New Jack Summary

Most people are aware that prisoners possess zero authority in the prison system. They have no control over any aspect of their daily lives, but instead they are minded by prison jurisdiction. Prison guards and wardens possess the power to do anything that they please within those brick walls. This is an issue that society has been aware of for many decades; however, there has been little to no effort to change the conditions. Many prisoners have sought to inform society of how these prison authority figures abuse their power by producing many different types of media. One of those individual’s is the poet, and former prisoner Carolyn Baxter. While being incarcerated in the New York City women’s correctional facility, Baxter wrote a poem entitled 35 Years a Correctional Officer. In this poem she expresses the motif of power by telling the story of a correctional officer who was in fact abusing her authority to satisfy her own needs. Baxter reveals this motif by cunningly using the literary elements of situational irony and tone.

People who suddenly find themselves sentenced to prison usually face a great deal of fear and uncertainty. These feelings stem from the differences that an inmate experiences versus how a “civilian” experiences life on the outside of prison. Accepted societal norms put aside for the codes and norms of prison inmates.

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

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

Standing as one the most dominant agencies operating within the criminal justice system, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is a detrimental factor that has proven to materialize the very aspects of which to expand the dynamics of maintaining care, control, and custody of federal inmates. Albeit as it may that the agency’s establishment fails to loom too far into the crevices of history, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has surpassed a multitude of platforms that has propelled its strengths today far beyond what its founders could have imagined. However, given the magnitude of such feat as the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been bombarded with, challenges such as, but not limited the swift rate of inmates incarcerated, has greatly hindered the

Journalist, Ted Conover expresses an interest in writing a book about the lives of prison guards by proposing to the New York Department of Correctional Services to interview corrections officers, but his access is denied. He then decides to immerse himself into the culture and apply for a correctional officer position. After a brief training, Conover is randomly assigned to Sing Sing as a “newjack” or a rookie, to one of the most infamous maximum security male prisons in the United States. He meets other officers with goals of becoming involved in law enforcement; ex-military looking for a demanding, disciplined and tactical position; and those who just need a steady job with dependable benefits for their families. Some of these individuals are frantic enough to commute hours on end to make a living wage.

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 article "Should Prisoners Get a Free College Degree? Why Opinions Are Shifting.", Harry Bruinuis explains a brief history of education within prisons along with an explanation behind why this education is critical. Bruinuis spends time reporting on facts and important numbers which help the readers understand the dire need for prisoners to be learning as they are incarcerated.

Many of the challenges faced within the prison system are the same as those that are faced within other criminal justice organizations but there are some that are different challenges. Some of the same are workforce challenges. Recruitment, hiring, retention, training, and succession planning are a few of those workforce challenges. Budgets have an impact on these challenges. Technology is also a challenge. Keeping up with the latest technology can be very challenging. There is always a need for management information systems, fingerprint systems, enhanced security systems, and communication systems. Challenges that are met by managers of a prison system that are not met by other criminal justice systems are

‘We will turn this prison from a scrap heap to a repair shop.’ - Thomas Mott Osborne, warden of New York’s Sing Sing Prison (1913). Over the past decade, criminal justice reform has become an increasingly controversial political topic as the prison population rises higher and higher--it has reportedly quintupled from 1980 to 2009; from 320,000 inmates to 1.62 million, according to a professor of Fordham law school. Orange is the New Black, a memoir by Piper Kerman about her individual experience in a women’s prison, actually surpasses the memoir genre in that it isn’t solely focused on Kerman and her plights, but each woman she encounters in her year in prison, exposing the naked reality that prisoners, at their crux, are only human, and in some cases, it is senseless to lock so many people away for trifling crimes committed. “We now lock up one out of every hundred adults, far more than any other country in the world,” she writes, a startling statistic that makes

Twentieth Century prisons have been dominated by three types. The first type is the so called “big house.” Big houses were six teared cells that house 2500 men. The second type is known as the medical model. Under the medical model inmates were subject to psychological assessments and diagnosis. The main treatments were academic and vocational training, along with therapeutic counseling. The third type was a power vacuum that was filled with inmate gang violence and interracial hatred (Bohm & Haley, 2012).

For one, it had the ability to shock me out of the presumed complacency I had assumed from the beginning of the essay. I appreciated the chance to have my views changed and my assumptions challenged. This essay challenged me to think about other issues and perspectives of prison, rather than the widespread media ideas about it. Moreover, I appreciated the thoughts and idea Hopkins introduced in his essay. His opinions about prisons and their changes (over a relatively short period of time) are actually incredibly important. If the trend of just “giving up” on prisoners continues, negative effects will be seen throughout our country and society. As Hopkins says, many officials and members of the government want prison to have negative connotations. They want the threat of prison to keep people from committing crimes. However, as Hopkins explains, not only is this plan not working, but it’s also keeping prisoners from having the chance of rehabilitation, parole, and education. The removal if these institutions from the prison system is defining prison as the “last stop”, giving prisoners no chance of release or the ability to change their lives around. There is a litany of problems with this, but the main one is the loss of hope and expectations prisoners receive, and the removal of a second chance. By exploring these issues, Hopkins is confronting concepts and ideals most Americans would rather not think about, and forcing them to challenge their preconceived notions about the prison system, as well as what it means for a person to be sent into

Upon the successful completion of academy training, recruits are sworn in as correctional officers and given their individualized positions. The final phase is a probationary period of considerable months or years working under a senior correctional officer who meticulously oversees performance and daily duties of the new personnel, usually in minimum-security populations; to restrict liabilities of unseasoned officers to high-risk populations (COEO, 2016). This eases the transformation process from adapting to varying prisoner interactions from minimum; medium, to high risk corrections safer (COEO, 2016). Procedure, protocol and policy training is a vital part of correctional personnel careers, most facilities mandate a minimum number of standard training hours that every correctional personnel has to complete annually while employed (COEO,

There is also pressure on the parole board from governors to ensure that the case of overcrowding is dealt with, as the federal suits would ensure that inmates are realized under a federal process outside the parole board’s control if they are successful. (Weinstein, 2004), argues that this is a classical case of ethics vs. morals, there is no hiding the fact that the prisons are indeed overcrowded. Therefore, there is a need for an agent action to be taken to address this situation. As overcrowding possesses many challenges including health, the prisoners should be treated with dignity just like any other human beings. Another issue are, the prison officer in charge, whose duties are to monitor the progress of inmates’ behavior and recommend those that are eligible for early realize and correct those that do astray, will have a hard time doing this

In today’s order, our correctional facilities are nothing like they were a long time ago. Foremost, the federal, state and local governments have a monopoly over our criminal justice systems and incarceration. This includes defining crimes, apprehending and prosecuting criminals, and then deciding what to do with the convicts. During imprisonment, government control is downright. Despite variation in the means, methods, goals and dreams of the many prison reform organizations, most of them out of necessity have a big-government focus. (John Dewar Gleissner, 2012)