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The history of prison development
History of the penitentiary system
Thesis for the history prison system
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Camp Hill the day that lasted 72 hours
On October 25, 1989 more than 1,300 inmates at the Camp Hill State Correctional Institution rioted. The rioters took at least 8 hostages, lighting 4 fires and caused millions of dollars in damage. More then 35 staff members, 5 inmates, 1 firefighter and 1 state trooper sustain injuries in the worst uprising in Pennsylvania history.
Inmates returning from an exercise yard in the late afternoon overwhelmed correctional staff and seized hostages. Inmates were reportedly upset about overcrowding and suspended privileges. They set fires, which destroyed more then half of the 31 buildings and took hostages who were not only guards but also other inmates who were not willing to join in the rioting. The riot ended through negotiations and the inmates were confined to their cells. The superintendent informed news and officials that the riot was over. The next day the superintendent met with the inmates to discuss their grievances. Unknown to the superintendent or staff many of the cells which the inmates were confined to were not secure permitting the start of a second riot later that day allowing prisoners to escape and take more then 17 more hostages and injuring 138 officers. About 800 troopers were on the scene during the peak of the riots with hundreds more en route to begin shift changes as the riots continued for a 3 day period. Negotiations were again attempted, but the riot finally ended when state police forcibly entered the compound.
The biggest problem at Camp Hill was that it was originally designed for juveniles but was transitioned to adult offenders with no consideration for the inadequacy of the physical facility or the necessary training. At the time the riots began Camp Hill’s capacity was 1,826 but housed more then 2,600 inmates running at a 142% capacity.
Unable to get official permission to interview and write about correctional officers, Ted Conover, author of the book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, “got in" by applying for a correctional officer position. After training, he and his fellow rookies, known as "newjacks," were randomly assigned to Sing Sing, one of the country's most famous -- and infamous -- prisons. Sing Sing, a maximum-security male prison, was built in 1828 by prisoners themselves, kept at their task by frequent use of the whip. Today, the chaos, the backbiting, the rundown building and equipment, the disrespect and the relentless stress that Conover experienced in his year at Sing Sing show, quite well, how the increase of prisons in the U.S. brutalizes more than just the prisoners. Some of the individuals in Conover's entering "class" of corrections trainees had always wanted to work in law enforcement. Others were ex-military, looking for a civilian job that they thought would reward structure and discipline. But most came looking for a steady job with good benefits. To get it, they were desperate enough to commute hours each way, or even to live apart from their families during the work week. Their job consists of long days locking and unlocking cells, moving prisoners to and from various locations while the prisoners beg, hassle and abuse them. Sometimes, the prisoners' requests are simple, but against the rules: an extra shower, some contraband cigarettes. Other times, they are appropriate, but unbelievably complicated: it can take months to get information about property lost in the transfer from one prison to another. Meanwhile, the orders officers give are ignored. Discipline -- even among the officers themselves -- is non-existent. And with the money and benefits of this "good" job come nightmares and family stress, daily uncertainty about one's job and duties, and pent-up frustration that, every so often, explodes in violence -- instigated by staff as well as by prisoners.
In 1917, Houston, Texas was placed under martial law. The Houston Riot of 1917, or the Camp Logan Riot, was a mutiny by 156 African American soldiers of the Third Battalion of the all-black Twenty-fourth United States Infantry Regiment. The riot only lasted for one night, but it resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and sixteen civilians. In the days to follow, a total of nineteen people would be executed and forty-one were given life sentences.
Chapman’s research shows evidence of 211 stabbings taking place in three years at one prison in Louisiana. Bloody riots, rape, robberies, and exhortation are just a few of the everyday occurrences that can be expected when entering a penitentiary.
The prison, opened in 1876, was started by seven prisoners who built the first few cells. As more cells were build more prisoners were taken in and more manpower was available to build bigger, better, and faster. There were 3,069 prisoners, 26 of them female, through the 33 year run of the prison at 350 a time, most of them having crimes ranging from rape to murder and many more in between. No matter how cunning or dangerous the criminals were they didn’t have much chance to escape. Armed guards, deadly heat, spanning desert, the already secure structure, and rapid rivers that held no hope for any prisoner were all topped off by a Lowell gun which was superior to the Gatling gun at the time. Manufactured by the Ames Mfg. Co. it could fire up to 1000 times a minute and was said to be accurate up to 1000 feet under certain conditions making it fearsome to any prisoner dreaming of a false freedom.
