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The chapter about ethical dilemmas in corrections by Joycelyn Pollock begins with the discussion of the correctional system moving towards a rehabilitative era in the 1970s and establishing rights for inmates inside of institutions. However, it then mentions that the system is in an era of due deference in which there is a struggle to balance correctional officer authority and safety, with the rights and safety of the inmates. With this in mind, the chapter talks about the different types of correctional discretion, which is not unlike police and prosecutorial/judge discretion, and how this can lead to misconduct. Two of the most common types of correctional officer misconduct inside of institutions are sexual relationships and misconduct, …show more content…
Right now in our criminal justice system, there are issues with ethical conduct of correctional professionals abusing their power and discretion in ways that negatively impact the quality of life of the people they have control over. Correctional professionals have a difficult job, often dealing with unhappy persons and having a fear of inmate/client violence, or struggling to keep their relationships professional with the people they interact with daily. Due to this, correctional officers can sometimes misuse their discretion with persons who cooperate with them, while abusing their power with persons who make their job difficult. With this in mind, the book suggests that it is difficult to work in corrections, where the goal is to help people in a system that is punitive, and there truly needs to be more correctional professionals who care about the rehabilitation of …show more content…
More specifically, I want to look into the success of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 and how it can be made more effective. While I believe Congress had good intentions in enacting this legislation, it is not as effective as it could be in reducing sexual relationships and sexual abuse within correctional facilities in the United States. While the data the act has provided has proven informative, more needs to be done to develop solutions to the problem. Also, the Department of Justice has set forward a process whereby which standards are supposed to be met by each state and their progress is to be recorded. However, the only punishment for not meeting the standards set forward by the DOJ in regards to sexual misconduct is a loss of five percent of federal funds. This provides little incentive for correctional institutions to follow procedures and meet the goals of the standards. If the punishments and/or sanctions for not complying with the PREA Act and DOJ standards are made more punitive, perhaps sexual misconduct in the field could be significantly
I feel that this book gives a rough, inspiring and passionate warning that the rush to imprison offenders hurts the guards as well as the guarded. Conover reminds us that when we treat prisoners like the garbage of society, we are bound to treat prison staff as garbage men -- best out of sight, their own dirt surpassed only by the dirt they handle. Conover says in one part of his book, “Eventually admitting that being in a position of power and danger brings out a side of myself I don’t like.” I feel both prisoners and officers deserve better.
In the case study of whistle-blowing at Corcoran State Prison, two corrections officers were all but shunned for the actions they took to put an end to the mistreatment of prisoners. Officers Richard Caruso and Steve Rigg witnessed their fellow corrections officers abusing their power by placing rival gang members in a small recreation yard in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) to promote fighting. The officers would make bets on the inmates, treated the fighting like a sport and used unnecessary deadly force with a firearm at will (Dryburgh, 2009). Caruso and Rigg, both former marines, had superior comprehension of ethically handling a firearm; the actions of their co-workers became unacceptable so they took action (Dryburgh, 2009).
...they want to be not only respected but also being able to survive in the prison environment. In prison, there are so many inmates and not two inmates are the same. The inmates will disrespect the officers by calling them names, giving officers difficult times, but it goes the other way around too. It is disturbing image after learning that sometimes it is the officer’s fault and not just the inmates’ wrongdoings. There will be times when officers and inmates will engage in a conspiracy crime and times when the female staff is engaged in sexual actions with an inmate. Conover wrote this book to allow the audience to see the prison society from many different point-of-views and give future officers an early insight to becoming a correctional officer.
In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing journalist Ted Conover, who has a background in anthropology, goes undercover as correctional officer in order to examine the US prison system. The central problem to this analysis is that is inherently subjective because the author is documenting his experience from the lens of the guard. In such a polarizing and negative power dynamic a singular perspective shows a severely inadequate representation of what occurs at the institution and the circumstances that allow it to perpetuate. This failure is evident in the author’s personal transformation from the beginning of the book to the end. His writing becomes desensitized and begins to see prisoners as increasingly evil. Although this type of first hand journalism is admirable and provides interesting anecdotal evidence it will never be able to fully examine the precise and intricate social, economic, and political conditions that are the root cause of the injustice that is our criminal justice system.
