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48 hours

Managing

Prisons

—

Best Practices and Policy Reform

Click each of the items below to complete this assessment.

To what degree does your professional experience or your

learning differ from popular depictions of life in prison

Next, imagine that the warden has asked you to devise a plan to address

the emerging issues and challenges described in the case study found in the

document,

Criminal Justice Case Studies: The Case of the Prison in Crisis

Submit a 750

–

to 1,250

–

word plan

that includes/addresses the following:

Explain the best practices you would implement, in the short

–

term, to

address the issues and challenges described in the case study.

Analyze ethical and legal issues/standards you w

ould take into

consideration before implementing your plan.

Explain at least three significant policy changes you would recommend

to reduce overcrowding and improve prison conditions in the long

–

term.

nder what circumstances is rehabilitation effective?

· U

nder what circumstances is rehabilitation ineffective?

Is the cost of rehabilitation worth it? Why or why not?

Next, in 300 words, provide an argument for or against the use of supermax

prisons. In your argument, be sure to consider the following issues re

lated to

the use of supermax prisons:

Safety of the public, prison employees, and the general inmate

population

Control and order over inmates in these prisons

Conditions and punishments in these prisons

Rehabilitation of inmates, their successful reentry

into the community,

and their likelihood of recidivating

Costs of building and managing these prisons

HE HUMAN STORIES BEHIND MASS INCARCERATION (13:40)

The Human Stories Behind Mass Incarceration

Abrams, E. (2017, November). The human stories behind mass incarceration [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/eve_abrams_the_human_stories_behind_mass_incarceration

Prison administrators are responsible for protecting the public from criminal offenders, ensuring the safety of prison employees and inmates, and providing inmates with adequate shelter, food, and medical care. Meeting these responsibilities is difficult even without the added challenges of overcrowding, the spread of infectious diseases, and the proliferation of mental illness in prisons. In the selections below, you will examine some of the issues and challenges facing the contemporary prison system.

ARTICLE: EVEN IN PRISON, HEALTH CARE OFTEN COMES WITH A CO-PAY

Even in Prison, Health Care Often Comes with a Co-Pay

Andrews, M. (2015, September 30). Even in prison, health care often comes with a co-pay.Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/30/444451967/even-in-prison-health-care-often-comes-with-a-copay

Time Estimate: 15 min

ARTICLE: AMERICA’S LARGEST MENTAL HOSPITAL IS A JAIL

America’s Largest Mental Hospital Is a Jail

Ford, M. (2015, June 8). America’s largest mental hospital is a jail. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/americas-largest-mental-hospital-is-a-jail/395012/

Time Estimate: 45 min

ARTICLE: PRISON-BASED COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL TREATMENT PROGRAMS

Prison-Based Cognitive Behavioral Treatment Programs

Helfgott, J. B. (2016). Prison-based cognitive behavioral treatment programs—A mechanism of panoptic control commentary on Jennifer A. Schlossberg’s (2015) narratives and discursive discipline in prison: Rewriting personal histories through cognitive-behavioral programs. Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, 8(2), 148–159.

Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.

Time Estimate: 30 min

ARTICLE: PREVENTION OF TRANSMISSION OF HIV, HEPATITIS B VIRUS, HEPATITIS C VIRUS, AND TUBERCULOSIS IN PRISONERS

Prevention of Transmission of HIV, Hepatitis B Virus, Hepatitis C Virus, and Tuberculosis in Prisoners

Kamarulzaman, A., Reid, S. E., Schwitters, A., Wiessing, L., El-Bassel, N., Dolan, K., . . . Altice, F. L. (2016). Prevention of transmission of HIV, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, and tuberculosis in prisoners. The Lancet, 388(10049), 1115–1126. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30769-3

Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.
Time Estimate: 30 min

DOCUMENT: CRIMINAL JUSTICE CASE STUDIES: THE CASE OF THE PRISON IN CRISIS

Criminal Justice Case Studies: The Case of the Prison in Crisis (PDF)

Managing Prisons
—
Best Practices and Policy Reform

Click each of the items below to complete this assessment.

**
To what degree does your professional experience or your
learning differ from popular depictions of life in prison
?

**
Next, imagine that the warden has asked you to devise a plan to address
the emerging issues and challenges described in the case study found in the
document, Criminal Justice Case Studies: The Case of the Prison in Crisis.

Submit a 750
–

to 1,250
–
word plan
that includes/addresses the following:

Explain the best practices you would implement, in the short
–
term, to
address the issues and challenges described in the case study.

Analyze ethical and legal issues/standards you w
ould take into
consideration before implementing your plan.

Explain at least three significant policy changes you would recommend
to reduce overcrowding and improve prison conditions in the long
–
term.

Under what circumstances is rehabilitation effective?

U
nder what circumstances is rehabilitation ineffective?

Is the cost of rehabilitation worth it? Why or why not?

**
Next, in 300 words, provide an argument for or against the use of supermax
prisons. In your argument, be sure to consider the following issues re
lated to
the use of supermax prisons:

Safety of the public, prison employees, and the general inmate
population

Control and order over inmates in these prisons

Conditions and punishments in these prisons

Rehabilitation of inmates, their successful reentry
into the community,
and their likelihood of recidivating

Costs of building and managing these prisons

Managing Prisons—Best Practices and Policy Reform

Click each of the items below to complete this assessment.

**To what degree does your professional experience or your

learning differ from popular depictions of life in prison?

**Next, imagine that the warden has asked you to devise a plan to address

the emerging issues and challenges described in the case study found in the

document, Criminal Justice Case Studies: The Case of the Prison in Crisis.

Submit a 750- to 1,250-word plan that includes/addresses the following:

 Explain the best practices you would implement, in the short-term, to

address the issues and challenges described in the case study.

 Analyze ethical and legal issues/standards you would take into

consideration before implementing your plan.

 Explain at least three significant policy changes you would recommend

to reduce overcrowding and improve prison conditions in the long-term.

 Under what circumstances is rehabilitation effective?

 Under what circumstances is rehabilitation ineffective?

 Is the cost of rehabilitation worth it? Why or why not?

**Next, in 300 words, provide an argument for or against the use of supermax

prisons. In your argument, be sure to consider the following issues related to

the use of supermax prisons:

 Safety of the public, prison employees, and the general inmate

population

 Control and order over inmates in these prisons

 Conditions and punishments in these prisons

 Rehabilitation of inmates, their successful reentry into the community,

and their likelihood of recidivating

 Costs of building and managing these prisons

In 250–300 words, address the following questions:

Part I

· In 250–300 words, address the following questions:

· In what circumstances would diversion be an appropriate alternative to arrest and incarceration? Be specific and support your response by referring to labeling theories.

· Which types of diversion programs would you recommend implementing in response to the crime problems in your city (or a city close to you)?

Part II: Probation

In 250–300 words, address the following questions:

· In which circumstances would probation be an appropriate alternative to incarceration?

· Which specific probation conditions do you think would be most effective for preventing recidivism and why?

· Which aspects of probation do you think probationers would find most challenging?

Part III: Parole and Reintegration

In 250–300 words, address the following questions:

· Is early release from prison a good strategy to reduce overcrowding? Why or why not?

· What are the primary challenges parolees might encounter during parole and reintegration? What factors might contribute to and detract from their success?

· Which community resources or programs would you recommend to ensure parolees’ success and reduce the likelihood of recidivism?

Part IV: The Role of Supervision

In 250–300 words, address the following questions:

· What are the roles of probation and parole officers in the supervision of probationers and parolees?

· How can you avoid or address the most significant challenges probation and parole officers encounter in their day-to-day activities?

· If you were given approval to hire additional probation and parole officers, what are some of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions you would look for in candidates? What kind of training would you recommend?

Part V: Follow-up Questions

Imagine that the deputy mayor asks you a few follow-up questions. In 300–425 words, respond to these questions:

· Is shaming a useful tool in reintegration programs? Why or why not?

· How can labeling affect the criminal path of first-time offenders?

· What diversion strategies could be used as alternatives for first-time offenders?

Which corrections trend do you think will have the most lasting impact on the future of corrections? Why?

Support your responses with professional experience and theories from this competency’s learning resources.

In 250
–
300 words, address the following questions:

Part I

In 250
–
300 words, address the following questions
:

In what circumstances would diversion be an appropriate alternative to
arrest and incarceration? Be specific and support your response by
referring to labeling theories.

Which types of diversion programs would you recommend implementing
in response to the crime problems in your city (or a city close to you)?

Part II: Probation

In 250
–
300 words, address the following questions:

In which circumstances would probation be an appropriate alternative to
incarceration?

Which specific probation conditions do you think would be most
effective for preventing recidiv
ism and why?

Which aspects of probation do you think probationers would find most
challenging?

Part III: Parole and Reintegration

In 250
–
300 words, address the following questions:

Is early release from prison a good strategy to reduce overcrowding?
Why or why not?

What are the primary challenges parolees might encounter during
parole and reintegration? What factors might contribute to and

detract
from their success?

Which community resources or programs would you recommend to
ensure parolees’ success and reduce the likelihood of recidivism?

Part IV: The Role of Supervision

In 250
–
300 words, address the following questions:

What are the roles of probation and parole officers in the supervision of
probationers and parolees?

How can you avoid or address the most significant challenges probation
and parole officers encounter in their day
–
to
–
day activities?

In 250–300 words, address the following questions:

Part I

 In 250–300 words, address the following questions:
 In what circumstances would diversion be an appropriate alternative to
arrest and incarceration? Be specific and support your response by
referring to labeling theories.
 Which types of diversion programs would you recommend implementing
in response to the crime problems in your city (or a city close to you)?
Part II: Probation
In 250–300 words, address the following questions:
 In which circumstances would probation be an appropriate alternative to
incarceration?
 Which specific probation conditions do you think would be most
effective for preventing recidivism and why?
 Which aspects of probation do you think probationers would find most
challenging?
Part III: Parole and Reintegration
In 250–300 words, address the following questions:
 Is early release from prison a good strategy to reduce overcrowding?
Why or why not?
 What are the primary challenges parolees might encounter during
parole and reintegration? What factors might contribute to and detract
from their success?
 Which community resources or programs would you recommend to
ensure parolees’ success and reduce the likelihood of recidivism?
Part IV: The Role of Supervision
In 250–300 words, address the following questions:
 What are the roles of probation and parole officers in the supervision of
probationers and parolees?
 How can you avoid or address the most significant challenges probation
and parole officers encounter in their day-to-day activities?

p.120

6 Prisons
Media Library

CHAPTER 6 Media Library

PREMIUM VIDEOPREMIUM VIDEO

Career VideoCareer Video

Payne career video 6.1: Former
Drug

Investigator

Feature VideoFeature Video

Schram Personal Perspective video
6.1: Prison

Culture

SAGE News ClipSAGE News Clip

SAGE News Clip 6.1: HIV-Positive
Inmates in Alabama

SAGE News Clip 6.2: Attica Prison
Riot

JOURNAL ARTICLEJOURNAL ARTICLE

Journal Article 6.1: Prison architec-
ture and inmate misconduct: A mul-
tilevel assessment

Journal Article 6.2: Mental health
issues in long-term solitary and “su-
permax” confinement.

