The Allure of the Prison Break
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
That is one of the most terrifying pieces of information I know. If you believe the movies, breaking out of prison is most of the accomplishment. But dozens of people manage to do that. It appars that no one makes it to the end of their natural life before recapture.
Mostly in places with "old testament" attitudes towards morality. For contrast consider cells and prison quality in a place like Norway or Sweden for example (including prison time), compared to the US or some place in Latin America...
There have been many philosophical justifications by judicial philosophers and political experts on justice systems in various countries, and deterrence and rehabilitation are more often than not the stated goals.
Women not only vastly expand the risk of romantic involvement, they're also physically weaker. And you don't get anything in return for taking these additional risks.
I have seen many women far more physically capable to handle jobs like that then men.
Hire the best person for the job regardless of gender.
I suspect that when everything is robots, and the judge and jury just press a button and forget about the rest, prisons will be even more horrific than they are now, only it will be 10% of the population in them rather than 1%.
1. The benefit of a larger talent pool to recruit from is easy to measure, and the drawbacks (having to fire a large number of them and increased contraband in the prison from said compromised COs) are harder to measure.
2. It's politically unpalatable to segregate by gender.
The vast majority of female COs wash out within their first year; either they can't take the pressure, or they start showing favoritism toward the more charismatic inmates. The reason is pretty simple - women are fucked with more than men. For whatever reason, when a male CO gigs an inmate, the inmate knows that it's The Man keeping him down and not the man. In contrast, when a female CO gigs an inmate, the inmate tries harder to get out of it because he perceives weakness. As a result, more female COs crack.
This actually happens with all staff, not just guards. Nurses, instructors, whatever - all of them get routinely compromised. It's a very, very difficult problem to hire people for relatively low wages, stick them with people who have nothing better to do, and expect everyone to remain professional.
The optimal male CO is an unthinking robot. "Sorry, you violated Rule 131. I have to write you up. No exceptions." In contrast, the optimal female CO is a "crazy dyke psycho bitch" who takes pleasure (or appears to take pleasure) in making prisoners' lives hell. They won't respect a woman who acts otherwise. Again, this is because inmates respect The Man but take it personally when a woman tells them No. So, the woman has to show that she will not ever let them off because she enjoys making them suffer.
Source: Girlfriend worked corrections for a while. Her "prison attitude" is hilarious.
"I prefer corrections to bartending. When customers at the bar sexually harass / assault you, you have to smile and take it. When inmates sexually harass you, you put them in solitary and forget to refill their pain med prescription. Whoops."
Also your girlfriend sounds crazy, nothing funny about abusing people
Your girlfriend sounds crazy.
Your girlfriend's attitude is exactly what is wrong with our prison system.
but "forget to refill their pain med prescription." is something I would consider to be worse than whatever sexual harassment she received.
people in authority executing personal punishments should be thrown in jail themselves.
Even if it was in response to a physical assault, it would be improper unless legally established protocol for the prison is to deny medication as a form of discipline, which seems quite unlikely. Denying pain medication is equivalent to inflicting pain on someone - which could easily be called torture. Sure, an officer could punch you if it was necessary to stop you from inflicting harm on one or her or others. Intentionally causing pain by denying medication would be more like punching you after you're already in custody and handcuffs and can't fight back. Clearly that could not be construed to be self defense.
Locking people into cages is an odd sort of profession.
When inmates sexually harass you, you put them in solitary and forget to refill their pain med prescription.
Sounds like a real thug^Wkeeper.
And yet it's necessary, unless we've decided that we should go back to the Good Old Days of just killing them.
> Sounds like a real thug^Wkeeper.
Hard people get hard treatment. As a drill instructor of mine used to say, "Play pussy, get fucked."
As for your DI, well, there's a bit of a difference between behavior that works in a military context and civilian reformation. One would hope, at least.
Good question.
We've always had a problem with the age-old question of "What do you do with criminals?" In antiquity, the answer was simple - nothing, unless it impacts the rich. The poor can squabble amongst themselves, and as long as they don't kill anyone important or terrorize too many merchants or rob a rich person's house, they're left alone.
This changed during Victorian times - the thinkers of the time saw the awful living conditions of the poor and decided that it wasn't Christian to leave the poor to suffer like this. So, they instituted penitentiaries - places where the wayward could be corrected and nudged back in the right direction.
Here's the problem - it doesn't work. Prison has two genuine uses - it isolates shitty people so that they can't mess with the rest of society, and it deters other people from following their example.
With initiatives like the War on Drugs, we've completely borked the shit out of this because we're now sentencing enormous numbers of relatively normal people to long prison terms. This has the following effects:
1. Prison staff are now focused on survival rather than staying on top of their jobs. This leads to inmates running the show. It also leads to said relatively normal inmates having to fight for survival as well, exacerbating the problem.
2. Large numbers of people are damaged by these conditions, emerging from prison completely fucked psychologically.
3. People notice that said people are unstable and likely to return to crime, and they act accordingly by turning them into outcasts (who go right back to committing crime).
If we want this to change, we need to turn prisons from enormous Walmarts (One-size fits all incarceration for the whole family!) to focused facilities for the worst of the worst. The animals go in their cages, and everyone else gets off with mandatory counseling and community service. This will drastically lessen the load on prison staff, who can now actually do their jobs instead of fighting to stay alive however they can.
Your drill instructor sounds like a retrograde sexist thug, too, and it seems like you go along with that. Which, ok, but not the attitude I'd want to carry around with me.
2x the candidates is a good idea.
This is a situation of bad management and people asleep at the switch running the place -- at best. At worst, the entire staff from top to bottom is completely corrupt. Every detail revealed thus far has been things that have multiple layers of controls that were supposed to prevent such an event.
There's no way that people are cooking burgers on hotplates in cells (with convict electricians wiring cells to enable said cooking) without people knowing about it. It's pretty easy to find hotplates that don't belong. Outside food was contraband, and the guards were almost certainly doing a brisk business in smuggling.
There are 800+ law enforcement officers, trained canines, and the national news media searching for 2, now 1 guy who has few resources except his brain and body. Not surprising they make great movies.
Unfortunately in real life the protagonist is almost always a bad guy.
I wonder if successful prison breaks select for or against guilt. You know, like maybe actual criminals are more likely to be able to run a prison break, while a chump who was framed won't have that ability.