Review of the Stanford Prison Experiment
The general topic of this article is what genuinely causes aggression within prisons, moreover, why these institutions are ineffective. Even though conditions inside prisons have improved over the last few decades, the social institution continues to fail in producing inmates ready to return to society. There is a considerable amount of evidence proving that time in these institutions neither rehabilitate or hinder their inhabitants from continuing to commit crimes after their release.
The purpose of this research is unearthing why inmates tend to be aggressive during and after their incarceration periods. Enduring violence, brutality, dehumanization, and degradation during their time in prison, poses the questions: do they act aggressively due to their personal nature, or do they act aggressively in reaction to the way they are treated during their sentence? (Haney, Banks, Zimbardo, 1973)
Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo are focusing on the dispositional hypothesis. This theory suggests that the nature of these social institutions stems from the essence of the people within them, rather than the prison itself. The “guard mentality” suggests that prison guards are sadistic, uneducated, and insensitive, therefore, bring violence and brutality into the environment. In response, the prisoners act aggressively and impulsively. However, there is an alternative theory, that individuals incarcerated have proven to disregard the law, order, and
For new inmate, the bus ride to prison, the processing at the prison reception center, and the belittling shouts from the inmates are all part of the early stage of what is known as prisonization (Clear, Cole, Petrosino, Reisig, 2015). It is the process whereby newly institutionalized individual are introduced to and come to accept prison lifestyles and criminal values; the learning of convict values, attitudes, roles, and even language (prison argot) (Schamelleger, 2001). The new inmates gradually learn the set of rules of conduct that reflect the
Prisons hide prisoners from society. “If an inmate population is shut in, the free community is shut out, and the vision of men held in custody is, in part, prevented from arising to prick the conscience of those who abide by the social rules” (Sykes, 1958, 8). The prison is an instrument of the state. However, the prison reacts and acts based on other groups in the free community. Some believe imprisonment
After touring both the Pendleton maximum security prison, and the Pendleton juvenile correctional facility I can say that while they both house inmates, the way they treat their inmates is totally different compared to one another. In Pendleton maximum facility, the staff would treat their inmates like any other criminal and hold them until it was time for them to be released, while in the Pendleton juvenile facility the staff called the inmates “students” while holding them until they believe the students are ready to behave when they are released. In this paper I want to explain how both facilities handles their inmates differently, the facilities themselves and their layouts, the rehabilitative programs available at both facilities, and how the security levels and the number of inmates assigned to the facilities effect how the treatment is implemented at each facility.
In the case of Jack, he quickly became familiar with a place that has a history of violence and persons with aggressive behavior. And a Texas Federal Judge also noticed this in 1999, it was concluded that Texas Prisons were pervaded by a culture of violence, both sadistically and maliciously. The conclusion was that violence in prisons is an open, tolerated, acknowledged and encouraged by prison officials. Some men cannot fend for themselves when they first come to prison and have to learn fairly quickly. The reason inmates have to learn early on to fend for themselves is because they will get chastised until they do. The only thing an inmate respects in another is moral strength. Men have been broken down to the point in which they no longer talk. They learn to live with the deprivation of security. They go from living in a free world with less fear to living with criminals. Inmates now have to look out for themselves at all times by means of violence. Situational awareness is essential as a prisoner. Some prisoners used collectivism to help one another in time of need. Abbott expressed that most inmates fought for one another against other groups of inmates. Each inmate only has one another to rely
In spite of the fact that the situation is intricate, and some conflicting discoveries have risen, for the most part the literature supports the idea that the more coercive the jail environment the more prominent the potential for savagery becomes. This is particularly so where jail administration and treatment of detainees are seen by detainees as unreasonable or illegitimate, as this reinforces detainee solidarity contrary to the authorities. A jail approach that keenly consolidates situational and social counteractive action techniques upheld by fitting administration strategies and exploration based staff enlistment and preparing practices, is likely the most encouraging model for lessening interpersonal savagery in correctional facilities.
Robert G. Morris in his study on exposure to short-term solitary confinement for violent individuals concluded that there is “no positive or negative relationship to subsequent violent acts,” which suggests that solitary confinement should be longer in order to prevent or deter future behavior. In order to extinguish certain deviant behaviors in prisons such as fights and rule violations, longer durations of solitary confinement could be useful. At the heart of it, solitary confinement is used to deter undesirable behavior and, in some cases, to protect the greater prison population from a dangerous inmate. So, in some circumstances, solitary confinement is beneficial to the greater population. However, just as in 2013, solitary confinement can have an exacerbating effect if it is used in an arbitrary manner due to unclear reasons of why someone is placed in solitary confinement. The arbitrariness of the punishment can cause uprisings due to perceived abuse of power and authority. However, if there is clear reason for the punishment, then solitary confinement is a useful tool in decreasing unwanted behavior and a time for inmates to reflect on their
The population at the prison is growing dramatically in the US. In 2013 the population in at the US State and Federal prisons were nearly 1.6 million inmates. Many inmates are serving long sentence at these facilities, and many of them are not immune to violence. In fact, most prisoners are still committing crimes within the walls of the correctional. There’s many factor contributing causes for violence, either between prisoners or between inmates and prison staff.