LEARNING
OBJECTIVES

11 To understand how prisons are
different from jails and the basic
characteristics of prisons, including
their physical design.

22 To grasp how and to what extent
prisons function as part of the larger
correctional system.

33 To understand the basic facts of the
state prison system versus the
federal prison system.

44 To gain basic fluency in prison
demographics.

55 To understand prison classification
systems and risk levels.

66 To grasp some of the extremes in
the system such as crowding, the
supermax, and isolation.

77 To know about basic types of
prisoner services and understand
some of the challenges involved in
delivering them.

88 To gain a basic sense of the prison
environment.

p.121

California Department of Corrections

The crowded living quarters of San

Quentin Prison in California, January

2006. As a result of overcrowding in

the California state prison system, the

U.S. Supreme Court ordered

California to reduce its prison

population (the second largest in the

nation, after Texas).

Prisons are the most iconic of all
correctional institutions; they have been
featured time and again in film and fiction,
almost as characters in their own right,
certainly as settings for riveting drama.
But, in reality, prison and prison life are not
all that romantic. The prison environment
is harsh, and life in prison is full of stress
and tedium, conditions made worse in
situations where overcrowding is a major
issue. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled, in an unprecedented decision, that
chronic overcrowding in California’s
prisons amounted to cruel and unusual
punishment. According to the narrow
majority of the court, the California
Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation was in violation of the U.S.
Constitution. To meet the court’s
requirement to substantially reduce
overcrowding within two years, the state’s
beleaguered prison system set about
planning for the release of 33,000
nonviolent, low-level prisoners to the
counties for supervision at the local level
or transfer out of state (see “In the Courts”
on page 127.)

The mandate to reduce overcrowding
sparked debates over its implementation

and consequences in California and across
the country. Some believed that, instead of
releasing prisoners, the prison system
should be expanded further and that high
rates of incarceration—fueled by tough
sentencing laws and practices—were the
key to lowering crime rates. But it would
take many years to build enough beds to
house the number of prisoners over
capacity, too much time for California to
meet the two-year timetable ordered by
the court. Fiscal constraints and a desire
for change drove others to support new
reforms, including many observers who
previously argued for expansion. The
public and the body politic are finally
having to admit that it is simply too
expensive to keep locking everyone up.

p.122

The Means to an End
As discussed in Chapter 3, prisons have
several ostensible functions—punishment,
deterrence, retribution, and
incapacitation. Whether prison
accomplishes these goals—whether it falls
short or goes too far—is the subject of
much debate. For example, some
criminologists believe that the certainty of
punishment and the swiftness of its
delivery contribute more to deterrence
than does the length of a person’s

©Jelson25

From the air, one might think this is a

typical rural high school, but it is the

U.S. Penitentiary at Lewisburg,

Pennsylvania.

sentence. And there is a long-standing
debate about whether the death penalty

truly serves to deter homicide.1 Debate
also continues about whether
rehabilitation is or should be a core
function of prisons. Incarceration serves
other societal functions as well. Many
would argue that prisons function as a
means of social control and a political

weapon used against entire communities.
The fact that U.S. prisons are filled
disproportionately with people of color
points to this control—a critical and
persistent problem (see Chapter 11).

There are more specific goals within
institutions, such as providing services or
maintaining a healthy, safe environment.
However, security is the predominant
concern inside a prison. The goal of control
always trumps other considerations,
especially in an emergency situation. For
example, in the event of a prison riot, the
prison will go on total lockdown, which
interrupts education, counseling, and
other services.

SAGE News Clip
SAGE News Clip 6.2: Attica Prison
Riot

Although the goals of prison may include
retribution and punishment, it is not
generally accepted that prison should lead

to the deterioration of a prisoner’s physical
and mental health. The punishment is
meant to be the denial of liberty. The ideal
modern prison institution is safe, clean,
and orderly, and maybe even beneficial and
cost-effective. However, this ideal is
difficult to achieve for many reasons,
beginning with the tensions inherent in the
very concept of locking people up. Few
prisons always meet all legal and ethical
standards, and many breach the most basic
standards of humane practice.

Prisons are different from jails. Prisons are
federally or state-run institutions to
incarcerate those convicted and sentenced
to more than a year; jails detain people in
many short-term custody situations.
Consequently, the jail population turns
over far more often than the prison
population. Data from the National
Institute of Corrections indicate that, on
average, a 1,000-bed jail turns over
completely 36 times a year (36,000
individuals admitted and released),
whereas a 1,000-bed prison may turn over

750 inmates in a year2 (see Chapter 4).
Prisons vary widely in their design, size,
and security level, among other factors.
However, common structural elements
typically include barbed wire, concrete,
high perimeter walls, armed guard towers,
external and internal patrols, surveillance
cameras, geographic barriers (cliffs,
forests, water), systematic
dehumanization, and psychological

domination. They are often located away
from urban centers in more remote
locations—far also from the public’s view.

p.123

Design of Prisons
The architecture of prisons in large part
defines the human interactions that occur
within them. Various correctional goals
have given rise to some of the forms
described in this section. A prison’s design
expresses and facilitates the intended level
of security and surveillance. Prison
architects consider what kinds of prisoners
and what kind of prison life the walls will
contain. They plan for maintaining control
over prisoner movement, watching and
counting inmates, housing styles, meals,
laundry, exercise, treatment, medical care,
religious service, education, visiting, and
administrative functions. All of these
considerations must be combined with
location and climate and, of course, cost.

Journal Article
Journal Article 6.1: Prison architec-
ture and inmate misconduct: A multi-
level assessment
CLICK TO SHOW

The most common designs are variations
on either a linear theme or a radial one.
Maximum-security facilities are often laid

out with branches set at right angles. Cells
are lined up along a straight central
corridor and stacked several levels up.
These may allow for easy movement, but
require regular surveillance by guards who
must walk past a cell to see inside it. Radial
designs have a central control room where
guards can see into a number of cells at
once. There are also courtyard designs and
clusters, or pods, of multiple radial units,
which allow for more direct supervision
and interaction between guards and
prisoners.

A precursor to the current radial design
was the panopticon, meaning “all-seeing,” a
creation of an English social theorist from
the late 18th century named Jeremy
Bentham. Bentham lobbied for many years
to see his idea realized, but it never was
built in the United States. The concept was
a wheel-like structure with a central tower
from which guards could see into every
cell. However, because the tower’s design
would shield the guards, the occupants of
the cells would not be able to tell when
they were or were not being watched.
Bentham thought one of the strong selling
points of his idea was how little it would
cost to staff the structure.

What the Numbers Say
At the end of 2015, the national prisoner
population was almost 1.53 million. As

large as this number is, it still represents a
decline that has persisted for several years
from its peak in 2009 at 1.6 million. The
decline in total prisoners is a result of both
fewer admissions and a larger number of
releases compared to prior years.
Prisoners in 2015 included approximately
196,000 held in the federal system and

1.33 million held in state facilities.3 These
numbers do not include the jail population
or the millions on parole or probation.

Pelican Bay State Prison, California.

Prison architecture is a professional

specialty—form and function bent to a

sociopolitical purpose.

p.124

The Growth of U.S. Prisons

The phenomenal growth of the U.S. prison
complex is a subject worthy of its own
volume (see Chapter 16). In brief, the U.S.

prison population remained relatively
stable for most of the 20th century,
dipping during wartimes—the 1940s and
the 1960s. Beginning in the late 1970s, the
number of incarcerated Americans took a
sharp turn upward and continued to rise
into the 2000s.

The general surge upward cannot be
explained by general population growth. If
so, the rate of imprisonment—the number
of inmates for every 100,000 U.S.
residents—would have remained relatively
constant. Instead, the rate rose drastically
for over three decades, increasing by 427%
from 96 in 1970 to 506 in 2008. It then
began a decline, decreasing almost 10% to
458 in 2015. Nevertheless, the United
States still incarcerates a larger proportion
of its population than any other nation in

the world.4

State and Regional
Differences

The U.S. states vary widely in many ways
that impact their incarceration rates, from
size, region, climate, topography, and
demographics to culture, political climate,
legislation, law enforcement policy,
characteristics of the judiciary, and reform
efforts. Consequently, prison population
sizes and rates have an enormous range
among the states. In 2016, the highest
incarceration rate was found in
Washington, D.C. (1,196) and was followed

closely by Louisiana, Georgia, Oklahoma,

and Alabama.5 In addition, these rates are
always in flux; they may be falling in some
states and rising in others.

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

A closer look at overall incarceration rates
reveals an enormous disparity in rates of
incarceration depending on gender and
race. To illustrate, the 2015 incarceration
rate for sentenced women was 64 and for
sentenced men was 863. For White
women, the rate was 52, for Hispanic
women 63, and for African American
women 103. For White men, the rate was
457, for Hispanic men 1,043, and for

African American men 2, 613.6

Postcard of an American panopticon: “Interior view

of cell house, new Illinois State Penitentiary at

Stateville, near Joliet, Ill.” Scanned from the

postcard collection of Alex Wellerstein.

The “roundhouse” at Illinois State

Penitentiary at Stateville was built in

the 1920s using a panopticon-inspired

design. Some might call Bentham’s

“all-seeing” design for prisons

ingenious, others diabolical.

p.125

Figure 6.1 National Rate of
Imprisonment, 1925 to
2015

Figure 6.1 shows that, throughout most of the
20th century, the imprisonment rate was stable,
rising above 130 per 100,000 only for a couple of
years just prior to World War II. However, in the
late 1970s, it started a sharp rise that did not
show signs of ending until 2009. The
imprisonment rate per 100,000 was 96 in 1970,
139 in 1980, 297 in 1990, 478 in 2000, and 500
in 2010. The high point was 506 in 2008, at which
point a gradual decline began, to 458 in 2015.

Source:
ttp://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/tost_6.html#6_bf.

Admissions and Length of

Stay in Custody

New admissions and length of stay are the
primary factors in prison population
counts. In simple terms, decreasing the
number of offenders sentenced to time in
prison means lower prison populations. If,
over time, the number of individuals who
are beginning a prison sentence stays the
same but their time served decreases, then
overall prison population counts will also
decrease. Even a small reduction in
sentence length can have an impact on the
prison population, and sentencing reform
is certainly an avenue toward relieving
pressure on overburdened systems. The
decline in total prisoners after 2009
resulted from both fewer admissions and
more releases than in previous years. The
reduction in admissions was partly due to
an increase in reforms and programming
meant to allow low-level offenders to
avoid incarceration and reduce recidivism.
Such strategies include diversion
programs, specialty courts, and drug
treatment centers. The increase in
releases was partly the result of reduced
sentences for “non-non-nons” (nonviolent,
nonsexual, nonserious offenders). Of
course, the reverse is also true: More
individuals sentenced to prison and longer
stays increase population counts.

