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Correctional staff and prison personnel are responsible for different daily responsibilities. From the warden to correctional officers (CO), each staff member plays a vital role in making the prison functional correctly and efficiently. Defined by the Bureau of Labor a CO is “responsible for overseeing individuals who have been arrested or who have been sentenced to serve time in a jail, reformatory or prison”. (Carlson and Howard, 2015. pg. 232). An officer’s day begins at roll call, which is usually fifteen minutes before the scheduled shift is supposed to start. During this time, any issues that may have arisen will be presented. Such as a Security Threat Group (STG) affiliated inmate has caused a disruption with another gang in the …show more content…
Officers are to hold inmates responsible for their appearance, ID showing, and most importantly how they conduct themselves in different situations. When an officer of a prison gets hired, there is extensive training on how to interact with inmates. These CO’s learn many methods to deal with diverse inmate’s behaviors. This training focuses on the sensitivity of some matters such as; racism, gang activities and mental well-being of certain inmates. Officers must always remain professional. They must treat inmates respectfully; no profanity, name calling or antagonistic dialogues. A public communication model for conflict resolution is motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing is a irrefutable method that applies nonconfrontational negotiation to diminish the arising, potentially violent situation. (Carlson and Howard, 2015. pg. …show more content…
shirt being untucked, inmates will lose respect for that officer. Most instances behaviors get worse. CO’s are discouraged to empathize with inmates, but a level of humanity must always be prevalent. Officers work closely with inmate’s day in and day out, they become familiar with the inmate’s ways and tendencies. The officer in the pods are always going to the first responder in case a situation breaks out. Handling disruptive behavior initially will decrease the likelihood of it escalating. (Carlson and Howard, 2015. pg.234-235). STG Task Forces are put together to manage the gang affiliated inmates in prisons. These task forces specialize in gang behaviors, affiliations and activities that go on between these classified inmates as well as the prisons general population. The training that STG officers go through is different from a food service worker. STG officers specialize in managing these inmates thorough different techniques, gang affiliated inmates are separated and put into lockdown cells. There movements are watched very closely. Recreation time is individualized so inmates are conversing or threatening each
The picture this book paints would no doubt bother corrections professionals in prisons where prisoner-staff relationships and officer solidarity are more developed. In training, Conover is told that "the most important thing you can learn here is to communicate with inmates." And the Sing Sing staff who enjoy the most success and fulfillment i...
...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.
The jobs of correctional officer are some times overlooked. Correctional officers are playing a huge role in society because they need to perform important tasks. A correctional officer’s job is not easy and can become very stressful at times. Correctional officers are required to enforce and keep order, supervise inmates, help counsel offenders, search inmate cells for contraband, and also report on inmate actions. Correctional officers need to contain power over the prisoners in order to enforce the rules of the prison, or else the prison will not function correctly. In the book, Conover says, “The essential relationship inside a prison is the one between a guard and an inmate…the guard, it is thought, wields all the power, but in truth the inmate has power too” (Conover, p. 207). In the book, the importance of power the prisoner’s hold can be seen through the sudden increase of prisoners, the Stanford Prison Experiment and through the contraband they make.
The correctional subculture is not described as extensively as the police subculture; however, many elements of misconduct and criminal activities are similar (Pollock, 2014). The parallelism of corruption between the police and correctional officer are as follows: (1) use of force; (2) acceptance of gratuities from inmates; (3) mistreatment/sexual coercion of inmates; and (4) abuse of authority for personal gains (Pollock, 2014). According to Pardue et al. (2011), there are two types of sexual coercion found within the prison subculture and they are as follows: (1) coercion between convicts; and (2) coercion between convicts and staff members (p. 289). The Department of Corrections is aware of staff sexual abuse and harassment of women prisoners, and they have been playing “catch up” to accommodate the challenges of this persisting problem (Clear et al., 2013, p.
These officers have little contact with the inmates or other correctional officers and because there are such few escape attempts, it’s easy for these officers to become complacent (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Perimeter security officers are typically assigned to towers, wall posts, and patrolling of the perimeters (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015).
Cross-gender staffing can raise many concerns for the female inmate and the correctional staff. Female inmates have dynamic interactions with the correctional officers, this can result in the offenders having a close relationship with their superiors; however, the lines can become blurred (Griffiths & Murdoch, 2014).
Prison gangs are originally formed by inmates as a way of protecting themselves from the other inmates. These gangs have turned out to be violent and thus posing a threat to security. This paper will have a look at the different gangs in prisons, their history, beliefs and missions, and the differences and similarities in these gangs.
