Prison philosphies

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First things first

Right now, I am busier than a NO leg man in an ass kicking contest. Where the hell does my time go? (No answers of jerking off from the peanut gallery, please)

SO...I won't be responding to comments til Friday, most likely. I apologize to those that have commented yesterday and I haven't replied to yet. Your day is coming. No, that isn't a threat LOL ;>

Finally, I have no idea whether I have previously published this material either here or over at https://gradschoolfool.blogspot.com/ It does seem to me that I cleaned this up a bit and published at Grad School Fool, but a (very) quick look doesn't bring it up. I may have used a different title. If I have published this here, it was over two years ago, so it don't bother me to republish today. This kind of confusion should have been resolved by Zotero, but I just now logged this one as published.

Shrugs

Punitive philosophy behind the use of prisons

A correctional facility uses dominance and violence to keep its prisoners under control so that they do not think of committing crimes once they're out of prison. The employees of this facility are unhappy and think it is unethical to use force with prisoners. However, the public is happy, and they feel safer that their prisoners are being kept under control.
To what extent does an agency's dependence on public opinion impede or encourage planned change? Provide an example of a significant research study done in the criminal justice field. How have the results of this research study revolutionized the working of the criminal justice system?

What changes should the management of the above mentioned correctional facility make to keep the employees happy and prevent the public from going against the facility? What are the positive effects of research in the criminal justice profession since the President's Commission in 1967? What are the negative effects?

Because planned change depends on accurate forecasting in order to be unhindered by limited resources (amongst other factors), forecasting must include considerations of public opinion. Public opinion will not only play a part in possible crescive change towards policy in general, but has a direct impact on budgeting and thus on resources. “The rational politician knows that, if their policy votes deviate too far from the opinion of their constituents, they risk their
electoral futures”(Nicholson-Crotty, Peterson, & Ramirez, 2009, p. 630) Nicholson-Crotty et al continue, “The electoral connection should be particularly strong to deviations in criminal justice policy from public opinion”. (2009, p.635) Thus effective, rational, planned change must forecast how the public will react to not to just the proposed change but to any consequences the planned change might cause. Criminal justice organizations that can not accurately foresee these issues will likely be beset with resource issues related to budgeting.

In 1975, Douglas Lipton, Robert Martinson, and Judith Wilks published a study of rehabilitation programs and their effectiveness, The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment: A Survey of Treatment Evaluation Studies . Martinson then wrote an article in The Public Interest in which he stated that “rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism” (Pratt, Gau, & Franklin, 2011, p.72) This point of view was capitalized on by both liberal and conservative policy-makers who opposed the current indeterminate sentencing standards. The influence of conservative policy makers eventually shaped sentencing policy to get tough on crime, and produced specific policies such as “Three Strikes” laws and Truth in Sentencing guidelines. Sarre mentions the Supreme Court finding of Mistretta v. United States, in which the Court upheld federal sentencing guidelines that had removed the goal of rehabilitation from consideration when sentencing convicts. (1999, p.5) It has been argued that these policies have led to overcrowding in prisons ( although the idiotic “War on Drugs” is a more likely culprit for this issue, and I see few things as blatantly dishonest as assigning an ideological blame for overcrowding on sentencing guidelines when the bulk of the increase can be accounted for on drug charges), and it has also been argued that these policies have been responsible for the drop in crime over the last twenty years (although other factors may include demographic changes and higher rates of suburbanization) Petersilia notes not just the controversy caused by Martinson's work, but found it of “critical” influence. (1987, p. vi)

Nicholson-Crotty, S., Peterson, D. A. M., & Ramirez, M. D. (2009). Dynamic representation(s): Federal criminal justice policy and an alternative dimension of public mood. Political Behavior, 31(4), 629–655. doi:10.1007/s11109-009-9085-1

Petersilia, J. (1987). The influence of criminal justice research. RAND, Santa Monica, CA. Retrieved September 3, 2014 from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/106799NCJRS.pdf

Pratt, T., Gau, J., & Franklin, T. (2011). Key ideas in criminology and criminal justice. SAGE Publications. Retrieved September 3, 2014 from http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/36811_6.pdf

Sarre, R. (1999). Beyond “What Works?”A 25 year jubilee retrospective. Presented at the History of Crime, Policing and Punishment Conference, Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Retrieved September 3, 2014 from http://192.190.66.70/media_library/conferences/hcpp/sarre.pdf

Lipton, Martinson, and Wilks

Mistretta v. United States

Why does the rehabilitation crowd constantly pop off about the failure of deterrence, ignore all evidence suggesting the fallibility of rehabilitiation, and remain completely silent on the value of incapicitation?

Considering that prison staff share one overriding goal with the public, that of keeping criminals incapacitated from causing harm to the public at large, it is necessary to bring about organizational development with the goal of maintaining guard morale and job satisfaction while performing their duty to society. Doble and Klein report that the public is preoccupied with personal safety (2009, P.293) If the public's opinion is that control over inmate behavior benefits society, and that perception conforms to prison reality, then a training program and a management initiative must educate guards regarding the benefits of that policy. Salinas identifies the basic objectives of prison staff as maintaining security and order. (2009, p.12)

In DiIulio’s typology of prison management, the control model is based upon punishment; Salinas states that this punishment must be swift and visible to other inmates in order to encourage compliance with prison order. (2009, p.22) Skarbek contends that prison staff can be prevented from maintaining this order by corruption and and by punishment costs (2012, p.96) Indeed, maintaining order is of obvious concern for prison staff, as Stafford points out that CO's have one of the highest rates of on-the-job-injury which is directly tied to inmate violence.( 2013, para. 2) The goal of our organizational development should center on these concerns.