Facilities

In 2005, there were 1,719 state and 102

federal prison facilities dispersed across

the country, 135 more than in 2000.7

(More recent counts are not available,
although new prison construction, both
private and public, continued after the
release of the last national census.) These
facilities ranged in size from halfway
houses that hold just a few low-risk
inmates to sprawling complexes that house

thousands of prisoners of all types.8

p.126

Table 6.1 Prison Population and
Rate of Imprisonment for
Prisoners* in Federal and
State Systems, 2015

The overall rate of imprisonment in the United
States in 2015 was 458 for every 100,000 of any
age in the general population. State rates ranged
from under 200 for Maine, Massachusetts, and
Minnesota to rates of more than 600 for Alabama,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. The federal
rate in 2015 was 55. The federal rate is always
low compared to state rates because most
criminal law falls under state jurisdiction.

*Sentenced to one year or more.

**Rate of imprisonment per 100,000 in general
population, all ages.

***Illinois, Nevada and Oregon rates are
estimated.

Source: Carson and Golinelli 2013.

p.127

IN THE
COURTS

Brown, Governor of
California, et al. v. Plata et al.

Appeal from the U.S. DistrictAppeal from the U.S. District
Courts for the Eastern andCourts for the Eastern and
Northern Districts of CaliforniaNorthern Districts of California
No. 09–1233;No. 09–1233;

Argued November 30, 2010—Argued November 30, 2010—

Decided May 23, 2011Decided May 23, 2011

In 2011, the total design capacity for
California prisons was about 80,000
inmates, but the population had
grown to over 170,000. This crowding
contributed to a fundamental
breakdown in safety, security, health
services, and suicide prevention and
to making the prisons very dangerous
for staff and inmates alike. The
governor declared that California’s
prisons were in a state of emergency.
A series of class-action judgments
against the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation
attempted to remedy these problems
without much success. Plaintiffs used
the federal Prison Litigation Reform
Act to argue that only immediate
reductions in the inmate population
could solve the breakdown of
fundamental Eighth Amendment
protections.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
plaintiff’s claims and sustained the
order of a federal three-judge panel to
reduce the California prison
population to 137% of its design
capacity in two years. Writing for the
Court, Justice Kennedy found:

As a consequence of their own
actions, prisoners may be
deprived of rights that are

fundamental to liberty. Yet the
law and the Constitution demand
recognition of certain other
rights. Prisoners retain the
essence of human dignity
inherent in all persons. Respect
for that dignity animates the
Eighth Amendment prohibition
against cruel and unusual
punishment. “The basic concept
underlying the Eighth
Amendment is nothing less than

the dignity of man.”1

To incarcerate, society takes from
prisoners the means to provide
for their own needs. Prisoners
are dependent on the State for
food, clothing, and necessary
medical care. A prison’s failure to
provide sustenance for inmates
“may actually produce physical

‘torture or a lingering death.’”2

Just as a prisoner may starve if
not fed, he or she may suffer or
die if not provided adequate
medical care. A prison that
deprives prisoners of basic
sustenance, including adequate
medical care, is incompatible with
the concept of human dignity and

has no place in civilized society.3

This case was an unprecedented
occasion of the U.S. Supreme Court
ordering a state to release inmates. If

government fails to fulfill this
obligation, the courts have a
responsibility to remedy the resulting
Eighth Amendment violation. By
2012, the state had succeeded in
reducing the prison population to
approximately 125,000, largely

through its “realignment” strategies.4

(See Chapter 16 Spotlight “California’s
Realignment.”) In the spring of 2014,
the three-judge court overseeing the
process granted the California
Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation a two-year extension to
achieve the mandated 137% capacity

limit.5

Notes

1.1. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304,
311 2002 (quoting Trop v. Dulles,
356 U.S. 86, 100 1958 (plurality
opinion)

2.2. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97,
103 1976 (quoting In re Kemmler,
136 U.S. 436, 447 1890 see
generally Alan Elsner, Gates of
Injustice: The Crisis in America’s
Prisons (Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson Education, 2004)

3.3. See also Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S.
678, 687, n. 9 (1978)

4.4. Schlanger 2013

5.5. Prison Law Office 2017

State facilities included 1,190 secure
confinement facilities and 529 community-
based facilities. Confinement facilities
(prisons, farms, camps) are typically larger
and more remotely located than
community-based facilities (halfway
houses, restitution centers, prerelease
centers, work release centers, and study
centers). All or most of those held in
community-based facilities are regularly
allowed to leave on their own for work or
study, while those in confinement facilities
generally do not have this liberty.
Community-based settings cost less than
prisons and allow inmates to retain or
reestablish connections with their families
and communities, employment, education,
rehabilitative programming, and other
services. These settings can be used as
alternatives to traditional secure confine-
ment or as a transition between prison
and the community.

p.128

Although representing just 4% (54,233) of
the total state and federal prison
population, between 1995 and 2005, the
number of people serving time in
community-based facilities rose at almost
twice the rate of those serving time in
secure facilities.

In America, a person’s race and

ethnicity have a strong correlation to

one’s likelihood of incarceration.

Facility Capacity

As one would expect, the 30-year growth
in prison populations described above was
accompanied by similar increases in the
number of prison facilities. Issues with
crowding and conditions of confinement
also grew. All but 12 U.S. states had at least
one prison under court order (consent de-
cree) either to reduce overcrowding or for
specific issues with conditions of
confinement in 2000 or 2005. At the end
of 2015, 18 states and the federal prison
system held more inmates than their

facilities were designed to hold.9

Prison Costs
Burgeoning prison systems have exerted

increasing strain on government budgets.
As state revenues have decreased,
housing, feeding, and providing medical
care for growing numbers of low-risk
prisoners has emerged as an extravagant
use of scarce taxpayer dollars—ever more
difficult to justify as other vital services
suffer, such as education, health care, and
transportation. These fiscal constraints are
prompting lawmakers to cut corrections
expenses. Just as policy decisions have
driven growth, they also drive cuts. Some
states are looking at lower-cost measures
that emphasize such strategies as
treatment in the community, collaboration
among relevant agencies, and improved re-
entry programming.

According to a 2011 survey by the Vera
Institute, the total state prison costs for 40
of 50 states was $39 billion. Vera
calculated costs for each state, taking into
account the additional costs of
incarceration that often fall outside of the
prison budget. These include employee
benefits, capital expenditures, legal claims,
private prisons, and statewide
administrative costs. Each state has its
own mix of these budget items outside the
direct prison budget, varying from less
than 1% (Arizona) to 34% (Connecticut).
The Vera survey controlled for this. The
average annual per capita expenditure on
each prisoner was just over $31,000. The
range was from $14,600 (Kentucky) to

$60,000 (New York).10

The meaning of per-prisoner costs is
complex. Lower spending can mean
substandard services, such as avoidance of
needed medical care, which is one of the
main drivers of prison costs. In addition,
per-prisoner costs do not measure facility
crowding, staff working conditions,
recidivism, or public safety.

p.129

The Federal System
The federal penal code covers a vast range
of areas—for example, commerce, federal
elections, food and drugs, customs, and
income tax issues. Federal prisoners are
those convicted of or charged with
breaking a federal law such as drug
trafficking across state borders, bank
robbery, tax evasion, white-collar crimes
that involve interstate commerce, mail
fraud, crimes that occur on federal
property, or immigration law violations.
Persons convicted of felonies in the
District of Columbia and on Indian lands
also fall under federal jurisdiction. A
former student who was convicted of
hacking Sarah Palin’s e-mail was sentenced

to a year and a day in federal prison.11

Figure 6.2 Offense Types of
Sentenced Prisoners* in
State Prisons, 2015

Source: Carson and Anderson 2016.

Figure 6.3 Offense Types of
Sentenced Prisoners* in
Federal Prisons, 2015

In 2015, violent offenders made up just over half
(53%) of state prisoners, property offenders 19%,
drug offenders 16%, and public order offenders
12% (see Figure 6.2). In the same year, violent
offenders made up just 7% of federal prisoners,
property offenders 6%, drug offenders 50%, and
public order offenders 36%. * Serving a sentence
of at least one year. Most serious conviction
offense is reported.

Violent offenses include murder, nonnegligent
manslaughter, manslaughter, rape, other sexual
assault, robbery, assault, and other.

Property offenses include burglary, larceny,
motor vehicle theft, fraud, and other.

Drug offenses include trafficking, possession, and
other.

Public order offenses include weapons, drunk
driving, court offenses, commercialized vice,

morals and decency offenses, liquor law
violations, and other.

Source: Carson and Anderson 2016.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
operates institutions of five security levels.
It also operates prison camps and a
number of administrative facilities that
have special missions, including detaining
pretrial defendants and treating prisoners
with serious medical conditions. There is
one federal super-maximum-security
prison called the U.S. Penitentiary
Administrative Maximum Facility, or
ADMAX, in Florence, Colorado, which has
the capacity for 490 prisoners and 800
staff. The federal system operates one low-
security prison for women and three
others that house both women and men. It
operated Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay
until its closure as a prison in 1963.
Alcatraz is now one of the most frequently
visited sites in the National Park system.

History and Growth of Federal
Prisons

The first federal prison was authorized in
1891 and took more than 10 years to build.
Prior to that, the few federal prisoners that
there were stayed in military facilities such
as what existed in Leavenworth, Kansas.
The federal government gradually added
more specialized prisons for women and
juveniles to the system.

President Herbert Hoover signed the bill
to create the Bureau of Prisons in 1930.
The BOP was intended to bring about a
more centralized and uniform system that
had higher professional standards and
exercised more humane care of prisoners
than those that existed at the time.

p.130

Table 6.2 Length of Stay (in
months) of Sentenced
State Prisoners

Between 2002 and 2012, the average length of
stay for state prisoners admitted for a new offense
remained relatively constant. Table 6.2 shows that
average time served for violent and property
offenses remained the same, for drug offenses
dropped slightly, and for public order offenses

rose slightly.12

Source: Carson 2017.

Over the decades, the major increases in

prisoner population were driven mainly by
changes in federal legislation and
sentencing policy. The Volstead Act of
1919 (Prohibition, or the Eighteenth
Amendment) criminalized the production
and sale of alcohol and therefore created
thousands of new prisoners. The
Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 abolished
federal parole and ushered in determinate
sentencing and mandatory minimums. This
was a move away from judicial discretion
and earned good-time credit. The result
was longer sentences, which helped fuel
the rapid growth of the federal prison
population. The Fair Sentencing Act of
2010 sent the federal prison population in
the other direction, reducing sentences for
certain drug offenses (see Chapter 3
Spotlight “Fair Sentencing Act of 2010”).
Besides Congress, White House policy and
presidential appointees in the Department
of Justice can drive federal prison
populations up or down. Recent reductions
in the federal prison population were
partially facilitated by Obama-era
directives to prosecutors to consider each
case individually rather than uniformly
pursuing the most serious charges and
toughest penalties allowed by federal
sentencing guidelines. This more nuanced
and, some would say, lenient approach was
a change from the “law and order” Bush
administration and was quickly reversed
by Trump appointee Attorney General Jeff
Sessions.

