Prison Structure : A Social Class

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.

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

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.

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.

There are public service announcements which warn that a DUI will cost you about $10,000. Those costs include fines, court fees, legal fees, jail costs, bail bonds, probation services, etc. Those advertisements subtly illustrate how crime directly benefits the “prison industrial complex.” That term refers to all of the sectors which profit from a massive prison population, including law enforcement, prisons, and the entire legal system. This system employs millions of Americans as police officers, lawyers, judges, paralegals, parole officers, correctional officers, etc.

As I conclude my final studies at San Francisco State University, this field research explores; the purpose, and effects of social control within, and among today’s American society. Furthermore, I will commence historically within the U.S., in particular within the colonial 1800’s, and how it currently continues to repress, and control certain demographics from excelling. Additionally, the purpose of this research is to explain (1.) social control, (2.) history of the institutions commencing in the 1800’s (3.) prisons as businesses, and contemporary prison industrial complex (4.) criminalization of deviance (5.) medicalization of deviance.

In Maskovsky and Cunningham (2009), there is a relationship which exists between the politics of surveillance, the rise of the prison complex and their interrelationships. The Bush administration was not formulated on the basis of unifying the homeland security but it was intended to create a fragmentation in the system which has unequal measures of the risks and security protocols which are followed. The prison industrial complex in this system was designed in order to eliminate people who are considered to be high profile criminals from the society. A lot of funds have been allocated to this system which depended entirely on policing strategies and surveillance improvements in order to help reduce the activities of terrorists. This massive investment in this sector led to the changes in the administration and the urban fears increased as a result of increased surveillance. The connection between urban fears, the politics of security and surveillance and the rise of prison industrial complex is based on the changes which took place in the bush administration.

Prisons are setup like the real world in many ways. There is a key called prison economy which works with almost every inmate that is incarcerated. It’s a key level of influence currency that comes in many different ways. It can be cigarettes, popular items, or using weak inmates as prostitution. This is a form of revenue source that flows in and out in the prison system.

Prisons are exclusive frameworks of interaction as they are highly controlled environments and are not influenced by the type of social conditions to be found in the public domain or any other type of governmental service. The everyday interaction that occurs between inmates and correction officers which can often span years depending on the length of incarceration of the inmate and the period of employment of the officer, will inevitably produce relationships that are not appropriate no matter the quality of training, years of experience, or degree of supervision an individual corrections officer has been provided with. Due to the nature of prison employment, corrections officers are dependent on others for their safety and security,

The prison system manipulates the system by creating a flow of inmates by categorizing minority youths. e.g. In more run-down

Prisonization is a prison model that discuss the process on how the inmates learn the customs of prison life and the culture. Prisonization is also the process of been more socialize into a stable status that allows the prisoners to become more adapt to their environment. Some prisoners ended adjusting to prison life by engaging with other prisoners and learning the lingo inside the prison doors. Prisoners can pick up other bad habits such as homosexuality, gambling, inmates can also develop bad attitudes towards other inmates and guards. Prison Culture is another model that focuses more on the prisoners attitude that are developed among inmates in order to protect themselves within the prison for survival. Deprivation is a model that discuss

The prison as it has been known in the United States was originally conceived as a more humane alternative to other punishments such as flogging, public humiliation, exile and torture, all of which were considered by early reformers to be cruel and unusual punishments unworthy of a republic (Sykes, 1958). I really think that those who are sent to prison should be fried and save us all money. In fact, by the early 19th century, improving the conditions of jails was also seen by some, such as the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, as an opportunity to rehabilitate rather than simply punish offenders. The group’s preamble stated:

Once you enter a prison, you are in a completely different world. The sound of the door as it closes drives the realization home: your freedom is gone. Whatever luxuries you had before are gone. Everything you once took for granted you now long for, and contemplate with reverence. This being the case, there are now two new sets of rules you have to follow: the rules of the staff, and the rules of the inmates. Of course, these will conflict, but you have to deal with it now. Prison subculture is different from the outside world and even varies between men’s and women’s. The men’s subculture is probably the better known of the two. It has its own set of ebonics, attitudes, statuses, and values. Inmates say that

The culture of this organization may be viewed from a “melting pot” perspective. This organization is made up of multiple nationalities. Even though employees are from varied backgrounds, the organization presents a psychic prison culture. Per Morgan (2006), a psychic prison is like an underground cave with its mouth open toward the light of a blazing fire (p. 208). Within the cave, people are trapped, and it appears that it is impossible for them to escape (Morgan, 2006).

The research contexts and settings: prison as a closed setting; controlled nature of prison; variety of prison types; separation of genders in prison; hierarchical nature of prison; permission to access.