Linear Essay

Michael Creswell

Linear Essay

10/23/10

The United States imprisons more citizens, both in number and percentage, than any other country in the world. Nearly one in every one hundred adults is in prison, but this is largely due to parole violations rather than an increased crime rate. This extremely high number of people in prison is a problem in itself, but even worse than the United States' drastically high incarceration rate is the treatment that people receive while in prison. Prisoners’ rights are being violated by an unjust prison system. Prisoners are commonly abused, beaten, and taken advantage of both sexually and monetarily. Studies show that an inmate has a 50 percent chance of being physically abused and a 40 percent chance of being sexually assaulted while in prison. In addition to this, many rapes and sexual assaults are not reported because the guards turn a blind eye, in fact, it is estimated that only half of the sexual assaults that occur in prison are reported to prison guards. Prison systems should serve as correctional facilities; they should be a place where people pay retribution for their wrongdoings, but this does not mean that prisoners should have to endure further consequences and unjust punishments.

While many prisons are just, civil, and decent, there are exceptions. While in a corrupt, worst situation prison, inmates are exposed to an animalistic world where prisoner abuse is regular. Abuse covers a large array of injustices, from assault to rape. Power hungry prison guards act at puppeteers who control the inmates every move, beating them, harassing them, and causing fights between other inmates. Prisoners lose all freedoms when locked behind bars. They lose their rights to ensure the safety of other inmates and of guards. The problem in prison lies with an unavoidable uneven distribution of power, where guards hold most of the power and inmates hold close to none. The guards receive too much power and take advantage of it. Sex scandals, drug scandals and cruel punishments are occurring within prison walls and are ignored, belittled, underreported, and under-prosecuted. Prisoners are physically abused using electroshock weapons, toxic chemicals, and blunt objects such as baton. Electroshock weapons subdue a prisoner by contracting all superficial muscles, leaving the inmate burned and in pain. Toxic chemicals such mace are often shot into the facial area of an inmate causing chemical burns and leaving the victim unable to breathe. Blunt object are used to simply beat a prisoner, guards also use their fists. Besides the physical abuse, prisoners are commonly sexually abused. Prisoners can be raped by both other prisoners or by staff; statistics show that prison officials overlook this once out of every two occurrences. According to Human Rights Watch, a non-government corporation that advocates for human rights, corrupt guards have inappropriately touched, sexually assaulted, and raped inmates with no consequences. In addition to physical and sexual abuse, prisoners can also be abused economically. Essentially the prisoners are being scammed by guards in their illegal dealings. For instance, a guard will force a prisoner to pay way too much for a pack of cigarettes which guards should not even be distributing to prisoners in the first place. The guards form a strict code of silence that leads toward unreported mistreatment of inmates, lack of justice, and overall public ignorance. Prisoners suffer through their incarceration time and are unable to pay retribution for their wrongdoing due to the abuse that is covered up behind prison walls. Guards constantly overstep their boundaries and never suffer consequences for it.

Although a small percentage of prison guards do abuse their power, a lot do not.The prison guards’ job is to oversee those who have been arrested, waiting to be tried, or sentenced to either jail or prison. The flow of prisoners is constantly changing; the guards see new faces everyday due to new criminals and the transfer of criminals. Guards are unable to form relationships with the inmates and must be on their toes at all times. Prisoners often are violent towards guards because they are already in prison they have nothing to lose. In jail the number one priority is for security to be maintained. The inmates are watched carefully in order to prevent violence, rapes, and escape. Correctional officers are given power to maintain order; they often settle arguments between inmates and randomly search the inmates living quarters for banned items to prevent any surprises. Prison guards have a difficult job; they must take extreme precautions to be able to protect themselves and other prisoners. This danger is made apparent when guards randomly search the cells for banned items such as weapons. Prison is a very rough world and inmates often kill or attempt to kill guards. The constant struggle for control and power fuels the disputes between guards and inmates. The majority of abuse is in fact inflicted on the guards not by the guards, but the small number of corrupt guards gives the rest of the guards a poor reputation. Prison guards are just trying to do their jobs and stay safe. Guards form a strict code of silence that allows guards to do their job easier, however, this also allows the guards to abuse their power. An example of the code of silence being wrongfully used is in the gladiator style fights during 1989-1995 in Corcoran Prison's High Security Unit. Guards would set up fights between rival gangs and then when the two rival gang members were trying to kill each other the guards would shoot at them. This led to 33 inmates being shot and 7 of those shot were killed. The guards involved were put on trial. No guard would rat out another guard. In this case, the code of silence had allowed the guards to murder 7 prisoners, treat them like animals, play god, and take shots at a human being without any consequences. These are the types of guards that give all prison guards a bad name. These corrupt guards have been able to stay under the radar of policy makers. Policy makers’ constituencies generally focus their attention on the abused prisoners rather than the corrupt guards.