Illegal immigrants line up against a

U.S. Department of Homeland

Security bus in El Paso, Texas, so they

can be unshackled and led across the

border to Juarez, Mexico, by

Immigration and Customs

Enforcement agents, 2009.

Trends in the state prison population are
not so easily swayed as federal prison
counts, because each state has its own
system. However, states do tend to follow
suit, if gradually, when federal correctional
laws and policies change. Further, Supreme
Court decisions can directly impact state
systems, as when the Court forbade the
death penalty and life without the
possibility of parole for minors. And
Congress can make federal funding
contingent on states abiding by
correctional legislation, as it does for the
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention Act (see Chapter 8).

Immigration and Federal
Prisons

Tensions run high over issues surrounding
immigration—especially in the border
states. Increases in illegal immigration and
the related policies and practices of law
enforcement have altered the federal
prison population’s racial and ethnic
composition. Racial disparity is a chronic
problem in all parts of America’s criminal
justice system. Clear-cut evidence that
policy drives the disproportion is perhaps
nowhere more evident than in federal
prisons (see Chapter 11).

State Prisons
State prisons are the “workhorses” of
corrections in the United States. In 2015,
they held 87% of the nation’s 1.5 million
prisoners (again, not counting jail inmates).
Three states accounted for over a quarter
of all state prisoners—Texas, California,

and Florida.14 State corrections systems
are administered by the executive branch
of state government, whereas jails are
usually administered at the county or city
level, and probation is often under the
authority of the judicial branch.

p.131

Figure 6.4 Federal Prison Population

Growth

In 1940, the population of the federal prison
system was approximately 20,000. By 1980, that
population had grown by only 5,000. However, it
increased to 40,000 by 1986, doubled to 80,000
by 1995, and then more than doubled again to
over 187,000 by 2005. Still dwarfed in number by
the state system, this nevertheless represents an
explosion of prison expansion, reaching a historic
high in 2013 with over 219,000 prisoners. The
federal population then fell to 188,513 by May
2017. This included 21,379 prisoners in private
facilities and 13,388 in community-based

facilities.13

Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons 2017.

Not surprisingly, states vary significantly in
the locations of their facilities, how many
there are, how many prisoners they hold,
what types of security levels they maintain,
and whether they adhere to a more
centralized or decentralized model. Urban
prisons are few. San Quentin is one such,
and it is built on land that is coveted in a
high-value real estate market. Rural
prisons are a boon to local economies.

Building a prison near a small town is often
viewed as a way out of economic
depression. Besides prison construction
and operation, there are many private and
influential producers of supporting
services and goods that make prison a
mainstay of the economy. However, a
community that has such a focused
industry also runs the risk of subsequent
economic hardship should the prison shut
down.

Military Prisons and the
War on Terror
In the 2000s, the prisons that were often
making news were those run by the U.S.
military and associated with the War on
Terror, especially Abu Ghraib in Iraq (now
under sole Iraqi control) and Guantánamo
in Cuba. These resemble maximum-
security prisons in the United States for
their heavily fortified settings and stark
conditions of confinement, but they are
not considered part of the U.S. corrections
system as defined in this text. They hold
mainly foreign inmates suspected of
terrorist acts who are not afforded basic
U.S. constitutional protections such as
habeas corpus and legal representation.
The facilities are, for the most part, not
subject to the same laws, regulations, and
processes as state and federal prisons and
mainstream prisons and jails. However,
largely because of their separate legal

Military Police at camp X-Ray on the

Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,

bring a detainee to an interrogation

room, February 6, 2002. © REUTERS /

Marc Serota

realm, military prisons offer cautionary
tales that apply to mainstream corrections.
These facilities have documented and
egregious histories of abuse by prison
guards and military personnel, and they
demonstrate the risk of a harshly punitive
culture among staff, exacerbated by
policies that are unclear, culturally
insensitive, and inhumane.

p.132

Classification Systems
By the middle of the 19th century,
prisoners were routinely separated—men
from women, children from adults, and the

healthy from the unwell. Reformers began
to demand that prisons separate groups of
individuals by their degree of criminality.
Over time, a logical means of sorting
prisoners grew in importance. Today, the
general prison population is classified by
risk level into units (some of which are for
special populations) such as disciplinary
segregation, protective custody, mental
health, or medical units. Systems of
classification are based on the premise
that individuals with varying offense
profiles, levels of risk, and methods of
supervision require different security
levels in custody.

The first prison classification screening
tools were based on psychological and
personality tests that were used on men
entering the armed services during World
War I. Up until the Progressive Era, when
the concept of rehabilitation began to take
hold, prisoners were separated simply
according to their age, gender, and number
of offenses; first-timers were kept away
from repeat offenders, when possible.
Beginning in the 1970s, the growing prison
population led to a series of riots and
allegations of abuse against prisoners.
Charges of arbitrariness and unfair
placement helped solidify the classification
system as an essential part of a well-run
institution. Institutions shifted toward
objective classification based on reliable
and valid criteria. This more diagnostic
approach led to a medical-style model of

identifying problems and prescribing
treatments. However, there was no
standardization, and decisions were still

made subjectively.15

Narrow schemes based on a single variable
have given way to a more modern
approach that uses tools based on
predictive data—tools that have been
validated by a generally accepted method
of evaluation. California and the Federal
Bureau of Prisons were the first to develop
such systems to improve consistency and
the accuracy of risk prediction.

Prison administrators have their choice of
many classification tools. These tools
create a profile for each prisoner using
tested predictors of behavior. The National
Institute of Corrections (NIC) has
developed a system called the Custody
Determination Model. According to the
NIC, the essential components of
classification cover goals and planning,
thorough implementation, the use of valid
instruments, a formal and centralized
housing plan, appropriate override factors,
data collection and monitoring, and
evaluation of the system’s process and
impact.

p.133

Sophisticated classification systems are
intended as strategic tools to manage
prisons and as a safeguard to treat

prisoners fairly and safely. For many years,
the standard has been to assign the least
restrictive classification necessary to
protect safety at all levels, to assess the
needs of prisoners, and to promote
positive change among prisoners through
incentives rather than relying on the
experience of prison officials to “know”
how to place prisoners, or any other
subjective method of decision making.
Rules about how to place inmates were
meant to ensure proper decision making,
orderliness, and appropriate conditions for
prisoners.

The basic system parameters are the
prisoner’s conviction offense, age, gender
(although almost all classification systems
are designed for men), custody level, gang
affiliation, general motivation level, and
history of institutional “adjustment.”
Assessment tools collect and measure
additional details on mental and physical
health status, substance abuse issues,
academic and vocational education, work
experience, relationships, history of
trauma or victimization, and life skills. On
the qualitative side, instruments assess
personality traits, especially those related
to prison life, such as attitude toward
authority, level of motivation, expression
of predatory tendencies, ability to form
friendships, aggressiveness, passivity,
fearfulness, and level of remorse.

Prisoners are assessed for classification

purposes when they enter the state or
federal prison system, when they are
admitted to the specific facility where they
will serve their sentence, upon assignment
to a specific housing unit, and any time
they are transferred. Reassessments might
be scheduled according to a person’s
security level or could occur for a variety
of other reasons determined by prison
administrators, such as significant changes
in an individual’s behavior. Classification
systems can also help with developing the
right kind and the right number of
treatment programs based on the needs of
the prisoner population, identification of
good candidates for therapeutic commu-
nities, establishing appropriate work
opportunities, monitoring the gang
population, and reducing racial disparities.
Prison administrators must balance the
assessment results with practical
considerations, such as bed space; they
must also periodically revalidate their
classification systems and instruments to
make sure they are working as intended.

Figure 6.5 Federal Immigration
Sentencing, 2015

Immigration violations fall under federal
jurisdiction. In 2015, Hispanics accounted for 32%
of individuals sentenced to federal prison for
offenses not related to immigration, but a full 95%
of those sentenced for immigration offenses. Most
immigration offenses were either entering or
residing in the United States illegally (82%) or
smuggling or harboring an illegal alien (12%). The
vast majority (92%) of immigration offenses were

committed by non–U.S. citizens.16

Source: Schmitt and Jones 2016.

p.134

SPOTLIGHT

ARIZONA’S
IMMIGRATION LAWS

Controversy rages over immigration
policies at the state level as well as on
the national stage. Immigration laws
present a host of thorny issues, among
them the intersection of legislation,
prison industry lobbyists, and persons
entering the country illegally. Arizona
passed a hotly debated law (SB 1070)
that opponents see as racial profiling
and supporters see as a bold step
toward addressing illegal immigration
from Mexico. Arizona’s highly charged
policy of requiring the police to stop
anyone who the officer has
“reasonable suspicion” is in the
country illegally and to detain anyone
who is not in possession of proof of
legal entry is certain to increase the
number of persons detained by the
state. National Public Radio aired a
story several months after the
legislation passed about the interests
of the private prison corporations that

helped pass the legislation.1 Viewed

from a business perspective, new
detainees equate to a new market;
from this perspective, the law opens
the door to for-profit prison industry
“opportunities.” This clearly raises a
new set of moral questions related to
immigration. It may eventually be up
to the courts to decide where to draw
the line in the broader issue of what
appears to be a serious ethical

conflict, that is, companies contracting
for building prison space and lobbying
the government to pass the laws that
would ensure those prisons stay filled

and profitable.2 Besides the profit
motive issue, the law has been
challenged on several civil rights and
constitutional grounds. In its first
ruling on SB 1070 in 2012, the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld police
investigations of the immigration
status of suspects but struck down
other parts of the law, including its
criminalization of the failure to apply
for and carry a registration card
indicating one’s legal status. Political
pressure and other lawsuits
eventually led to a 2016 settlement
that dismantled much of the law. Law
enforcement officers are no longer
required to inquire about immigration
status, but they may do so at their
own discretion as long as other
constitutional protections are
respected.

QUESTIONS

1 Should each state decide its own

policies related to immigration?

2 Discuss what would be an
appropriate definition of
reasonable suspicion.

3 Discuss the problem inherent in
private prisons lobbying for

punitive sentencing.

