Panopticism In Prisons

Everyday correctional officials work to deal with mental health inmates. Often hotly debated, many search for ways to work with this growing population. Glaze and Bonczar (2009) estimate around 2.3 million people are incarcerated within the US and of those, 20 percent suffer from some form of mental disorder. Even with such a high number, the rate of mental illnesses within the prison system is on the climb. Many of these inmates will remain incarcerated and receive little to no treatment for their mental issues. This essay, will look at the practices associated when dealing with mental illness and discuss the strategies on dealing with this growing issue.

Mental illness affects roughly 56 percent of state prison inmates and 64 percent of jail inmates. It is a disorder that interferes with mental cognition involving changed thinking, emotion, behavior, or a combination of both. Several things are thought to be correlated with mental illness among the incarcerated. Some examples include prior life stressors, gender differences, prison life environment, etc (Drapalski et al., 2009; Gosein, Stiffler, Frascoia, & Ford, 2015). In the present paper, the role mental illness plays in the life of incarcerated inmates is investigated. It is hypothesized that individuals diagnosed with a mental illness are more likely to be incarcerated than inmates without a mental

In a valiant attempt to clean the streets of societies, criminals are put away in rehabilitation institutions called prisons. It was a belief that they would learn their mistakes, repent and rejoin societies as better people. On the contrary, what happened was the cultivation of an environment leading to the evolution of prison subculture. In a constant power struggle amongst nations, politicians and people within society, many fail to perceive or notice a battle of another sort. That is the battle of those trying to survive in an environment predominant with racism, hate, violence and gangs. Prison subculture evolved, when doing time wasn't just about doing your time but became an intricate experience of politics, power,

Prisonization is a concept first introduced in 1940 by Clemmer. He defined it as the process of assimilation in prisons, where new inmates take on a less or greater degree of the customs, folkways, and the general culture in a penitentiary. Prisonization can be described in similar terms to those used by sociologists in capturing the processes of assimilation and socialization of communities at large. In the same manner people are assimilated to the customs and norms of a society, inmates must also assimilate themselves into the self-contained community they find in prison. They need to re-adjust from their normal lives and learn the new norms and rules, as well as the implied expected patterns of behavior since they are discordant from the societal values of a free world. Also referred to as the “inmate code”, this is the kind of behavior that is considered to be unacceptable in the free world but is encouraged, and rewarded within the prison walls.

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.

There are several departments that come to mind when thinking about corrections such as, the police, the court system and jail or prison facilities. After a crime has been committed, I typically think about the subsequent police detainment of the offender. Proceeding with the arrest, I think about the trial in court that may or may not be given based on the allegation. Based upon the verdict, the criminal is either innocent or is sentenced to jail or prison.

This paper explores the topic of mental health within prisons and how it affects the inmates. The report of my findings were through research of twelve articles, two credible website sources, and a published textbook.

Prison’s were established a long time ago to try to put an end to the rapidly increasing crime rate, however over time we are seeing the effectiveness of the most prisons decreasing. As a result of this epidemic, prisons have a higher recidivism rate and over 40 percents are currently operating over maximum capacity (Holder.) Through different types of research, we are finding out that our prison systems are no longer effective and there is a serious need for improvement. The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate almost ¼ of the worlds prisoners (Holder.)

In 2011, I spent time serving in prisons with a church organization who’s goal was to change the systemic problems within the prison system. This caused me to examine all aspects of inequality and oppression that disproportionately affects people of color.

In the United States today, 4.7 million citizens—more than two percent of the adult population—are deprived of the right to vote because they have been convicted of a felony. Of these, 1.7 million have completed their sentences and are no longer under any form of criminal justice supervision.1 I shall argue that disenfranchisement of offenders who

In the United States the number of people placed in prison has increased almost 5 times more among the 1980 and 2009. Minorities were greatly impacted, while Blacks completed thirty-eight percent of the prison population. Blacks make up thirteen percent of the U.S population. It is said stated that by a Black male reach the age of thirty, twenty-one percent will serve time within the prison system. As for White males, only 2.5% will serve in the prison system. While increasing, Black males will more likely spend more time within the criminal justice system, rather than attend college. It is revealed that this disparity is associated with the battle with drugs and sentencing, which would mandate longer prison time for low-level drug charges

The United States currently over-incarcerates its citizens, and it is not morally justified because it is unsustainable, inhumane, and the product of unethical policies. Approximately 2.3 million people are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons, juvenile correctional facilities, and jails (Wagner & Rabuy, 2015). Before continuing a practice that affects such a large number of our citizens (not just those in prison, but their families and communities as well), we need to ask the question: Is this working? Is it ethical to continue a practice that may be doing more harm than good?

"I have visited some of the best and the worst prisons and have never seen signs of coddling, but I have seen the terrible results of the boredom and frustration of empty hours and pointless existence"

Prison culture or the “values, norms and attitudes that inmates form in terms of institutional survival” (Bartollas, 2013), can be described in one of three models. The Deprivation Model describes the inmate’s behavior as the product of the environment, more specifically the attempt to adapt to that which he is deprived of as a result of incarceration (Bartollas, 2013). An example of such would be the pseudo family unit or physical relationships that inmates form as a result of the absence of such relationships while incarcerated.

Michel Foucault is a very famous French intellectual who practiced the knowledge of sociology. Foucault analyzed how knowledge related to social structures, in particular the concept of punishment within the penal system. His theory through, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, is a detailed outline of the disciplinary society; in which organizes populations, their relations to power formations, and the corresponding conceptions of the subjects themselves. Previously, this type of punishment focused on torture and dismemberment, in which was applied directly to bodies. Foucault mentions through his literary piece, “the soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy: the soul is the prison of the body (p.30). However, today, the notion of punishment involves public appearances in a court and much more humane sentences. However, it is important to note and to understand the idea of power and knowledge; it is fundamental to understand the social system as a whole.