I just read a couple of articles about Lowell Correctional Institution as a research for an upcoming project me and Free are working on. Lowell is the biggest women's prison In Florida and one of the biggest In US. It's also one of the most infamous prisons In USA (possibly the whole world?)
The articles dated a few years back, so at the time of writing this things may have changed. Though probably not a whole lot. The biggest issues were the abuse of inmates by the staff. The change of warden May have corrected some issues, but we can never be sure.
There is one common factor In all the cases of police brutality In recent years. It's not what you think. We may and will debate about the motives of these acts for years, but one common thing: they were all caught. Most of them were recorded on a phone camera by a bystander. Cameras are criminals worst nightmare, whether they wear a uniform or a mask.
The problem with prison abuse is, that There are no bystanders with cameras. Only security cams In certain places. This gives a guard with bad intentions a valuable opportunity. Prison guards have a lot of power over inmates, which is why certain types of people seek these positions. They're the same types that seek career with the police and the army. These types will abuse their power. Most of prison guards are decent people doing their jobs. Unfortunately the bad ones are louder and more visible, especially within inmates.
Weeding out the abusive guards would be the obvious solution, but there is one problem: Guards aren't the only ones abusing power In prison. There's one group that has as much abusive people if not more. That's the inmates.
Unfortunately a certain percentage of inmates are narcissists, psychopaths and other manipulative individuals. Most of the inmates have committed a crime to get inside. Whether certain crimes need prison time or not is another debate, which I'm more than willing to join.
Many Inmates also suffer some sort of mental problems, which either make them easy prey or new predators. People like this are willing to lie to get their way. Sometimes they lie about guards, which is why all of them can't be trusted, unfortunately.
The same way corrupt guards lie about inmates if it benefits them somehow. Because of these individuals guards can't be trusted. Neither can the inmates, again thanks to certain individuals.
Current prison system is focused on security. So it needs a system to monitor and control the inmates. Unfortunately there's the same problem that have always been with systems like these: Who guards the guards?
I feel like the trust between guards and inmates was more damaged than ever in the reformation shift between the old school correctional approach to the new restorative justice format. It seems like the instability in rules traumatized inmates more than the old time beat downs and pain.
I got a whole new sentence at 22 years old for something I didn't do. A guard didn't like me, the sergeant was having sex with my woman, and I went down for assault. I was put in jail and given an additional two years. At that time a life sentence meant life. So that two years was excessive. I had life plus two years until the youth offender laws passed.
I still knew how to act around cops however. Stay away but speak when spoken to. Rapport was still possible. Now, however, the police are so heavily supervised they fear to even speak to inmates and we are so afraid of how frustrated they get as a result that we avoid them altogether.
A huge increase of unregulated prison snitches has abounded as prisoner rights increased making those who did time and got things done in a "Don't Ask, Don't a tell" environment now disabled as well as the "cool cops" who enabled us to bend rules and get those things done.
Now everything is rigid and everyone miserable. I avoid police altogether like the rest of the population. They in turn have disconnected and have a deep rage towards us with no outlets. A division has been created by the policing of the police that can be literally seen when cops walk down the sidewalk only to be skated over ten feet around by inmates leaving paths to about them and if not the Investigative Units standing in black suits visibly keeping an eye on every move whereas back in the day the men in black were told of like a fable and never seen.
Prison reform released many. It helped the elderly, sick and youth who were sentenced as well as nonviolent offenders. However, that help came in accelerated release. The actual time being done was not helped but hindered on the other hand.
Cops used to take us in as humans, dirty rules and all, but we knew the game and we were human. Now we wear blue, them green, and as clear as a gang color flag there is no integration. The times of good cop-bad cop and now we stand armed inmate vs. guard eternally.
No comments:
Post a Comment