Notes

1.1. Sullivan 2010

2.2. Arizona v. United States 2012

Security Levels
The security level of a facility is defined by
a combination of architecture, rules,
technology, and regimentation. Security
levels are based on the kinds of controls
considered necessary to accomplish the
goals of incarceration and to prevent
escape, violence to staff or other inmates,
and other in-custody criminal or disruptive
behavior. Both the state and federal prison
systems have at least minimum-, medium-,
and high-security (maximum) institutions.
Each level of prison is subject to its own
challenges in controlling behavior and in
monitoring abuses of power. The
differences in facilities related to security
level include gun towers, external security
barriers, cameras, razor wire, staff-to-
inmate ratios, external patrols, and
frequency of head counts.

p.135

Minimum Security

Negotiating
With Protesting
Prisoners

In response to complaints by some
inmates about their deprivation of
rights by being placed in
administrative segregated housing
units, a large number of prisoners go
on a hunger strike. Spokespersons for
the inmates say that many inmates are
willing to sacrifice their health and
safety to stop the harsh segregation
policies. Dozens of inmates refuse to
eat prison food and will not perform
their work assignments. Some refuse
to come out of their cells for daily
exercise. The hunger strikers appear
to represent inmates from diverse
racial groups and gangs.

Prison officials claim that the hunger
strike is a ploy by powerful prison
gangs to increase their influence
behind the walls. They claim that
inmates are still eating food bought in
the prison commissary and no one is at
great risk. The corrections staff claim
that current segregation policies are
necessary to protect the safety of
inmates and staff. They argue that to
give in to inmates’ demands for change
will undermine the authority of
correctional officers and could lead to

more violence. Prison officials ask the
courts to allow them to engage in

force-feeding of convicts who are
facing imminent threat of death or
serious health problems.

Families of inmates are protesting
outside the prison gates, and they tell
of dire health challenges faced by
those refusing food. Many prominent
celebrities, editorial writers, and
politicians have rallied on behalf of the
inmates’ cause, demanding that prison
officials negotiate a resolution with
the hunger strikers.

YOU DECIDE: As director ofAs director of
corrections, do you negotiatecorrections, do you negotiate
with the striking inmates or theirwith the striking inmates or their
spokespersons to resolve thespokespersons to resolve the
protest? What is the compromiseprotest? What is the compromise
you seek?you seek?

These are the least restrictive facilities and
have a range of forms, such as ranches,
farms, or cottages. They are for prisoners
who pose very little physical security risk—
first-timers, white-collar criminals, or
nonviolent prisoners with short sentences.
Minimum-security facilities are the least
oppressive and imposing. Minimum-
security prisoners often wear their own
clothing, but there is still regulation and
regimentation. The less restrictive

atmosphere is not necessarily the most
predictable or easiest to manage.
Minimum-security facilities have their
disadvantages; more interaction and less
surveillance can open up opportunities for
violence or abuse among prisoners and
between prisoners and staff.

Medium Security

These facilities are more restrictive,
designed typically with razor wire
perimeters. They may have gun towers and
guards on foot or in vehicles. They often
have dormitory-style housing and fewer
rules than maximum-security facilities.
Prisoners wear institutional clothing but
may have more freedom of movement
within the facility, which is allowed for a
population at lower risk for violence or
escape. Medium-security facilities are
often sectors of entire prison complexes,
adjoining higher-security units or
campuses. Administrators can easily
transfer prisoners as they change
classification levels. The possibility of
transfer to a higher security level with
stricter, more oppressive conditions serves
as leverage that prison administrators can
hold over inmates as a means of control.

Maximum Security

Maximum-security facilities operate with a
focus mostly on custody and control and
less on treatment and rehabilitation. These

facilities often impose 22 to 24 hours of
lockup every day. They are the highest
security level in most prison complexes.
Because movement is so highly controlled
and prisoners are more isolated from one
another, these facilities may tend to have a
lower incidence of violence and abuse than
what is found in lower-security settings.
However, orderliness is not necessarily a
sign of effectiveness in achieving any kind
of lasting behavior change.

p.136

The Supermax
The super-maximum-security prison—or
supermax—is the most extremely fortified
form of incarceration in the United States,
ostensibly reserved for the “worst of the
worst.” Supermax facilities are intended for
the most violent, escape-prone, and
rebellious prisoners and gangsters who
pose the greatest threat to the institution,
to society, or to other prisoners. However,
supermax prisoners are not all lifers; most
of those held in the supermax are
eventually released.

Journal Article
Journal Article 6.2: Mental health is-
sues in long-term solitary and “super-
max” confinement.
CLICK TO SHOW

Separate facilities or adjunct units in
prison complexes, supermaxes, and
specialty housing units (SHUs) hold
prisoners in extreme isolation, confined to
their typical six-foot-by-eight-foot cells for
22 to 24 hours a day; any other hours
might be spent on exercise in a separate,
solitary enclosure. Conditions vary from
one to another of more than 55 such
facilities in approximately 40 states, with a

total capacity of 25,000 prisoners.17

However, some of the common conditions
include heavily reinforced concrete walls,
floors, ceilings, doors, and windows; lights
left on 24 hours a day; constant video
surveillance; meals served through an
opening in the door (the “bean slot”); and
highly limited visits, mail, phone calls, and
human contact. In addition, the
administrators of these facilities have wide
leeway to use their judgment in
determining who goes to isolation and for
what, how long prisoners must stay in
isolation, and how to manage and
discipline those prisoners without a great
deal of review from outside the facility and
without a regular prisoner grievance
procedure.

According to one theory of corrections, the
supermax concentrates troublesome
inmates and cliques into one high-security
environment—instead of dispersing them
throughout the system—for a uniform
scheme of supervision.

A 1999 NIC study revealed that there is no
single agreed-upon definition about what a
supermax is and who should be housed in
one. Specifics vary widely on the criteria
for admission or release, the maximum
length of stay, the transition out of
isolation, the inclusion or exclusion of the
mentally ill, the amount and type of
programming (in many cases, there is
none), and the degree to which human
contact is allowed.

The NIC finally adopted this definition:

A highly restrictive, high-custody
housing unit within a secure facility, or
an entire secure facility that isolates
inmates from the general prison
population and from each other due to
grievous crimes, repetitive assault, or
violent institutional behavior, the
threat of escape or actual escape from
high custody facility(s), or inciting or
threatening to incite disturbances in a

correctional institution.18

Cruel and Usual?

Proponents of supermax isolation include
prison officials and politicians who claim
that it is a necessary means of control for
those it houses and a deterrent to other
prisoners. They say there are few
alternatives for those prisoners who
present a clear and imminent danger.
However, even during the period of prison

expansion, when states were planning and
constructing new supermax facilities,
controversy swirled around them.

p.137

It is now widely accepted among
penologists and researchers—and even
some correctional officers and wardens—
that the extreme conditions of the
supermax exact a human cost in terms of
cognitive and emotional health that is well
beyond the goals of incarceration and may
cross the border into pointless suffering.
Indeed, esteemed criminologist Norval
Morris stated that supermaxes “raise the
level of punishment close to that of

psychological torture.”21

Figure 6.6 State Prison Security
Levels

Source: Stephan 2008.

The deleterious impact of extreme and
prolonged isolation is now known to be
significant not only for inmates, but also
for staff. Professor Craig Haney argues
that the supermax environment reaches
perverse extremes and negatively
influences staff, who are also subjected to
the dehumanizing architecture, degrading
rituals, and emotional tensions. These
conditions lead to a higher probability of
maltreatment of prisoners ranging from

indifference to brutality.22

Although the supermax is supposed to be
used only for the extremely dangerous,
there are many instances of its use for
punitive sanctions for lower-level
prisoners or as “protective” isolation for
HIV-positive or mentally ill inmates. The

NIC suggests that prison administrators
should conservatively and clearly define
the population for the SHU. Other
prisoners should be housed in less extreme
conditions, including the mentally ill, the
“incorrigible” who need frequent
segregation, those who need protection,
those who need administrative
confinement for separation but not
control, and those in need of observation.
“These facilities are inappropriate for the

nuisance inmate.”23

Figure 6.7 Federal Prison Security
Levels

Overall, more than half (54%) of U.S. state prisons

are low security, a quarter are medium security,

and just under a quarter are high security.19

Federal prison facilities are 36% low or minimum
security, 28% medium, 6% high or maximum, and
about 30% are multilevel complexes or
administrative facilities holding prisoners with
particular needs such as those awaiting trial or

with mental health issues.20

Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons 2017.

Due process is meant to govern any
placement in the SHU. The criteria for
release (determinate time, behavior
change) must also be defined. SHU inmates
are sometimes released directly to the
streets, creating a public safety risk of
unknown proportions. It has been shown
that mental states can deteriorate rapidly
inside these units, sometimes within days.
Few prisons have a well-organized,
stepped-down release plan for inmates
who spend time in the SHU or the
supermax.

p.138

SPOTLIGHT

ISOLATION AND THE
SUPERMAX

Alcatraz, in the center of San
Francisco Bay, is the forerunner of the
modern supermax. In the nearly 30
years “The Rock” was in operation, the
nation’s most notorious and hard-core
prisoners lived there. Similarly, the
likes of the Unabomber, Zacarias
Moussaoui, and Juan Matta-
Ballesteros are serving life sentences
in the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative
Maximum Facility (ADMAX) in
Florence, Colorado. Their crimes are
notorious, but many other unknown
prisoners occupy the 550
underground beds of the only
supermax operated by the Federal

Bureau of Prisons.1

Isolation as a tactic for control of
prisoners is not a new concept, nor is
the use of solitary confinement (the
“hole”) new as a prison within a

prison.

These measures have been used for
decades to break the spirit and make
an example out of certain prisoners
for certain behavior. In 1829, the
Quakers who established the Eastern
State Penitentiary believed that
isolation with a Bible would lead a
prisoner to recognize and repent for

his failings.2 Within decades, isolation
had shown little appreciable
effectiveness in accomplishing this
goal and was largely abandoned for
being an inhumane strategy.

The idea of the supermax came much
later. In two separate incidents in
1983, two officers and one inmate
were killed in the U.S. penitentiary at
Marion, Illinois, which led to indefinite

lockdown of the entire facility.3 This
penitentiary housed violent and
rebellious prisoners and hard-core
gangsters who manipulated their
empires from inside prison. Later, in
1994, the federal government opened
ADMAX, the first of many such super-
secure-custody prisons. A majority of
all states operate one or more
supermax facility.

QUESTIONS
1 Should isolation be used as a

behavior control strategy? If so,
who should be subject to it?

2 Research accounts by former
prisoners who have spent time in
extreme isolation. Discuss their
experiences.

3 Discuss how you think you would
be affected by spending time in
isolation.

Notes

1.1. Collins 2004

2.2. Eastern State Penitentiary n.d.

3.3. Federal Bureau of Prisons n.d.-c

Challenges in court (Ruiz v. Johnson,
Wilkinson v. Austin) have contested the
standards for the operation of a supermax
facility. In the 1995 case Madrid v. Gomez,
a federal judge found that conditions at the
now notorious Pelican Bay prison in
California “may well hover on the edge of
what is humanly tolerable.”