Some officers will probably not follow this part of training because of them thinking they can take the inmates because they are in charge over them. But you need to think about your safety and what you have outside of your career. An important ability to have is situational awareness, ability to monitor others, read body language and prepare for an attack. All of this is crucial to this profession because you just don’t know what you will run into that day. Textbook self defense scenarios leave the attacker lying on the ground, unconscious, crippled and bleeding.
...rulson, Marquart, Vaughn, Bever (2010). Additional research has revealed that individual-level risk factors, like gang history, recurrent prison confinements, active criminal justice status, previous arrests and convictions, substance abuse history, and others are associated with prison misconduct and violence among inmates (DeLisis, Caudill, Trulson, Marquart, Vaughn, Bever (2010). In other research inmates’ psychological characteristic were studied such as anger in relation to their criminal history, these variables also relate to misconduct in prison.
One of the major problems of corrections today is the security threat group - more commonly known as the prison gang. A security threat group (STG) can be defined as any group of offenders who pose a treat to the security and physical safety of the institution. Throughout the 1960's and 1970's, prison gangs focused primarily on uniting inmates for self protection and the monopolization of illegal prison activities for monetary gain (F.B.P., 1994, p. 2). STGs are mostly divided along racial lines and practiced defiance towards authority. STGs use a variety of hand signs, alphabet codes, tattoos, and different types of gang terminology. Gangs characteristically have rivals and make an alliance with other gangs. The criminal activity of S.T.G.’s does not only exist inside the confines of the prison walls, but has flowed to the outside world. “Prostitution, extortion, drug selling, gambling, loan sharking – such activities are invariably operated by prison gangs” (Gaines, Kaune, Miller, 2000, p.652). The Texas Prison System consists of eleven classified security threat groups; Texas chooses to classify a gang as a STG when they become involved in violent activity. “Prison gangs exist in the institutions of forty states and also in the federal system” (Clear and Cole, 2000, p. 260). Three main stages that the offender will experience with the S.T.G. are recruitment, the gang experience, and affiliation upon release.
A typical day for a Correctional Officer would be the preparing of inmates for court appearances. They also receive new inmates to the facility brought in by the Sheriffs Department. Each new inmate must be photographed and fingerprinted upon immediate arrival to the Pre Trial Centre. They are then stripped and fully searched inside and out. With that ...
In today’s pop culture, media of all forms portrayals of correctional officers are almost always negative. Correctional officers are portrayed as bad, “meat head” type men. They are depicted as authoritarian, insensitive and without any redeeming qualities. This image of correctional officers is one in which many people believe and think of when they view prison life. These images can be found in films like “Shawshank Redemption”, where guards brutally beat, sometimes to death, the inmates they are responsible for. It is portrayed that the guards do not care about the inmates but instead hate them to the point that most believe they are always harsh and use excessive force. One harsh officer claimed he “wouldn’t piss on them [inmates]
In the United States prison system inmate’s struggle and face conflicts within the culture, they live in on a daily basis. Prison life is very structured and within this system, there are multiple layers of racism, bigotry, and injustice. As a result of extreme conditions and the prison climate, many prisoners often experience stressful situations that influence their mental health. In addition to mental health issues, many prisoners often experience emotional, social, organizational, and arduous physical conditions while incarcerated. Due to these harsh conditions, further research is needed in our prison systems to evaluate the impact of our prison culture and the climate that these inmates are subjected to when incarcerated. Corporate
This first study did not mention exactly how many officers were used in this study but it stated that 39 to 55 percent have experienced work related violence or threats. (ncjrs.gov). Most of the work related stress did not come from the offenders but from the agency itself. There are three major types of stress in the probation world, high caseloads, paper work and lastly but not least deadlines. And as many jobs have it, about 87 percent blame their supervisor for one of the causes of stress. They said the lack of advancement of the job, and recognizing well job done. (ncjrs.gov). As we can see already, each and one of these stress actors is tied to another. Now the question to ask is how these strong and willing full individual deal and cope with their stress. Some said they took extra sick days just for themselves and other by going to church, venting with family, friends or co workers and others by exercising. (ncjrs.gov)
Safety is a major stressor for correctional officers within a correctional facility (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). The scenario that was presented has three possible safety issues the correctional officer encountered, that we will discuss. The three safety issues are: overtime, working alone in a cell block, and family-work conflict. Now that we have identified the three possible safety issues, probable solutions or observations will be discussed.