America's Prison System

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America's Hardest Prisons - First Timers - part 1

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1 out of 100 Americans now in jail.

• For the first time in American history more than one in every 99.1 adult men and women are now in prison or in jail.

• States spent a total of $49 billion on prisons in 2007, compared to $11 billion 20 years ago.

• The United States incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than any other country. China ranks second.

How Prisons Work• What is Prison? • Prison is quite simple: it's a place where your freedom,

movements and access to basically everything is restricted, usually as punishment for committing a crime.

• But for anyone who has ever done hard time, a prison is so much more:

• it's a place where dignity, privacy and control are given up to guards and prison administrators, where isolation and boredom can drive someone insane, and where the simplest of necessities seem like luxuries.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvtPim-Gync

• A prison sentence is a punishment. In this regard, it serves both as a form of justice and as a deterrent(prison is unpleasant, so people are reluctant to commit crimes for fear of going there).

• Prisons often serve as a safeguard, keeping dangerous people locked away from society so they cannot commit any more violent crimes.

• In some cases, prisons are used to rehabilitate criminals and set them up for a new life with an improved education, job and social skills and a new outlook.

• U.S. prisons are broken down into three basic levels of security: maximum, medium and minimum.

• Minimum security prisons often resemble camps or college campuses. They are reserved for non-violent offenders with relatively clean criminal records, or prisoners who have served most of their term in a higher-security facility and displayed exemplary behavior.

• A medium security prison restricts the daily movements of the inmates to a greater extent, but instead of cells they usually have dormitories, and the prison is usually enclosed by a razor-wire fence.

• Maximum security prisons are what most people think of when they think of prison. However, only a quarter of all prisoners in the United States are housed in a maximum security facility.

• These types of prisons are reserved for violent offenders, those who have escaped (or tried to escape) or inmates who could cause problems in lower security prisons.

• They are surrounded by high walls topped with razor wire, and armed guards in observation towers shoot at anyone who tries to make it over the wall.

• When an incident occurs at a maximum security prison, all the inmates are confined to their cells for several days, with absolutely no freedom whatsoever. This is known as lockdown

• Several prisons have been built and run under permanent lockdown -- they are known as SuperMax prisons.

• Most maximum security prisons have a SuperMax unit within the prison that has permanent lockdown status.

• Prisoners simply call it The Hole.

Life in prison• Once the new convicts arrive at their home prison,

they are usually stripped, disinfected and subjected to a very thorough inspection to make sure they aren't smuggling anything into the prison.

• Their possessions are catalogued and boxed up -- convicts are allowed to bring in little from the outside, not much more than eye glasses, a few books and their legal papers

• The typical prison cell is eight by six feet, with a metal bed tray (either bolted to the wall or free-standing on metal legs), a sink and a toilet

• The vast majority of the menial labor performed in prisons, including laundry, maintenance, janitorial services, cooking and landscaping are performed by the prisoners for as little as 10 cents an hour.

• Prison overcrowding has forced most prisons to keep two prisoners in each cell, so an additional metal bunk is placed above the bed.

• In severe cases, three prisoners have been placed in a cell. A few cell blocks have a dormitory set-up, with eight or more prisoners in a larger cell with multiple bunks, but this is uncommon.

• The typical maximum security prison is divided into wings or blocks, each of which has its own staff and can be sealed off from the rest of the prison.

• A block may have multiple tiers. The cells are arranged around an open central space that contains a security booth.

• Additional armed guards may be positioned in glassed-off cubicles in observation posts within each cell block.

• Guards who come into contact with prisoners usually do not carry a firearm because a prisoner could steal it.

• Prisoners can purchase a variety of items at the prison commissary.

• The commissary is basically a warehouse of goods that are approved for inmates to own.

• Prisoners get a list of all the items and their prices, and on the day they are allowed to go to the commissary, they fill it out for the items they want.

• After waiting in a long line, they reach a window where a guard (or possibly a working inmate) deducts the money from the prisoner's account and retrieves the items.

• Prisoners are not allowed to carry cash -- money they earn in their prison job or sent to them from the outside is kept in an account.

• Each prisoner ID card is electronically linked to the account, much like a debit card.

• Every prison has a black market. • In the absence of cash, prisoners use a complex barter

system. Prisoners who want something that can't be purchased at the commissary, such as better books, illegal drugs, nicer clothes or a weapon might trade cigarettes, commissary stamps or personal protection from other inmates to get what they want.

• These outside items might be smuggled in by visiting relatives or guards who make their own profit from the black market.

• In some cases, inmates have produced bootleg alcohol or illegal drugs inside the prison itself.

• Prisons generally have visiting hours that roughly coincide with regular business hours.

• Each prisoner gets a limited number visits per month, depending on his behavior in prison and the nature of his sentence and crime.

• When someone is first incarcerated, their paperwork includes a list of family members who are allowed to visit them, as well as a limited number of friends.

• Visits from investigators, employers or the inmate's attorney are not limited, but they must still be approved by the warden.