Besides their human toll, supermax
facilities cost significantly more to build
because of the heavily reinforced
structure, perimeters, doors, locks, and
electronic surveillance equipment.
Operations cost more as well; the staff-to-
prisoner ratio is as high as two to one.

Programs and Services
There is a range of programs and services
in prisons; the prison population has
multiple needs that programs are intended
to address. Structuring time and engaging
prisoners in productive activity is widely
seen as a key method of maintaining a safe
and well-functioning facility. Punishment
alone is not effective in reforming
prisoners. Rehabilitative programs in
prison, like those for probation and parole,
are based on criminogenic factors—the
risk factors that contribute to criminal
behavior such as antisocial values and
peers, certain personality traits, low self-

control, and family dysfunction. Programs
are designed to address education,
employment, substance abuse treatment,
behavior and counseling, medical services,
and recreation. However, the main
function of prison is behavior control, and
when officials are faced with a choice
between the two, security always takes
priority over the delivery of services.

SAGE News Clip
SAGE News Clip 6.1: HIV-Positive
Inmates in Alabama

p.139

Compared to the general population,
prisoners typically have significantly
higher rates of substance abuse,
victimization, undiagnosed or untreated
mental health problems, illiteracy, poverty,
underemployment, and other forms of dis-
enfranchisement. Thus, the treatment
they do or do not get in prison can have a
significant impact on subsequent

Administrative segregation prisoners

take part in a group therapy session at

San Quentin state prison in San

Quentin, California. San Quentin

prison is California’s oldest

correctional facility and houses the

state’s only gas chamber.

successes and failures.

Attitudes about how to handle inmate
needs fluctuate over time. Treatment as
viewed from a medical model fell from
favor during the 1970s, when the view that
“nothing works” in rehabilitation took hold,
and programs were greatly reduced
nationwide. Representatives from both
sides of the political aisle became
suspicious of rehabilitation. Liberals
criticized behavior change as mind control,
and conservatives characterized
addressing prisoner needs as pampering.
Many of these attitudes persist, but the
United States appears to be reawakening

An officer checks doors at the

Adjustment Center group of cells

housing death row inmates inside San

Quentin.

to the idea that smart correctional policy
includes well-designed and tested
methods for dealing with the risk factors
that are known to correlate with crime.

Still, many members of the public,
lawmakers, and correctional professionals
alike are skeptical about the value of
treatment and services for prisoners. The
public often resents prisoners when the
perception is that prisoners have more
opportunities than what is available to
many in the community. It is
understandable that prisoner access to
medical care, for example, seems unfair to
many law-abiding people who cannot
afford it themselves. Despite the
inequities, the solution surely can’t be to
deny health care to the sick and elderly in

Once the site of harsh punishment

and strict isolation—while

tantalizingly close to freedom—

Alcatraz is now one of the most

prison.

Prisons enlist a gamut of providers,
including teachers, counselors, case
managers, social workers, psychologists,
psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, and
chaplains. Their working conditions are
often more challenging and their
compensation is often lower than what
they would earn for the same work in the
private sector. Whereas the role of prison
custodial staff calls on powers of control
and intimidation, program and treatment
providers offer benefits to prisoners and
relationships that are defined more by
trust.

p.140

visited of the U.S. national parks.

Service providers in prison, including
teachers, encounter many obstacles to
continuity and consistency. One of the
major challenges in the delivery of
effective programming is overcrowding.
Not only is it impossible to conduct classes
when classrooms have been retooled as
dormitories, but a more pressurized
atmosphere also leads to more frequent
disruption and chaos, making scheduling,
concentration, and learning or treatment
even more difficult.

Program effectiveness is extremely
variable and highly dependent on the way
programs are conceived and implemented.
All prison programs are by no means
created equal. Evaluating them is an
ongoing task of the research community
and departments of corrections. The
findings of research inquiry have the
potential to inform and improve the
delivery of effective programming. Moving
toward more effective treatment in prison
hinges in large part on the ability of
leadership to enlist the buy-in of its line
staff, whose day-to-day interactions and
practical application of policy are crucial to
the definition of the social order behind
bars.

Federal Programming

The federal system runs educational
programs such as literacy, English as a
second language, and GED courses.
Completion of a GED is a requirement to
obtain anything above an entry-level job
while in federal prison. In 2016, there were
15,822 federal inmates enrolled in GED

programs; 6,456 of them graduated.24 The
system also administers hundreds of
occupational programs, plus courses
offered by other entities, including the
Department of Labor. All federal facilities
have some level of psychological and
psychiatric counseling, substance abuse
treatment being one focus of counseling.
Federal prisons are under a mandate to
provide drug treatment to every eligible

inmate.25

Federal Bureau of Prisons

In some prisons, especially women’s

facilities, inmates take part in service

dog training, which has many

emotional benefits for the

participants.

p.141

Education

Education has for decades been the
cornerstone of rehabilitation philosophy.
Support for prison education in the state
and federal systems has come and gone
over the years. But research gives
credence to the concept that education is a
sound, long-term investment in public
safety. To paraphrase one reporter, not
only does an education make it much
easier for a parolee to find and hold a
decent job, but—unlike drug users—there
are no relapses for those who escape

illiteracy.26

A person’s education level may be one of
the more reliable predictors of criminal
behavior. According to the Bureau of
Justice Statistics (BJS), roughly two thirds
of prisoners have less than a high school
education, and many have learning
disabilities. Large numbers of prisoners
need remedial education and basic literacy
skills. Education is one type of prison
program that is more understandable for
its direct link to participation in the
economy (and avoiding crime) and,
therefore, is more acceptable to the public.

The capacity of prison educational
programs is inadequate compared to the
need. Even though 85% of all state and
federal prisons have some kind of
education programs, there are long waiting
lists for enrollment, especially for GED

programs.27 In the federal system, having a
GED is a prerequisite to eligibility for the
higher-paying prison jobs.

Vocational training is also offered in just
over half of prisons. However, vocational
training in prison too rarely teaches skills
that are truly marketable, especially in a
rapidly changing marketplace. In addition,
ex-prisoners, even if they do have skills,
face public stigma and legal obstacles to
employment in a broad range of jobs.

Some studies have begun to evaluate the
link between prison education and
recidivism. A 2013 meta-analysis by RAND
summarized the results of such studies
conducted over nearly 20 years. The
aggregate results show a distinct and
significant set of advantages for inmates
that participated in education programs in
terms of less recidivism (a 13% reduction),
better job prospects after leaving prison
(13% more former inmates found
employment), and lower costs to prison
systems for educating rather than
reincarcerating prisoners. Further, the
studies pointed to better results for
inmates who received vocational
education versus academic education and
improved results in reading (slightly
better) and math (significantly better) for
those whose instruction included
computer-assisted learning methods. In
addition to measuring these beneficial
outcomes, the meta-analysis concluded

that the next wave of research should
focus more closely on what makes an
education program high-quality, the best
curricula, the optimum number of
instruction hours, and more methodical
ways of pooling and examining research

results.28

Inmates training to become

commercial underwater divers

receive classroom instruction on

diving history, science, and techniques

at the Marine Technology Training

Center, part of the California Prison

Industry Authority, of the state prison

in Chino, California.

p.142

A Texas study found that educational
programs might be most effective in
reducing recidivism, especially for the

most educationally disadvantaged.29

Brewster and Sharp concluded that a GED,
whether it was mandatory or voluntary,
was strongly associated with being less

likely to reoffend, especially for women.30

Although education is clearly a way to
increase the skills and self-respect of
prisoners, researchers have yet to fully
evaluate the power of education to keep
prisoners from committing new crime.

Recommendations from the California
Legislative Analyst’s Office point to the
difficulties in funding, participation, and
program interruptions, among others:

• Fund programs based on actual
attendance, not enrollment.

• Develop incentives for inmate
participation and achievement.

• Fill teacher vacancies.

• Limit the negative impact of lockdowns
on programs.

• Develop a case management system
that assigns inmates to the most
appropriate programs based on risk and
needs.

• Base decisions for funding education on

ongoing assessments of programs.31

Drug Treatment

According to a report from the Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at

Columbia University, the prevalence of

drug and alcohol abuse among the prison
population rose 43% from 1996 to 2006.
The CASA research concluded that 65% of
prisoners met the medical criteria for
substance abuse, and another 15% to 20%
were substance involved and under the

influence at the time of their crimes.32

These are, as expected, higher rates of use
and abuse than among the general
population.

Career Video
Payne career video 6.1: Former
Drug Investigator

Clearly, the need for treatment is immense.
But there is a great deal of discrepancy
between that need and how many
prisoners are actually receiving related
services. There were drug and alcohol
dependency programs in 74% of state and

federal prisons in 2005.33 But some
sources claim that only 17% of programs
are effective, and only 12% of prisoners

are enrolled in substance abuse

treatment.34 Furthermore, in many ways,
the prison environment is antithetical to
treatment, which relies on trust, honesty, a
certain willingness to be receptive or
vulnerable, and, some argue, voluntary
participation, which by its very nature is
not possible in prison.

Physical and Mental Health

Care35

Prisoners have high rates of infectious
diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C,
and sexually transmitted diseases. Many of
these conditions are associated with a
high-risk way of life. These health
conditions, especially HIV/AIDS, present
challenges for prison administrators.
Whether to test all entering prisoners as
well as standing populations of inmates is
highly controversial. Administrators may
want to identify prisoners who test
positive for the virus to segregate them
and protect the others. However, such
segregation stigmatizes prisoners and
does nothing to promote education and
appropriate protection for everyone in the
system.

Prisoners also have high rates of chronic
diseases, such as cancer, hypertension,
diabetes, and heart conditions. Of the
3,927 inmates who died in state prison in
2014 (not including death penalty cases),

the leading causes of illness-related death
were cancer (30%), heart disease (26%),
liver disease (9%), respiratory disease (7%),
and AIDS-related causes (2%). Suicide
accounted for 7% of the deaths, homicides

2%, and drug or alcohol overdoses 1%.36

p.143

Inmates exercise at a California state

prison in Chino, California, 2011. The

Supreme Court ordered California to

release more than 30,000 inmates or

take other steps to ease overcrowding

in its prisons to prevent “needless

suffering and death.” The U.S. has

more than 2 million people in state

and local prisons. It has long had the

highest incarceration rate in the

world.

There are high rates of mental health
problems among prisoners, especially

women. According to a special report from
the BJS, 56% of state prisoners in 2005

had a history of mental health problems.37

Many argue that mental health has been
criminalized in U.S. society, resulting in the
incarceration of people with mental health
problems. Further, prisons and jails are not
well equipped, and corrections personnel
are not well trained, to deal effectively and
humanely with the mentally ill. Mental
health treatment is sorely inadequate in
prison and mostly consists of the
dispensing of behavior-modifying
medication. Prison itself is considered to
be a risk factor for mental health
conditions.

