Mid-State Correctional Facility Summary

As a result of these privileges given to the inmates upon their arrival, the prisoner have no real incentive to follow the rules and regulations therefore prison officials must bribe and coerced them. A way to fix the defects of total power, prison officials should change or eliminate the reward system. Instead of providing inmates with rewards upon their arrivals at the prison, guards should use a positive reinforcement system where inmates get to enjoy certain privileges if and only if they follow the rules and regulations of the prison. Another structural defects are the inadequacies of the prison staff. Almost half of all the guards at the New Jersey State prison were temporary employees. Some of these temporary officers were not interested in making corrections as a career that resulted in high turnover rates. These guards were paid at the lower end of the salary scale and a lack of advancement opportunities that brought dissatisfactions. In order to correct this structural defect, prison officials should offer higher salaries, clear and concise advancement opportunities. Using these techniques, prison official would influence guards to remain longer and have pride in their

The amount of mass incarceration in the United States as reached an all time high over the years. Mass Incarceration is the incarceration of a person or race based off of them being different and can be identified as a trend among law enforcements.These tensions have reached a certain extent and has received the attention of American citizens and the nation’s government. The laws of the United States seems fair, however with the enforcement of these laws, specific groups are targeted and abused by them daily.

Angela Davis demonstrates the ongoing violent abuse as she quotes a report on sexual maltreatment in women’s prisons, “We found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally, and orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them” (Davis 78). However disturbing this blunt sexual contact that male officers take with the vulnerable prisoners may be, the officers adopt even more severe tactics to harass and abuse the women as they often utilize “mandatory pat-frisks or room searches to grope women 's breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas...” (Davis 79). To add insult to injury, women are virtually incapable of escaping from their abuser(s). Prison employees upkeep their inappropriate behavior as it is believed they will “rarely be held accountable, administratively or criminally” (Davis 78). Davis specifies that the lack of accountability for inappropriate behavior is caused by faulty administrative action as she explains, “Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist, are often ineffectual...” (78). Since women’s prisons were established, sexual abuse has been used as a form of punishment, although this is not formally acknowledged by prison officials, it is undeniable that women’s prison staff more than oftentimes engage in sexual

David Shapiro, a member of the American Civil Labor Union and lead author of “Banking on Bondage”, deems private prisons a “danger to state finances” in his report on the corruption of today’s for-profit prison. In the process of cutting costs, the private prison industry puts together a low-quality staff with poorly trained guards and a high turnover– thus, increasing the risk of escapees, inmate violence and prisoner mistreatment. As a result of the poor quality, the public sector is heavily affected. In one case, the conditions of a privately run Arizona prison were studied after the escape of a prisoner, and it was reported that the prison staff was fairly “green” across all shifts, lacked weapon proficiency, and even ignored the sounding alarms as a prisoner

Additionally, in an attempt to foster an increase in professionalism within the correctional community, care and consideration must be taken with the care and housing of inmates both privately operated and those operated by some branch of the government. “The quality of prisons has improved from the past, but there continue to be too many inhumane new prisons. New construction does not always result in a prison conductive to humane incarceration” (Bartollas,

There are numerous issues that deal with the American criminal justice system, but the two I found most prominant that occur on a daily basis is the abuse from police officers and clear racism shown by the American criminal justice system. To begin, racism as we know is a prejudice directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. In the criminal justice system African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a higher more aggressive way, than say someone who is caucasian and committed the same exact crime. Racism is more often than not, the motive for official misconduct. There are examples of racism from every known region in the United States, spanning across centuries from slavery to

The article, Macomb county jail to get full-body scanner for inmates describes the new technology in Macomb county prison in Detroit, Michigan. The full body scanner, which will be installed in order to prevent the inmates from bringing drugs, weapons, or other contrabands inside the prison. According to Kent county sheriff, Lawrence Stelma, these scanners are expensive, but quite effective (Hall, 2016). The article states that smuggling contraband is one of the biggest issue in the prison system. Many inmates tend to hide objects such as, drugs, illegal substances, copper wires, and so forth. inside their body cavities which may go through the initial security.