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.
255). Respect must be mutual between inmates and correctional officers and it should not be a one way street. A clear define prison structure will emphasize on strict routine, authority and zero tolerance; however, all actions from correctional officers must conform to the Eighth Amendment. Leadership, communication, and solid management skills will set a tone for violent criminals confined in maximum-security facilities. Offenders who are sentenced to a maximum-security confinement will eventually realize that they are in it for the long haul, and their chances of reintegrating into society are zero to none. Therefore, in order to solve a majority of the facilities operational problem we must “create an environment where a positive custodial adjustment can occur” (Maghan, 1996, p.
In prison, women are considered to be less violent than male inmate. This difference is not taken into account upon constructing prisons for female offenders. In fact, construction is based on the correctional model about men being violent. Each gender interacts within prisons differently as well. For instance, males form gangs within prisons. They act territorially and fight to maintain power. In addition, men are more likely to congregate by race. On the other hand, females look to form small families that are not racially specific. Women will fight due to jealousy. However, they are more likely to vent their hostility upon themselves through self mutilation. The way the prison is set up also creates a difference. Prisons for males dived prisoners via classification based on the dangerousness of the crime. In contrast women’s prisons generally allow incarcerated women to mix freely (Stuart von Wormer & Bartollas, 2011).
A second issue with the research on this topic is the limited global resources the scholarly authors actually used in their articles. Most of the research used in this assessment is 5 states or less per article, meaning the wider spectrum of violence all over is limited. This creates issues in the accuracy of what the scholarly articles are posing, because each state across the nation is different when recording prison violence (Krause, Keith 2009). Each state follows the same rules but in a different manner. The range of differences used in all the research used for this are concentrated on separate states so the wider variety of information can be obtained. The lack of overall 50 state-wide articles creating prison violence as a whole tends
Lastly the contemporary prison developed more professionalism in their treatment towards inmates, while some staff members still abuse inmates this behavior is less evident in today’s prisons, where staff-on-inmate violence was a routine feature of daily life. The support for the inmate codes is also disappearing in the contemporary prison. The increased number of habitual offenders statutes has led to the graying of the prison population. A study revealed that inmates that adjusted most successfully to the prison’s environment encountered the most difficulty making the transition from institutional life to freedom (Bartollas, 2002).
Forming such an outward picture requires passionate reactions to be painstakingly measured. In this manner, detainees battle to control and smother their own inward passionate responses to occasions around them. Passionate over-control and a summed up absence of suddenness may happen therefore. Affirmations of defenselessness to people inside the quick jail condition are possibly risky in light of the fact that they welcome abuse. As one encountered jail overseer once composed: Prison is a scarcely controlled wilderness where the forceful and the solid will misuse the frail, and the powerless are awfully mindful of it. A few detainees are compelled to wind up distinctly surprisingly gifted self-screens, who compute the foreseen impacts that
Many citizens in the United States today have a common interest in crime. Whether it’s the criminals themselves or the prison facilities that house them, Americans wonder what drives a particular human being to such crime or what goes on inside a maximum security prison. “The American public appears to have an insatiable fascination with what goes on inside prisons. Moviegoers flock to see Hollywood films about prison life (e.g., Escape from Alcatraz, Murder in the First, and The Shawshank Redemption). The news media is quick to cover lurid stories about prisons, including prison disturbances...” (Wright). Consequently, a thought that flies under the radar is the reputations of these hardened convicts and how these reputations are what attract
Incarceration is the most important form of sanctioning in the modern day criminal justice system. A prison serves 2 basic functions in society. Prisons were built to incapacitate the criminals from further wrong doings and also the thought of incarceration will allow criminals to make a second thought before committing various crimes. 1Craig Haney posits that the process of adaptation to imprisonment is almost always difficult and exposes the inmates to various effects that can be dysfunctional in periods of post-incarceration adjustment. Nevertheless, the psychological effects of incarceration may vary throughout many persons and can often be reversible. Haney ensures to make emphasis on the point that not everyone who is incarcerated are physically or psychologically harmed by it.2 To achieve a better understanding on this adaptation to incarceration.