Recreation

Recreation programs for prisoners are
generally considered to be part of a
healthy rehabilitation plan. It is not hard to
imagine that recreational activities are
closely tied to prison morale. Some of the
activities offered in prisons may include
exercise courses, team sports,
woodworking, musical activities, open gym
time, weightlifting, and an outdoor yard.
These activities may be supervised by a
specialist in recreation or a general
correctional officer. Participation in some
recreational programs may be contingent
on good behavior; participants may have to
be free of any behavior problems or rule
infractions for a certain period to be
eligible for recreation. Some programs may

entail a fee.

There is some controversy about
recreation for prisoners. Most prison
administrators recognize the value in
maintaining some normal and healthy
activity among the prison population.
Recreation certainly contributes to that.
On the other hand, media images of
prisoners participating in recreation tend
to convey the idea that prisoners have an
easy and comfortable life. The public
seems easily swayed into thinking that
prisoners are not being punished enough if
they have time to play baseball. In addition,
images of prisoners lifting weights and
getting stronger and more muscular seem
to raise anxiety among the public, and
perhaps even among prison administrators
and guards.

p.144

SPOTLIGHT

PERSONALITY AND
PRISON LEADERSHIP

Prisons have been run with a certain
effectiveness by the force of
personality of a single administrator

or warden. Dr. George Beto, who ran
Texas prisons from 1962 to 1972, had
such a personality. He imposed a
paramilitary model of control that was
highly effective in maintaining order
and accomplishing his personal goals
for the prison. He enlisted the
“natural” prison leaders to help run or
“tend” the prison and rewarded them
for doing so. His method placed a
nonnegotiable value on work and
learning to read. Discipline was
unwaveringly strict—with swift and
certain consequences for stepping
outside the lines; Beto literally had
inmates walk between painted lines
on the floor. He reinforced the
behavior he wanted with a system of
rewards as well. One problem with
these methods is that it is almost
impossible to pass them on to a
successor. The personality itself
becomes the method and is central to
its effectiveness. Also problematic is
the tricky balance between control as
a means to instill order and discipline
taken to an inhumane extreme:

A great problem in American
prisons is finding something
constructive for the inmates to
do. In many prisons, especially in
the north and east, they
warehouse convicts—they keep
them in cells and permit them to
lie around all day long. Every able

man in our department works.
And he works hard. . . .

If we don’t do anything else in the
Department of Corrections we at
least teach them the dignity of

work and the necessity of work.1

They’ve got this place so
regulated that there’s no chance
to screw up. Here, every decision,
even the tiniest one, is made for
you…. It’s like running a poultry
farm. There’s good feed, the
cages are clean, they wash down
the animals, but it’s all
mechanical. Honor, integrity,
decency—these are the human
things that there is no attempt to
instill. It’s the antithesis of the
outside world, where you have to
take some measure of
responsibility for yourself. They
turn out great prisoners here—

but broken people.2

QUESTIONS
1 What are the most important

qualities for a prison warden to
have? Why?

2 Should a warden institutionalize
his or her personal methods?
Discuss ways a warden might
accomplish this.

Notes

1.1. George Beto in Chase 2009, 111

2.2. Frank Leahy in Chase 2009, 111

In fact, weightlifting was highlighted as the
symbol of prisoner leniency during the get-
tough 1990s. During the Clinton
administration, Congressman Richard
Zimmer (R-NJ), introduced legislation
called the No Frills Prison Act: Amendment
to Prevent Luxurious Conditions in
Prisons. It was this legislation that helped
to spur a debate on prisoner privilege in
general, and weightlifting in particular. In
the wake of the federal legislation, some
states enacted similar laws, which also
eliminated or limited cable television,
computers, legal research materials, and
many other amenities. Another side of this
debate was well articulated by a group
called the National Correctional
Recreation Association (NCRA), which was
founded by custody officers in the mid-
1960s. The NCRA defends recreation,
including weightlifting, as building self-
esteem and self-discipline, counteracting
idleness, creating incentives, and relieving
stress.

p.145

The American Bar Association (ABA)
developed and adopted standards for the

treatment of prisoners that address

recreation and leisure activities and call for
minimizing time in cells and daily
opportunities to maintain physical health—
in the open air, if possible.

Work and Inmate Labor

Of all public state and federal facilities,
95% have work programs. Inmates earn
very little; wages are usually under $1 per
hour. In some states, prisoners earn
nothing for their work.

Exploiting captive labor and labor as
punishment and as a way to accomplish
large-scale public works projects is not a
new idea. Slaves in Egypt built the
pyramids, according to some theorists.
Prisoners housed on a ship in San
Francisco Bay built their own prison at San
Quentin. One of the most potent images of
captivity is the prison chain gang at work in
the fields or on the railroads in the South.
Prison labor has been used and exploited
in various schemes and with varying
degrees of attention to the welfare and
civil rights of the prisoners.

There is a legitimate claim to valuing work
as a productive use of time and as an
opportunity to learn responsibility, self-
discipline, and marketable skills.
Structured time can increase the safety of
the prison environment. Work as a
rehabilitative strategy is also a legitimate

value. However, there is great potential to
abuse and exploit prisoner labor.

Controversy still surrounds prison labor,
and objections come from different camps.
Labor unions complain that cheap prisoner
labor undercuts them, and they object to
unfair competition. Prisoners’ work often
supports the very institution that confines
them, but these jobs (from laundry to
license plates) rarely prepare inmates for
work on the outside. Contracting prisoner
labor out to local industry creates a
conflict of interest for wardens and sets up
an unseemly motivation to maintain a
prison population of a profitable size and
fitness. These problematic interests have
led to laws restricting the use, movement,
or sale of prison labor and goods produced
by prisoners.

The Prison Environment
Prisons are large and complex
organizations with several levels of
administrative hierarchy. The prison
warden is at the top of the chain of
command and has ultimate responsibility
for the facility. Leadership sets a tone and
communicates a level of confidence and
competence. Low confidence can
destabilize the institution, which then
becomes a more dangerous place. A power
vacuum is always filled in prison. If prison
administrators lose power, the strongest

among the prisoners stand to gain it.38

Feature Video
Schram Personal Perspective video
6.1: Prison Culture

Historical/Getty Images

A Southern chain gang circa 1903 and

a modern prison work crew. How are

they similar? How are they different?

p.146

Wardens are accountable to
commissioners or the head of the state’s
department of corrections. Deputies
oversee subdepartments, such as custody,
programs, and industries. Line staff work
directly with the prisoners performing
searches, movements of prisoners, and
head counts. Other staff support the
functions of the prison, such as office
personnel, accounting, purchasing, food
services, and training. Providers of
professional services are separate from
the regular prison employees and are often
under the direction of the state
department of corrections. However,
prisoners do much of the daily work of

running the facility.

The prison environment is one in which all
aspects of the prisoner’s life are
regimented and overseen. Individuality is
systematically reduced through uniform
clothing, removal of personal belongings,
and assignment of numbers, among other
measures. Prisoners get up, dress, eat,
shower, exercise, and sleep according to
the prison schedule.

The relationship between officers and
prisoners is more complex and nuanced
than one might assume. They are more
dependent on one another than may be
evident on the surface, and they are
together for months or years on end.
Except for the highest-security facilities,
inmates and guards are in close physical
proximity to one another for much of the
day. Prison guards have the backing of the
state and the institution—they have the
weapons and the resources—but prisoners
have many idle hours, devise creative
solutions to problems, and outnumber the
guards. It is in the interest of guards to
engage in subtle negotiations of the more
minor rules to gain cooperation with the
more important rules that have to do with
safety.

Prisons are social systems as well as penal
institutions, with hierarchies, enterprise,
and alliances—subtle and not so subtle
politics and agendas—it’s what people do.

However, prison relationships are
fundamentally coercive. Inmate social
systems are guided by a code that solidifies
prisoner unity against officials, even
though there are other social divisions as
well. Numerous subgroups within the
inmate population and the staff often
divide along lines of race, age, gang
affiliation, or language, and loyalties within
and among these groups vary to a wide
degree. Nevertheless, corrections officers,
as police (and, to some extent, most
employee groups), tend to live by a code of
silence—a value of never revealing
damaging information about a colleague.

An inmate is led by a prison guard at

the California Institution for Men in

Chino, California, 2011.

p.147

Correctional officers view their work role
as everything from human service provider

to brutal enforcer. Their training is in many
ways similar to basic military training, with
emphasis on physical conditioning,
disciplined behavior, and a component of
classroom learning. Prison guards have the
same daily environment as the prisoners.
Their responsibilities include both the
custodial and the rehabilitative, roles that
can be challenging to balance. Because
prison is a stressful and dangerous
environment, there tends to be high
turnover and rates of burnout. Personnel
issues make management of the prison
even more difficult. Where the ethnic
makeup of the staff is distinctly different
from that of the prisoners, significant
cultural barriers between officers and
prisoners often exist, including language
barriers. Some officer training may include
learning Spanish, for instance, in places
where the prisoner population includes
many Spanish speakers. Staff training is
often an ongoing effort, especially in light
of constantly changing legal requirements,
such as proper handling of prison sexual
safety and accommodations for disabled
prisoners (see Chapter 9).

Discipline
Prison discipline encompasses several
levels of hierarchy. Prison administrators
control prisoner behavior—a basic
function of incarceration. Doing so
presents the basic administrative

challenge of keeping order and safety
inside a facility. There is also the balance
between control of a prisoner and ease of
abusing the power differential between
captors and captives. Because of the
“slippery slope” of total authority, prisons
themselves must also be subject to
oversight to monitor performance in
carrying out the goals of incarceration and
protecting the civil rights of prisoners.
What happens when prisoners break the
rules inside, and what happens when
prison officials do?

The California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation introduces prisoner
discipline as follows in its Operations
Manual:

The Department provides a graduated
system of inmate discipline designed
to be administered commensurate
with the seriousness of the offense.
Discipline shall be so administered as
to maintain control, conserve human
values and individual dignity and
promote socially desirable changes in

attitude and behavior.39

People in prison (presumably) have already
broken society’s laws and are often not
compelled to submit to authority. In prison,
they are governed by an even more
stringent set of rules and regulations than
what exists on the outside. Despite all the
means of control inside a facility, people

break the rules all the time, both prisoners
and staff. Serious and violent crime as well
as minor disorder occurs inside of prison.
The warden is ultimately responsible for
disciplining prison staff as well as
prisoners.