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;
Even though many of the protesters were severely beaten, they still stood their stance and got the message out. What is a Riot? According to Encyclopedia.gov a riot “is a social occasion involving relatively spontaneous collective violence directed at property, persons, or authority.” There are five main
...series of meeting set up by, U.S. Attorney David M. Satz. According to police the riots took 26 lives, 24 of them were African American. The two white victims were a police detective, who was reportedly shot by a sniper, and a fireman, who was killed by gunfire while responding to an alarm on Central Avenue. Eighteen of the 26 people killed during the riot were shot by police or National Guard troops. Several people, like Eloise Spellman, and Elizabeth Artis, were fatally wounded in their own homes by a combination of National Guard/Police bullets aimed at suspected snipers. According to New Jersey state police reported 725 injuries (according to Newark City Hospital over 1000), 1500 arrest, and $10 million in property damage. After the riots Newark tried to encourage racial equality. However, today, housing, employment, and education are remaining huge problems.
In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people have dedicated themselves in fighting for
We live in a society today filled with crime and fear. We are told not to go out after a certain hour, always move in groups, and even at times advised to carry a weapon on ourselves. There is only one thing that gives us piece of mind in this new and frightening world we live in: the American penal system. We are taught when growing up to believe that all of the bad people in the world are locked up, far out of sight and that we are out of reach of their dangerous grasp. Furthermore, the murderers and rapists we watch on television, we believe once are caught are to be forgotten and never worried about again. We wish on them the most horrible fates and to rot in the caged institution they are forced to call their new home. But, where do we draw the line of cruelty to those who are some of the cruelest people in our country? And what happens when one of this most strict and strongest institution our nation has breaks down? What do we do when this piece of mind, the one thing that lets us sleep at night, suddenly disappears? This is exactly what happened during and in the after effects of the Attica prison riot of 1971. The riot created an incredibly immense shift and change not only in the conditions of prisons, but also in the security we feel as American citizens both in our penal system and American government. The Attica prison riot brought about a much-needed prison reform in terms of safety and conditions for inmates, which was necessary regardless of the social backlash it created and is still felt today.
In the 1970s, prison was a dangerous place. Prison violence and the high numbers of disruptive inmates have led prison authorities to seek new ways to control prisoners. At first, prison staff sought to minimize contact with prisoners by keeping them in their cells for a majority of the day. As time went on, the prison authorities began to brainstorm the idea of having entire prisons dedicated to using these kinds of procedures to control the most violent and disruptive inmates. By 1984, many states began construction on super-maximum prisons.
...DuBois, a black civil rights activist, wrote “During that year seventy-seven Negroes were lynched, of whom one was a woman and eleven were soldiers; of these, fourteen were publicly burned, eleven of them being burned alive.” In most of the race riots the problem was started by a white person attacking a black person. However in almost every riot the police force sided with the white people by either participating in the riot and attacking the black people or by failing to stop the fight. One major reason for this is because the black people had no power, the entire police force and justice system was made of only white people.
Levin, b (2002). From slavery to hate crime: the emergence of race and status based
most of the units being understaffed, prison gangs and prison violence is hard to control in these type of
Throughout history into today, there have been many problems with our prison system. Prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, rape rates are off the charts, and we as Americans have no idea how to fix it. We need to have shorter sentences and try to rehabilitate prisoners back to where they can function in society. Many prisoners barely have a high school education and do not receive further education in jail. Guards need to pay more attention to the well being of the inmates and start to notice signs of abuse and address them. These are just a few of the many problems in our prison systems that need to be addressed.
... set on fire. As a result, the governor called in the National Guard. On May 4, 1970 the guardsmen confronted students at a rally. The students threw rocks and bottles and the guards retaliated with tear gas. However, without warning, a group of guardsmen fired their rifles into the crowd and killed four students and wounding nine. New of this violence soon spread to other campuses and more protests erupted nationwide.