Images Of Prison Life And Correctional Officers

There are three models of prisons that have been prominent in American since the early 1940’s: custodial, rehabilitative, and reintegration. Each model is designed differently based on its overriding goal, and this affects the physical design, policies, and programs that are implemented within each of the models.

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

Specifically, the treatment of the many prisoners at the hands of the guards had really stood out to me. How handcuffs, leg-irons, strip searches, and comments such as “spread’m, Tonto” had become his day to day routine. In just a small section of the book, he shows the attitude that many guards take when dealing with people they are arresting or who are already incarcerated. They disrespect the inmates, not because they have to, but almost because they want to.

The distressing experience of operating as a prison guard in such a notorious penal facility as New York State’s Sing Sing Penitentiary is one that is unlikely to be desired by one not professionally committed to the execution of prison uniformity. However, the outstanding novel written by Tom Conover illustrates the encounters of a journalist who voluntarily plunged himself into the obscure universe of the men and women paid to spend the better portion of their lives behind prison barriers. In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Conover creates a noteworthy document resonating personal emotional occurrences that nonetheless suggest the cultural sensitivity of a true prison guard. From the standpoint of our studies

The author of Descent into Madness discusses how systems of criminal justice that engage in high levels of disorganization become nothing short of a breeding ground for discontentment among prison inmates. The other main point is that prison staff psychologically are hungry for power. This manifests in the myriad of ways that they treat the inmates in an effort to feel powerful through by retribution through their

Ted Conover’s book, New Jack, is about the author's experiences as a rookie guard at Sing Sing prison, in New York, the most troubled maximum security prison. He comes to realize that being a correctional officer isn’t an easy task. This is shown from the beginning when he is required to attend a 7 week training program to become a correctional officer. He comes to realize what inmates have to endure on a daily basis. Throughout his experience into a harsh culture of prison and the exhausting and poor working conditions for officers, he begins to realize that the prison system brutalizes everyone connected to it. New Jack presents new ideas of prisons in the United States in the ways facilities, corrections officers, and inmates function with

Conover’s purpose in writing this book not only to share his experience as a correctional officer but to also help readers get beyond the stereotype of the brutal guard seen on television and rumors but to see correctional officers as individuals, offering us a chance to understand

After reading the book I have gained a new understanding of what inmates think about in prison. Working in an institution, I have a certain cynical attitude at times with inmates and their requests.

What the researchers found during this study was that both the behaviors and mentalities of guards and prisoners changed. Guards became more aggressive and prisoners became passive. A group of five prisoners had to actually be released from the study because of physical and emotional changes they were experiencing. Those prisoners remaining actually began acting as if they were truly incarcerated. By the behaviors they exhibited they had all but forgotten that they were free to leave at any time and not forfeit the money they had already earned. Guards, on the other hand, actually stayed at the prison longer than they were scheduled and were actually disappointed when the study came to a close while prisoners were very happy and expressed their luck at getting released early. These results clearly demonstrate that it is the environment that contributes to the behaviors observed. Those who were given the role of guard expressed the power and control they had over the prisoners. The prisoners began to become hopeless and bend to the power of the guards.

In the case of the California’s Corcoran State Prison the prisoners were being mistreated. The situation that brought this case to the forefront was Dryburgh (2009) found that “Preston Tate was shot and fatally wounded by a corrections officer after Tate and his cellmate fought against two rival Hispanic gang member. Tate death was at the hands of a prison guard prompted two whistle – blowers to approach the FBI with tales of abuse and brutality toward inmates by correction officers”. Moreover, this was not the first time that an inmate had been shot by a correctional officer.

The 1994 film, The Shawshank Redemption, directed by Frank Darabont, presents a complex and brutal prison environment for both its guards and inmates. Andy Dufresne, an inmate who is wrongly convicted of murder, is faced with several facets of the grim and isolated nature of Shawshank penitentiary. Throughout the film, several correctional concepts are illustrated that present inimitable challenges for both Dufresne as well as other inmates in the prison. The major correctional concepts that shaped the inmates’ prison experiences include: prison economy, prisonization and institutionalization, adaptive roles, and prison violence. Together, these concepts provide the multifaceted foundation of the prison environment in the film as well as depict current correctional concepts that are present in America’s prisons.

At any given time, a single corrections officer, can expect to be outnumbered by upwards of 400 inmates (Conover, 2011). It can be chilling to work in the midst of hundreds of inmates, some of which initiate attacks and inappropriate relationships. However, other issues have impacted the psychological health and physical safety of the staff. Detrimental factors have included heavy workloads, the prisons physical structure, and a lack of support from both peers and superiors. Each workplace issue has been in addition to role problems, specifically role ambiguity and role conflict (Schaufeli & Peeters, 2011). It is believed that anyone of these undesirable facets of prison should be enough to deter the public from attempting to enter such

In the book NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing, the book discussed the life of a guard. Most people feel that the guards are bad guys in the criminal justice system and with the politics of the criminal justice systems there are many assumptions of the way in which the stereotype of prison guard’s life should be. The author Ted Conover explains first hand on the experiences behind the scenes that many guards experiences throughout their careers that is an untold story of the truth in the prison system. Conover was curious about the subculture of the prison guards’ duties and wanted to know the truth about if the assumptions that most have about the prison guards is truthful. Conover entered the Academy with many other young men and a few women who wanted good jobs with security. The training was modeled after boot camp for the military. Those who had been in the military fared better than those who had not been so initiated. Once Conover crossed the training hurdle, he was tossed over to Sing Sing for his first assignment.

When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.

A Corrections Officer has many duties to consider as they manage the activities of inmates. They are charged with the responsibilities of conducting head counts, monitoring recreational activities, and supervising their work assignments while maintaining a safe environment ensuring the welfare of those who are incarcerated in the correctional facility and employed there, as well as protect the safety of the public communities. They are investigators trained to search for illegal or prohibited goods smuggled into the institution, respond to riots, transport inmates and write reports. Although the job of an officer is challenging still the manner in which they ought to interact with the inmates should exemplify a standard of discipline that displays ethical professionalism, and respect at all times.