In order to do this they need to make new centers to help prisoners inside better themselves. In Alabama prisons may soon shut down 14 of its prisons for overcrowding, neglect, and violence in the state’s correction systems. In the prison St. Clair Holman in Alabama the prison system makes prisoners act different. There is no safety, security or supervision. “We have people being killed, sexually assaulted, raped, stabbed on daily basis at St. Clair, Holman, and multiple facilities; it’s a systemwide problem,” said Charlotte Morrison, a senior attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which represents Alabama prisoner.” Within this quote we see that in St. Clair prison, inmates get raped and stabbed. These are reasons why prisons should be reformed. Prisoners shouldn’t be hurt for whatsoever problems. Conversely, Penal Reform International article suggested different reasons to reform prisons one that stood out to reform the particular prison in Alabama was this, Provide a healthy, safe environment. “Spaces that are filled with sunlight, outside views, therapeutic color schemes and normalized materials, encourage inmates’ participation, reduce stress, incidents and assaults and decrease staff absenteeism.” Considering the fact that prisoners in Alabama are brutally hurting each other in their cells, we can conclude that if prisons provided a safe environment bad

There are many subjects in the book “The Essentials of Criminal Justice.” Through the fourteen chapters, the chapter I will be discussing is chapter eleven. Chapter eleven talks about the history of correctional institutions, jails, prisons, and alternate correctional institutions. In this paper, I will be discussing only part of chapter eleven. It will be discussing the history of the correctional Institutions which includes the following: the history of the correctional institutions, the origin of corrections in the United States, the development of prisons, the New York and Pennsylvania systems, and the comparisons of the 19th and 20th century correction systems.

Keen Mountain Correctional Center is located in Buchanan County, Virginia on a 159 acres of land in a town called Oakwood. It is classified as a level 2 prison that houses prisoners that are serving single, multiple and life sentences. It was opened in 1990, their daily average population is about 879 prisoners. It has a special population that has protective custody unit housing. They have no programs or had upgrades to the facility since it was first opened. They have a vinyl/silk screen industry plus a janitorial industry for its prisoners. After visiting several other prisons so far, as of right now it is kind of hard to expect what to see, because things could be the same like the other prisons we have encountered at , but

My interest in being a part of the CUNY Law Review was peaked when I came across a CUNY Law Review article as I was preparing my research paper on police violence. G. Flint Taylor’s “The Chicago Police Torture Scandal: A Legal and Political History,” put into prospective the continuous outcries of the citizens of Chicago regarding police violence against people of color as well as the cover-up by the local political and legal systems. Particularly with the recent decision by the Chicago District Attorney’s office to charge a police officer for the execution of 16-year old Laquan McDonald after withholding video evidence for over a year. Though much has changed in Chicago since the torture scandal, it is clear that a lot more has to be done as there continues to be an issues of accountability and swift action when officers step across the line from public servant to criminal.

In chapter 13 of Corrections in America, the author describes the history of private-sector involvement in corrections and identifies its advantages. The author also describes how prison inmates were considered slaves of the state. Overall, this chapter compares gatekeepers and rainmakers.

Ronald Nussle’s case against the Cheshire Correctional Institution began with the “unjustified beating”, as proclaimed by Nussell, that he received from the corrections officers in his unit. This vicious assault violated Nussle’s freedom from cruel and unusual punishment as outlined in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Corrections officers are generally not permitted to use excessive force against inmates unless there is an attempt at escape or a severe breach in normal prison operations. Nevertheless, inmate abuse by corrections officers is not an uncommon occurrence within the United States prison systems. Misconduct and excessive use of force when handling inmates within correctional facilities often goes unreported. In fact,

Police brutality is a civil rights violation, occurring when a police officer acts with uncontrolled power by using an amount of force with regards to a civilian that is more than necessary (Reuters 1). In the past, several years’ police actions of abuse have become very crucial. Instead of police officers protecting and serving the people like they were assigned, they rather murder and anguish them for no cause. The common race being tortured are African Americans. The incidents that are occurring is being overlooked.

In the article “Even Prisoners Must Have Hope”, Richard Stratton (the author) talks about his thoughts on the federal prison system in America. Stratton himself had served 8 years in jail for smuggling marijuana. He strongly advises not to make the prisons even worse than they already are. The harsh conditions and other peoples’ vengeful attitudes toward criminals only make the violence and crime continue. According to Stratton, instead of improving the harsh conditions and trying to rehabilitate and help prisoners that could lead to peace, our society inflicts more pain and punishment, enforcing a violent cycle. The only effective programs Stratton believes are helpful, are the ones that give counseling and education to prisoners. Statistically,