Policy makers are not able to make and implement effective policies. There have been Acts in the past that have tried to eliminate the mistreatment of prisoners, yet, even with sufficient funding they fail. For instance, in 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which deals with the sexual assault of prisoners. However, this act is being violated in numerous correctional facilities in the United States. The Act does not tolerate a culture of sexual violence and misconduct against offenders through education, screening, assessment, classification, monitoring, counseling, and investigation. Nevertheless, the prison guards are infringing on these policies. For example, a seventeen year old Texas prisoner reported to the prison authorities that he was raped and beaten and was not taken seriously. He had injuries and reported to be raped eight times by the same man. The authorities interviewed both men and they decided that it was nothing but a “lovers’ quarrel.” They sent both men back to their cells where rape took place again. The victim was raped and beaten even more severely. The victim’s father pleaded that he be granted protective custody, but this request was denied. Unable to take the abuse any longer, the prisoner committed suicide. If enforced, the Prison Elimination Act should have prevented this situation from happening. Policy makers do a good job of creating a policy that has potential to be effective however; they do not see the implementation of the policy and therefore it fails although it has ample funding. Policy makers seem to care not about preventing injustice in prisons but more about getting re-elected through keeping their constituency happy.

In the United States Prison system, there have been numerous budget cuts. For example, in Michigan, there was a budget cut of five hundred million dollars from correctional facilities. This means that there are one thousand fewer correction officers within the facilities and the same amount of inmates, causing an increase in violence. Despite the budget cuts, the overall spending of the prison system has increased over the years. It has increased 570% over the last twenty years and the spending of education has only increased 33%. So while the amount of money spent per inmate has gone down, the overall spending on the prison system has gone up to keep up with the swollen prison population. The money that is spent on prisons is not used in an effective way. Ultimately, the spending has increased but the quality has decreased. In the 2007 -08 year, prisons were locked down 148 times due to violence, which is an eighty percent increase. Assaults by inmates on other inmates rose 19.5 percent and assaults on staff rose 11 percent. Although there have been numerous budget cuts to the prison systems in America, millions of dollars have been appropriated from policies that ultimately fail, essentially wasting the taxpayers money. For example, in 2004 the Prison rape elimination act appropriated 25 million dollars to various states; Iowa, Michigan, New York, Texas, and Washington all received the maximum grant of 1 million dollars. In 2005 20 million dollars were given out in grants. This money has not increased or decreased the number of prison rapes, instead it has uncovered a more accurate number of how many inmates are actually raped, at least 13% or 200,000 prisoners. Failed policies and overcrowded prisons are wasting taxpayers’ money. Although the total amount of money has gone up dramatically the quality of life of a prison inmates has decreased.

The focus of a crime is on the offender, the offender of a serious violent crime, such as rape, could get life in prison. Once the offender has been tried and convicted the government has done their job and they move on to another crime. What about the victim? Victims are left alone to lick their wounds. Victims are often overlooked. Underprepared and feeling vulnerable victim’s lives can be forever ruined from a crime. I personally care about prison conditions after one of my closest family friends told me that her mother was the victim of attempted murder. To protect her and her family I have removed all names and locations. I care about prison conditions after hearing this story. Imagine an average American family. Not poor but not rich. Generally happy with a couple of speed bumps along the way. Unsuspecting. Suddenly the father comes home with a shotgun, with hopes to kill the entire family. In an attempt to save her children the mother is shot and killed. The kids run from the house, one has sustained major injuries, all are in shock. They have been ripped out of their secure suburban world that they grew up in and now have a father who will be in prison for life without parole and a mother who has just made the ultimate sacrifice in front of all their eyes. Alone, vulnerable, confused, and heartbroken they are not given a change to digest what they have just saw, they instead are questioned by numerous officers and detectives focusing on putting the beast behind bars. Each question twists the knife that has been thrust into them by this crime. Living with extended family is the only form of comfort these kids have. Once their father is behind bars the questions stop and all attention on them fades away. The extended family takes care of the wounded sister who is the oldest and the middle sister steps into the role of mother. The middle sister fights back tears in the attempt to be strong and create security of her struggling sisters. The tears build up over the years and she snaps and becomes angry. Life goes on yet the haunting past continues to become unburied. The eldest sister is now homeless and psychotic; the middle sister is lives her life looking forward and making the most of every situation, and the youngest sister is timid and untrusting. While this happened to my friends mother, if her grandfather is released from prison he made it clear that he would “finish what he started”, affecting her entire family. The view of the family is that he should serve his time in prison and die in there, however he should absolutely not be exposed to abuse or corruption. I find this extremely interesting that he ruined their lives and forever changed them for the worse and yet they do not want to see their father and grandfather endure the worst situation prison. This changed my perspective on those in prison. The majority are, maybe not great people, but decent people, and humans nevertheless. No human no matter what circumstance should play god.

Something must be done to stop the unjust treatment of prisoners and to correct the corruption in the United States prison system. In order to stop the corruption, money that is spent on the prison system must be used more effectively, and altered legislation must be enacted. Not only should previous legislation such as the Prison Rape Elimination Act be more strictly regulated and enforced, but also the consequences for committing crimes that violate these acts should be more severe. Legislation that exists now varies from state to state, and if the Government came up with one all encompassing legislation regarding prisoner treatment, it would be much easier to enforce than it is now. This federal legislation would not only expand on the states' laws, but would also be stricter and more specific. For instance, it would make corporal punishment unconstitutional under any circumstances and the rape and abuse of prisoners by guards would result in a more severe sentencing than a misdemeanor. These changes in the legislation would make the laws easier to enforce, make them more clear and consistent, and would ultimately deter inmates and prison guards from committing the crime in the first place due to the consequences. The code of silence must be broken and the prisoner’s inalienable rights as human beings must be respected.