Marquart studied an informal system of force in a Texas prison unit; although it was effective in maintaining control, he found that the the methods were illegal and possibly based on racial grounds.(1986) This study is useful in contrasting methods and highlights the necessity of a formal and legally sanctioned method of use of force.

The positive effects of research have included a more realistic examination rehabilitation, a reductiion in the ideal of rehabilitation as a goal in crime control, a better use of police resources in “hot spot” policing, and the idea of a rational approach using the scientiifc model in improving police services. Willis,with some justification, describes the resistance to such reform from LE agencies, and discusses ways to better mesh research with police experience. He concludes that advancing police reform relies on focusing on what can be gained by unity between LE and researchers, not by focusing on the differences. (2013, p. 11)

The negative effects of research are mainly tied with the continuation of the “poverty pitfall” research coming out of the Chicago School. The “poverty pitfall” is my description of the fundamentally incorrect idea that poverty causes crime. The continuation of this line of thought (and of the similar lines originating in Marxist “thought”) have resulted in a dogma, not a body of research. The negative effects from such include anti-LE propaganda, identity politics, and dishonest journalism in portraying violent criminals as victims.

Doble, J., & Klein, J. (2009). Punishing criminals, the public’s view: An Alabama survey. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 21(4), 291–293. doi:http://dx.doi.org.southuniversity.libproxy.edmc.edu/10.1525/fsr.2009.21.4.291

Marquart, J. W. (1986). Prison guards and the use of physical coercion as a mechanism of prisoner control. Criminology, 24(2), 347–366. Retrieved September 4, 2014 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=i3h&AN=16305288&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Salinas, G. (2009, Summer). A Preliminary Analysis: Prison Models and PrisonManagement Models and the Texas Prison System. Texas State University. Retrieved September 4, 2014 from https://www.academia.edu/1195462/A_Preliminary_Analysis_Prison_Models_and_Prison_Management_Models_and_the_Texas_Prison_System

Skarbek, D. (2012). Prison gangs, norms, and organizations. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 82(1), 96–109. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2012.01.002

Stallworth, R. (2013, June 11). The war beyond the walls:We are under attack inside the walls and now outside of them as well. CorrectionsOne. Retrieved August 17, 2014, from http://www.correctionsone.com/officer-safety/articles/6270478-The-war-beyond-the-walls/

Willis, J. J. (2013). Improving police: What’s craft got to do with it? Ideas in American Policing, 16. Retrieved August 10, 2014 from https://www.policefoundation.org/sites/g/files/g798246/f/201306/IAP16_Willis_2.pdf



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Hi, @stevescoins!

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(Edited)

" It has been argued that these policies have led to overcrowding in prisons ( although the idiotic “War on Drugs” is a more likely culprit for this issue, and I see few things as blatantly dishonest as assigning an ideological blame for overcrowding on sentencing guidelines when the bulk of the increase can be accounted for on drug charges), and it has also been argued that these policies have been responsible for the drop in crime over the last twenty years (although other factors may include demographic changes and higher rates of suburbanization) Petersilia notes not just the controversy caused by Martinson's work, but found it of “critical” influence."

I am certain that ideological perspective is utterly crucial to this issue, for the following reason.

When the USA was initially instituted, it was a radical attempt to rationalize the institution of government, and a paradigm shift that has been both a great success, and a dismal failure. It is demonstrable that the institution of government cannot be immunized from the inherent susceptibility of institutions to corruption. Even the supposed resistance a republican government has to mob rule is rendered null and void by the need of representatives to mollify the electorate, and mob rule under influence from propagandists is endemic and inevitable to every potential institutional form of government IMHO.

The justification that was asserted from the initiation of the American republic for governmental authority to undertake force to apprehend criminals and sanction them with incarceration was wholly based on the need to rehabilitate, as assuming a punitive power of government is a direct denigration of the ideological assumption that sovereign individuals cooperatively themselves rule via their representatives, and there is zero basis for assigning to any sovereign entity the authority to punish another.

The very existence of governmental authority under the Constitution then is an ideological assumption, and any consideration of such effectiveness of incarceration, and the use of force against sovereign individuals is inherently ideological.

I here also will state that the assumption of that authority to use force has been proved to be based on faulty reasoning, by the present incarceration levels suffered by Americans. I submit that the same faulty reasoning is similarly responsible for The War Against Treatment (TWAT) as for governmental authority to use force on sovereign persons, and thus both factors you consider as separate are actually the same ideological issue, which is the source of the described problems of the Prison Industrial Complex.

While I do have arguments I believe can resolve this and similar issues rationally, I must note that none of them support government as an institution, and do not expect anyone that supports that institution in any way will agree with me. Therefore, I will not belabor this issue further, so as to not waste your time.

Thanks!

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I don't think it's a waste of time.

The State vs Individual argument is circular, but sometimes you gotta speed up the cycle to break the wheel.

MOAR DISCUSSION (see latest post)

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I see you are inviting me to a discussion. Just making sure you're not offering me a lift in a helicopter. =p

Thanks!

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