In the case of Sandin v. Conner, DeMont Conner, an inmate at a maximum security correctional facility in Hawaii, was subjected to a strip search in 1987. During the search he directed angry and foul language at the officer. Conner was charged with high misconduct and sentenced to 30 days of segregation by the adjustment committee. Conner was not allowed to present witnesses in his defense. Conner completed the 30-day segregation sentence, after which he requested a review of his case. Upon review, prison administration found no evidence to support the misconduct claim. The State District Court backed the decision, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Sandin had a liberty interest in remaining free from disciplinary segregation. This case is significant because it confronts the question of which constitutional rights individuals retain when they are incarcerated. In Sandin v. Conner, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that prisoners have a right to due process only when “atypical and significant deprivation” has occurred. Prisons must now be vigilant in protecting the rights of inmates. It is a delicate matter in the sense that, when an individual enters prison, their rights to liberty are by and large being forfeited. The rights in question are important to prisoners because prisons are closed environments where by nature their freedoms are already very limited. They need a well-defined set of rights so that prisons do not unduly infringe on their liberty. Without court intervention, prison administrators would likely not have allowed this particular right, as it adds another layer of bureaucracy that can be seen as interfering with the efficiency of their job. Also, it could lead to a glut of prisoners claiming violations of their rights under the court ruling.
As a newly promoted Lieutenant in charge of jail operations in the Houston Police Department (HPD), there are several critical issues regarding the jail environment that require immediate attention such as, inadequate conditions of confinement, health care, security measures, and sexual misconduct between correctional officers and inmates. The aforementioned issues are a controversial topic all across the U.S. and it usually attracts media attention and creates negative publicity towards the Department of Corrections. A lieutenant of jail operations is responsible for his or he shift and oversees multiple areas of the jail facility. Responsibilities of a jail lieutenant includes but is not limited to the following: (1) coordinate shift activities;
When envisioning a prison, one often conceptualizes a grisly scene of hardened rapists and murderers wandering aimlessly down the darkened halls of Alcatraz, as opposed to a pleasant facility catering to the needs of troubled souls. Prisons have long been a source of punishment for inmates in America and the debate continues as to whether or not an overhaul of the US prison system should occur. Such an overhaul would readjust the focuses of prison to rehabilitation and incarceration of inmates instead of the current focuses of punishment and incarceration. Altering the goal of the entire state and federal prison system for the purpose of rehabilitation is an unrealistic objective, however. Rehabilitation should not be the main purpose of prison because there are outlying factors that negatively affect the success of rehabilitation programs and such programs would be too costly for prisons currently struggling to accommodate additional inmate needs.
