Sterling Correctional Facilities

..no fences, no bars on the windows, no detention sash. Guards do not wear uniforms..the buildings look like a motel. Inmates may use telephones to call anyone anytime, they have keys to their own individual rooms, they have their own money, and they wear their own clothes. There are no restrictions on hours of watching television or visiting in the day rooms or

Before the 1820s, most prisons resembled classrooms where inmates lived in large rooms together like a dormitory. The newer prisons of the era, like New York’s Auburn Prison, shepherded men into individual cells at night and silent labor during the day, a model that would prove enduring. Women at Auburn, however, lived in a small attic room above

Prior to visiting the prison, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was nervous but also excited to see how everything operated. I had never been to a jail or a prison prior to this field trip. I was expecting to see one big building surrounded by high fences and coiled barbed wire. Once inside, I was expecting to see people dressed in orange doing various activities, much like in movies and television shows, even though I knew these weren’t true.

Prison populations have been on the raise since the early 1970s. Today we incarcerate over 2 million men, women and juveniles in the various correctional facilities around the country. These facilities can range from local jails or detention facilities to the new so called "Supermax" prisons. Conditions can also vary across the spectrum for these different correctional institutions. Each type of inmate has his or her own challenges when faced with incarceration. Many factors play into determining "the experience" they have. Age and sex are one of the things that determine what type of institution you are committed to. Adult male prisoners are committed to adult male prisons.

Even though prisoners are incarcerated, they still are entitled to certain rights. There is a lot of debate about which rights prisoners should have because they can’t have too much freedom, and they also can’t have too little freedom. If inmates have much freedom, chaos would reign over the facility. No inmate would learn to truly change their ways and fit back into the community successfully. If too little freedom is given, inmates would be neglected and treated like animals. The perfect balance is needed to achieve a functional correctional facility.

The History of prisons goes through many eras. Many of these eras have a major impact on today’s prison system. The different was that the system worked and didn’t work really showed what was possibly and what should not be tried again. Each era tried to do something new are recreate something that had already been done by making changes to the way that they treated the inmates all the way to how they were housed and how much contact they had with one another. The different eras gave the present day prison system many great things to think about. Such as large capacity housing so you can properly use all the space in the prison and hold it to capacity. There is also the parole system that gives inmates a chance to work get out early and spend the rest of their sentence on the outside. These many great traits that the prison system today has all come from the hundreds of years of trial and error that occurred throughout the world.

     In general, Supermax prisoners are locked into small cells for approximately 23 hours a day. They have almost no contact with other human beings. There are no group activities: no work, no educational opportunities, no eating together, no sports, no getting together with other people for religious services, and no attempts at rehabilitation. There

A. Each prisoner received a copy of the Rules and Regulations for the Government… Correctional Institutions as well as a copy of the warden’s special rules that explained the daily routine of work and counts. The inmates were awakened at 6:30am to begin their day. They were required to clean up themselves and their cell and required to shave three times a week.

The overcrowding prison reflects that the inmate population has grown much faster than the funding for prisons, which is controlled at the state level. In most cases, state funding has not come close to keeping up with the rise in the prison population, leading to decrepit prison infrastructure that is wholly inadequate for housing such large numbers of inmates. Without capacity to house inmates properly, some prisons have resorted to having prisoners sleep in gymnasiums, and many have overcrowded cells to accommodate the extra bodies. This overcrowding has led to deteriorating cleanliness of prisons and declining safety. Today, non-violent prisoners are forced to live in close quarters with violent ones, and the results are predictable.

I decided upon reading more about the Supermax prisons, as I had heard of them but never really focused much attention to them. I wanted to gain more knowledge on what they were used for and the controversy which surrounded the use of these Supermax prisons. I decided to read ‘Housing for the “worst of the worst” inmates: Public Support for the Supermax Prisons’ and ‘What we know, what we do not know, and where we are going’ journals. From my first perceptions of a Supermax prison, I only really knew that they could house thousands of criminals at one time and that those criminals were the ones you would not want to be involved with, being as they were in confinement for the majority of the day. And they are rarely allowed to communicate with each other or with the prison guards.

Believe it or not, every prison has a set schedule that has to be followed by inmates. A wake up time, a time their allowed to make phone calls, breakfast and lunch time, furthermore a time where they have attend school and work. Young prisoners have to do at least fifteen hours of education a week. A prisoner that’s older is given an opportunity to study as well. It’s required that inmates are working in prison because this helps reduce the cost of the prison system. The type of jobs inmates have varies from state to state. Every state is different depending on the location of the prison.

There are many differences in the state prison systems out there. For example, custody levels, as previously mentioned, are typically governed by the crime that the criminal has committed and the security threat that they are classified as having. They also have to keep in mind that there are rules that must be followed, and as such, the frequency and severity of the infractions, usually called “good time”, can lower or raise the level of custody. You also have to take into consideration the types of units out there and their purpose in order to adequately describe the variances. Some are meant to educate and rehabilitate, as well as others are designed to progressively prepare offenders for

Male and female prisons differ in some ways, but one thing that is the same is that the inmates suffer from depression, stress, and anxiety each day for the rest of their lives. It is hard to imagine what they face through everyday incarcerated or not. When prisoners are in jail, they have to deal with drama believe it or not. They might form groups determined by race and talk negative things about each other or think one race is better than another. Women prisons do this more often than men prisons. An example from the show Orange is the New Black of prison drama is when a prisoner stole a hand mirror from another prisoner. It is stupid things like that. They have to deal with the crappy food, crappy roommates if they can have one, and not being able to have the freedom. They have strict rules on when they can have visitors and when they can take a phone call. If you committed a crime that is super bad, then you do not get these privileges. When there time is up, they have to worry about where to go, finding a job, family, and more. Some of them come out of there and have no family to help them seek shelter and help them financially. Some just have to live on the streets for a bit until they have some money. It is very difficult to find a stable job with committing a crime on your record. They probably could get hired on at a fast food restaurant or at a factory, but they won’t make much to be

A. Each prisoner received a copy of the Rules and Regulations for the Government… Correctional Institutions as well as a copy of the warden’s special rules that explained the daily routine of work and counts. The inmates were awakened at 6:30am to begin their day. They were required to clean up themselves and their cell and required to shave three times a week.

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