• At lower-level security facilities, the visitation room looks much like a waiting room. It is usually very crowded, and there is little privacy. Excessive physical contact between prisoners and visitors is discouraged.

• Conjugal visitation rights are extremely rare in today's prisons.

• In a maximum security prison, inmates speak to visitors through a glass partition using telephones. Visitation time is limited and monitored by armed guards, and prisoners and visitors are subject to searches before and after the visit.

• Other than visits, prisoners can have contact with the outside world with letters and packages.

• However, all mail going in or out of the jail is opened and examined by prison officials, and all phone calls are recorded.

Crime and Punishment Inside Prisons

• While in prison, cons are subject to the rules set by prison officials. If a con commits an infraction, he gets a hearing before the warden or some lower ranking officials. If the committee finds the prisoner guilty of the infraction, penalties can be issued. Some examples of punishment:

• Time in solitary confinement (The Hole) • Removal of accumulated "good behavior" time • Transfer to a less desirable prison job • Confiscation of items • Transfer to another, higher-security prison • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3lw6PMjj40

• If it’s a minor infraction it results in a shot. • A shot is a mark against the prisoner, placed on his

prison file. • When the prisoner comes up for parole or requests

permission for some kind of additional privilege like a better prison job or a work release program, the number of shots on his record can prevent him from receiving this privilege.

• In maximum security prisons, a larger percentage of the inmates are violent offenders.

• Prisoners often maintain a "might makes right" philosophy.

• Inmates who show cowardice or fail to stand up to threats are quickly marked as pushovers and forced to run errands and provide contraband for other prisoners.

• They may also be beaten or abused.

• When a beating or even a murder happens in prison, there are rarely any witnesses.

• Cons have a strict rule against "snitching," so even a murder in a crowded prison yard can go unsolved.

• This rule is upheld because snitches are repaid by violent retaliation.

• Inmates learn quickly to keep their mouths shut, no matter what they saw.

Prison Slang• Shank - An improvised stabbing weapon. Metal bed legs and

pens are popular shank sources. • Slock - A sock with a heavy combination lock or battery in it,

swung as a blunt weapon. • Hacks - Prison guards. In decades past, they were called

screws. • Cellie - A prisoner's cellmate. • House - A prisoner's cell. • Rollies - Hand-rolled cigarettes, often made using pages torn

out of a book. • Roll it up - A command issued by guards, meaning get your

belongings together so you can be moved. • Lock it down - Another guard command, meaning get into

your cell and shut the door.

Rehabilitation or Punishment?

Rehabilitation or Punishment?• A study of state prisoners from 15 states who were released

in 1994 showed that more than half of them ended up back in prison within three years.

• The goal of many prisoner reformers is to reduce these rates by providing education and job training for inmates.

• All prisons offer a GED course it is often a requirement for parole and a few vocational courses.

• More than 90 percent of all prisoners are eventually released. • When they are released, often the only skills they acquired in

prison were those that allowed them to survive. • They may be paranoid or bitter. They may have learned that

the only proper response to a problem is violence. • Getting a decent job as a convicted criminal is hard enough --

add in these factors and it can become very difficult for ex-cons to reassimiliate themselves into the outside world.

• On the day a prisoner finally completes his sentence, he is given little.

• He may get the clothes and items he had with him when he arrived at the prison, although some things may be missing.

• He will get whatever money is in his prison account, though it doesn't usually amount to much.

• If the prisoner has no street clothes, he is given a prison uniform to wear.

• If he has no money, he'll get $5 so he can afford bus fare home, if he has a home to return to after his time in prison.

Criminal Justice: Prison

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Prison Recidivism• One in 31 adults in the United States was either

incarcerated or on probation or parole.• Recidivism rates between 1994 and 2007 have

consistently remained around 40 percent. • more than four out of 10 adult American offenders return

to prison within three years of their release, this means that the system designed to deter them from criminal behavior is falling short.

• Read the papers any day and you see stories of many people who are committing crimes are out on probation, or are repeat offenders.

• Is the solution that we throw away the KEY?

• On any given day more than 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States, and over the course of a year, 13.5 million spend time in prison or jail.

• African Americans are imprisoned at a rate roughly seven times higher than whites, and Hispanics at a rate three times higher than whites.

• The Bureau of Justice Statistics has projected that if current trends continue, one out of every three African American men born in 2001 will go to prison at some point during their lifetime.

• Within three years of their release, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated, a recidivism rate that calls into question the effectiveness of America's corrections system, which costs taxpayers $60 billion a year.

• 95% of inmates are eventually released back into society, ill-equipped to lead productive lives.

Substance Abuse and Crime• Drug sentencing laws have had a critical role in the

growth of the prison population. • In 1980 the incarceration rate for drug offenses was 15

inmates per 100,000 adults, by 1996, it was 148 inmates per 100,000 adults.

• The figures for federal prison are even more severe. In 1970, 16.3 percent of all federal inmates were imprisoned on drug-related charges; in 2002 that percentage had risen to 54.7 percent.