The way correction officers are treated in prison is dreadful. “A corrections officer was seriously burned Monday morning in an attack by an inmate at the Green Bay Correctional Institution” (Roberts, 2016). This topic interest me because most of my life my brother has described the working conditions of correction officers in prison. I remember him telling me how one officer had his finger bitten off by an inmate. Correction officers are the guards who work in prison to enforce prisoners, so that inmates do not find themselves constantly in trouble. In addition, the officers ensure inmates’ safety. Despite the fact that the officers want to secure the inmate 's safety, people are unaware of the hardships officers face every day. A great deal of the rigorous challenges guards go through are never mentioned on the news or make it to newspapers. Correction officers are rarely mentioned within society, even though they are a huge part of the law enforcement. There is a
Just issuing out policies and rules don’t help, there needs to be “an ethical orientation and belief in the value of integrity and it must be central to the culture of the organization. The only correctional organizations that succeed are value-based. The Correctional system is not a value neutral enterprise. They have to have values and speak openly and often about them” (Martin, 2001). “Professional ethics or a conflict with professional ethics becomes an issue when the relationship between a correctional officer and an inmate becomes personal. The close proximity of officer and inmate over a period of time, as well as shared feelings about the facility's administrators, can at times bring the officer and inmate too close. When officers feel they have more in common with the inmates than with their administrators, unethical conduct becomes noticeable. On the other hand, when officers contribute to inhumane and destructive environments for inmates, they are also being unethical. Ethical behavior by correctional officers requires that they do not violate an inmate's constitutional rights, that inmates and other staff not be treated only as means to a selfish end, that actions not violate a law, that actions not produce more harmful than beneficial effects for those involved, and that actions not violate departmental procedure or a professional ethical
Sexual Abuse has gained an outrageous amount of attention as it quickly inclines to the top concerns of the prison system. Officials have been severely struggling as surveys display the number of sexual assaults with no regard of the person’s age, gender, or race. Officers and other staffs have been engaging in sexual activities with inmates undermining the rules and regulation of the system, and ignoring the oath taken prior to becoming an officer. Inmates have been raped, had affairs, become pregnant and deeply involved with the staff of the prison. As a result of the struggles, officials generated the PREA Act, a policy that was put in place to help prosecute and punish officers who engaged in such behavior.
and Sexuality in US Prisons." Critical Survey 23, no. 3: 55-66. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost. doi:10.3167/cs.2011.230305
With the substantial increase in prison population and various changes that plague correctional institutions, government agencies are finding that what was once considered a difficult task to provide educational programs, inmate security and rehabilitation programs are now impossible to accomplish. From state to state, each correctional organization is coupled with financial problems that have depleted the resources to assist in providing the quality of care in which the judicial system demands from these state and federal prisons. Judges, victims, and prosecuting attorneys entrust that once an offender is turned over to the correctional system, that the offender will receive the punishment imposed by the court, be given services that aid in the rehabilitation of those offenders that one day will be released back into society, and to act as a deterrent to other criminals contemplating criminal acts that could result in their incarceration. Has our nation’s correctional system finally reached it’s critical collapse, and as a result placed American citizens in harm’s way to what could result in a plethora of early releases of inmates to reduce the large prison populations in which independent facilities are no longer able to manage? Could these problems ultimately result in a drastic increase in person and property crimes in which even our own law enforcement is ineffective in controlling these colossal increases in crime against society?
All over America, crime is on the rise. Every day, every minute, and even every second someone will commit a crime. Now, I invite you to consider that a crime is taking place as you read this paper. "The fraction of the population in the State and Federal prison has increased in every single year for the last 34 years and the rate for imprisonment today is now five times higher than in 1972"(Russell, 2009). Considering that rate along crime is a serious act. These crimes range from robbery, rape, kidnapping, identity theft, abuse, trafficking, assault, and murder. Crime is a major social problem in the United States. While the correctional system was designed to protect society from offenders it also serves two specific functions. First it can serve as a tool for punishing the offender. This involves making the offender pay for his/her crime while serving time in a correctional facility. On the other hand it can serve as a place to rehabilitate the offender as preparation to be successful as they renter society. The U.S correctional system is a quite controversial subject that leads to questions such as how does our correctional system punish offenders? How does our correctional system rehabilitate offenders? Which method is more effective in reducing crime punishment or rehabilitation? Our correctional system has several ways to punish and rehabilitate offenders.
The first issue that I would like to address is the overcrowding issues in prisons. In my opinion, overcrowding issues are the biggest issues in our correctional system that concerns every citizen. Running a prison required money, resources and manpower, with overcrowding issues, the government would have no choice but to increase the number of correctional facilities, privatized prisons and increasing manpower. According to (Levitt, 1996), “The incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled in the last two decades. At year-end 1994 the United States prison population exceeded one million. Annual government outlays on prisons are roughly $40 billion per year. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is three to four times greater than most European countries.” (p.1). Overcrowding issues are not only affect prisons but the society as a whole as well. The reason is simply because prison population directly refl...