ll been rebuilt its totally differant.
Just a WAG, but it might have something to do with the cost of building the actual prison. If you have individual cells for every prisoner, you have to have a toilet and sink in each cell. If you build 4-man cells, the cost per inmate is reduced.
Based on my fuzzy recollection of a college criminal justice class, I’m going with cost as the major factor.
I will remark that while having a jerk cellmate is bad, having a certain level of human contact IS needful.
Studies too contradict each other about the amount of forced sex or concentual sex in prison. I know of several warders in state prisons and they tell me the sex isn’t an issue in the cells as they are pretty well watched and even video taped.
If the violence occurs it happens in areas not subject to such easy security.
Our own Doper Qadgop is a prison doctor, and he’s said that rape in prison is actually rather uncommon. Apparently, sexual relationships between prisoners are common, but are usually more-or-less concentual.
Actually, many inmates like having a “cellie”, and not for sexual reasons, either.
A lot of the guys get quite bored on their own. Somebody to play cards with, talk to, even argue with, is better than the isolation of a single cell for many inmates.
Of course, a lot of these inmate relationships don’t work out, but I’ve had quite a few inmate patients get quite upset when I inform them they have to go into a single cell for a while, for infectious precaution reasons (MRSA, for those in the know).
Since you have a prison ‘background’ , as it were, how would you ideally design a prison? I admit I have no clue how prisons are usually laid out - are most of them pretty much the same? And do publicly administered facilities differ from private ones, in general? (I only know about private prison facilities from the NYSE.) I feel that the prison population needs to be kept safe, and there should be some separation of really ‘bad guys’ and the ‘I really screwed up this one time’ type, but I have no idea how you differentiate.
I enjoy your posts (and have learned much from reading them) and would be interested in your views on this.
A homicide detective who gave us a talk last month said that the jail in (x portion of our city) is designed to hold 880 prisoners. Current population: 1800.
The designing and building of jails requires decisions by politicians and commitment of money from taxpayers. The filling of jails requires police work and sometimes politician anti-crime drives. The two motivating forces do not always coincide.
No, we isolate anyone with an open or draining wound, and don’t d/c the isolation precautions until the wound either closes, or culture shows it’s not MRSA. We don’t try to decolonize the carriers. It’s felt to be rather futile by our ID experts, since they’ll just get re-colonized right away. 99+ % of our MRSA is skin and soft tissue infection only.
And we don’t use the hyperprecautions of HA (hospital acquired)-MRSA, just the general precautions of CA (community acquired)-MRSA. Most of our MRSA dies off when faced with Minocycline, or clindamycin, or even TMP-SMX. At least for now, anyway.
And barracuda, I’m not into prison design, just corrections medicine. But inmates are assessed for security & violence risk on intake, and assigned to either a minimum, medium, or maximum security institution. Some even go to Supermax, but the less said about that sort of place, the better.