Prisons have formal and informal schemes
of consequences for breaking the rules,
usually based on the granting or removal of
privileges and comforts and presumably
proportional to the seriousness of the
behavior. Prisons have many rules, so rule
breaking can range from relatively minor
issues (petty theft or vandalism, misuse of
telephone privileges, use of vulgar
language) to very serious matters
(possession of contraband, assault, or
homicide). Privileges include mail, visits,
phone calls, and recreation. Prisoners can
be issued “tickets” for misconduct,
whether minor or more serious. Typically, a
disciplinary committee reviews prisoner
complaints and charges against prisoners,
conducts hearings, and makes
determinations of guilt and punishment. Of
course, a great deal of the daily negotiation
for control goes on all the time in informal
ways that are dictated by the relationships
and culture inside the institution.

p.148

SPOTLIGHT

PRISON SEX CULTURE

The National Institute of Corrections
(NIC) was assigned the responsibility
of assisting the corrections field in
addressing the problem of prison
sexual violence as part of the Prison
Rape Elimination Act of 2003. One
element in that effort was a series of
focus groups and interviews with staff
from 12 facilities across the nation to
increase knowledge about the
realities of sexual culture in prisons
and jails from the perspective of those
who work closely with inmates.

The NIC conducted these interviews
and produced three volumes of results
from the research in partnership with
the Moss Group, a Washington, D.C.–
based consulting firm. The first
volume focused on preventing and
responding to sexual assaults in adult
prisons and jails; the second, on
investigating sexual assault; and the
third, on sexual violence in women’s
prisons and jails. These three
documents provide a unique and in-
depth look at the staff point of view
on the subject of sexual behavior
among prisoners and between staff

and prisoners.1

According to the reports, the majority
of staff recognized the gravity of the
issue of sexual misconduct and abuse;
they believed that preventing it is an
important part of their job. Staff
generally believed that incidents were
infrequent, although they conceded
that they are difficult to count. Even
without having direct or firsthand
knowledge, and even if the victim
doesn’t come forward, staff had a
sense of when “something was wrong.”
Staff developed a sense of who in the
institution is likely to be vulnerable or
likely to be predatory; they contended
that smaller, younger, or more
effeminate individuals are more likely
to be victimized. Staff recognized
what is referred to as the “grooming
process” (cultivating a sexual
relationship) or “protective pairing”
(seeking shelter from a stronger, more
experienced inmate as a benefit of a
sexual relationship). Because of the
deprivations of prison and jail, both
women and men may engage in
situational same-sex behavior. Others
of their fellow prisoners may be
offended by same-sex physical
contact.

One of the main challenges cited by
staff was being able to distinguish
coerced sex from consensual sex.
Though sexual relationships among
prisoners are against the rules, they

may not constitute a law violation.
The difficulty in getting to the truth
about an incident has to do with a
number of factors, including inmates
being reluctant to tell because of the
risk of retaliation for “snitching,”
stories changing from one period of
questioning to the next, or a lack of
evidence. Also, falsely accusing a
person of sexual misconduct or worse
—whether it is alleged against a staff
member or another inmate—can be
used as a strategic weapon by
individuals who have very little power
otherwise. Almost all staff agreed that
all reports of sexual abuse or violence
must be taken seriously and
investigated appropriately, regardless
of who the alleged perpetrator might
be. They also agreed that there can be
no consensual relationship between a
staff member and an inmate; such an
alliance is by definition coercive and

wrong—morally, ethically, and legally.2

p.149

In responding to victimization, it is
difficult for staff to balance their
desire to be compassionate toward
inmates and not wanting to open
themselves up to being manipulated
or accused of wrongdoing. As an
example, staff opinion varied about
whether and when it was appropriate
to give a prisoner a hug.

Particularly in women’s facilities,
sexual violence may tend to be less
common than it is in men’s facilities,
and incarcerated women focus more
on relationships than men do. Staff
observed that many conflicts or
instances of physical violence among
women prisoners stemmed ultimately
from personal intimate relationships.
Many incarcerated women have
histories of abuse and unhealthy ideas
about what constitutes a relationship.
Some women don’t even know that
they have a right to say no. There may
be a great deal of confusion or
misunderstanding of intentions, both
among inmates and between them
and the staff members. And intimacy
—especially inappropriate intimacy—
tends to exacerbate vulnerabilities

and create drama.3

In general, staff admitted to having
inadequate training in detecting
problem situations, responding to
them in a professional manner, and
preventing them from happening in
the future. Some forward-thinking
administrators are making a
concerted effort to thoughtfully
change facility and agency culture and
to foster an environment that is safe
for staff and prisoners alike.

QUESTIONS

1 Discuss ways that custody staff
might be able to balance
compassion and professional
distance.

2 Why might a prisoner not want to
report an incident of sexual
misconduct or abuse?

3 Should staff try to intervene in
prisoner relationships when they
feel someone might be vulnerable
to victimization? If so, how should
they do so?

Notes

1.1. National Institute of Corrections
and the Moss Group 2006, 2007,
2009

2.2. National Institute of Corrections
and the Moss Group 2006

3.3. National Institute of Corrections
and the Moss Group 2009

Especially for very serious behaviors, every
prison must have a procedure that
incorporates due process elements similar
to what exists on the outside—in effect, a
justice system within a justice system.
Prisoners have a right to receive a
complaint, have a fair hearing, confront
witnesses, have help to prepare for the
hearing, have the decision in writing, and
appeal the decision. The right to counsel

was granted by the court at first, then was

taken away after two years.

The issue of prisoner discipline and prison
oversight tests one of the stickier tensions
inside prison. Espousing a more hands-off
approach, John DiIulio stated that “prison
officials oversee prisoners, and the courts
oversee the prison officials. Courts have
increased bureaucratization—more
reliance on ‘bulky training manuals’ than
the ‘integrity, personality, keen wit,’ and

discretion of the line staff.”40

Until the 1960s, prisoners were generally
thought to have no rights, and the courts
took a hands-off approach to corrections.
The civil rights era helped to create a
climate of change that affected prisoners
as well. The Supreme Court case Cooper v.
Pate recognized prisoners as persons
whose rights are protected by the

Constitution.41 As such, they are allowed
to sue prison officials for such issues as
brutality, deprivation of medical care, or
denial of other basic rights. They can also
challenge the legality of their confinement
through a writ of habeas corpus.
Predictably, prisoner litigation
skyrocketed after the Cooper decision.
The next obstacle for prisoners was
gaining access to legal counsel and the
courts. It was not always the case, but now
most prisons have law libraries, and
prisoners are supposed to have access to
legal counsel. Many prisoners have

pressed charges and succeeded in testing
their rights in court, prompting judges to
take more of an interest in prison oversight
and influence reform measures. Despite
the protections of the court, prisoners are
still at a disadvantage to exert their rights
and may fear retaliation by prison officials.

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p.150

One of the difficulties with prisoner
discipline is its potential for being applied
in a capricious or unjust manner. Some
wardens may make no apology for this.
Others have instituted a more structured
matrix for applying specific punishments
for specific behaviors. In addition, a
department should have prescribed
methods for disciplining prisoners,
procedures for investigation, and
requirements for detailed documentation
of incidents and their consequences.

SUMMARY

Prisons are intended to be the means by
which society carries out its objectives
of punishment, deterrence,
incapacitation, and rehabilitation.
Although there are other ways to
achieve these goals of society, the
United States relies heavily on prisons as
a correctional sanction.

Correctional facilities run by the federal
government are for people who break
federal laws such as those governing
immigration and drug trafficking across

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state borders. Each state operates its

own prison system as well, and over 85%
of prisoners are in state prisons. There
are many regional differences among
state prisons and state criminal law.
Many of these are problematic
differences, with some states
criminalizing the same actions that are
legal in other states—crossing borders,
marijuana possession, gay marriages,
and abortion, among others. Rates of
incarceration serve as the best method
of comparison. There are striking
differences in rates for minorities
compared to Whites, for the wealthy
compared to the poor, and for women
compared to men.

Prisoners are usually classified into risk
levels depending on their histories, their
current offense, and other factors. Their
classification level helps administrators
separate prisoners into groups
according to the degree of supervision
needed to control behavior and
administer services.

Prisons are architecturally varied but
are typified by fortified structures,
armed guards, razor wire,
regimentation, controlled connections
with the outside, and harsh conditions
inside. Prisons are designed to
accommodate a number of security
levels—minimum being the least
fortified for those prisoners who pose

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the lowest threat to public safety and
safety within the facility. Medium
security is more restrictive, and
maximum is even more so. The
supermax exerts the most control and
keeps some prisoners in extreme
isolation. Prison life is fraught with
controversy. There are ongoing tensions
and legal challenges between the
administration of prisons and the rights
of those confined inside.

Prison is used in the United States more
than in any other nation, and the
consequent financial and social costs are
extremely high. Prisons are expensive to
build and to operate. Addressing the
basic needs of prisoners costs the
taxpayers. Again, addressing the
underlying issues that contribute to
criminal offending is also expensive but
may be considered an investment in the
future safety of the community, as
healthier, better educated, less drug-
dependent, more employable former
prisoners have a better chance of
staying out of prison.

Conditions inside of prisons affect the
prisoners and the prison staff as well.
Discipline and maintaining order involve
a complex balance of objectives for
prison administrators. Research can help
identify the ways in which prisons can
operate more efficiently and with better
success in rehabilitation.

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p.151

DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS
1. 1. What are the main objectives and

functions of incarceration?

2. 2. Discuss the U.S. reliance on prison
as the main means of correctional
control. What might be viable
alternatives?

3. 3. How do state correctional systems
compare to the federal system?

4. 4. Discuss comparative rates of
incarceration for males and females
and for different ethnicities and
races.

5. 5. How does prison crowding affect
administrators, guards, and
prisoners?

6. 6. How do immigration laws interact
with prison privatization?

7. 7. Discuss a plausible step-down
strategy for releasing inmates from
supermax facilities.

8. 8. Describe the main intent behind
prisoner classification systems and
discuss the problems
administrators face in implementing
them.

9. 9. What kind of services should
prisons provide to prisoners, and
why?

10.10. How are prisoners and guards

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dependent on one another?

KEY TERMS
Community-based facilities, 127

Consent decree, 128

Contraband, 147

Criminogenic, 138

Cruel and unusual, 121

Disciplinary segregation, 132

Disenfranchisement, 139

Good-time credit, 130

Habeas corpus, 131

Halfway house, 125

Lockdown, 122

Protective custody, 132

Secure confinement, 127

Security level, 129

Supermax, 136

Therapeutic community, 133

NOTES
1. 1. Death Penalty Focus 2013; Radelet

and LaCock 2009

2. 2. Hall 2006

3. 3. Carson and Anderson 2016.

4. 4. World Prison Brief n.d.

5. 5. Wagner and Walsh 2016

6. 6. Carson and Anderson 2016

7. 7. Stephan 2008

8. 8. Federal prisons are managed by the

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Bureau of Prisons and generally
hold individuals awaiting trial,
awaiting sentencing, or serving
sentences for violations of federal
law. These facilities also hold some
individuals awaiting trial or
sentencing by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement or the U.S.
Marshals Service. Sentenced felons
from the District of Columbia also
serve their sentences in federal
prisons.

9. 9. West, Sabol, and Greenman 2010;
Carson and Anderson 2016

10.10. Henrichson and Delaney 2012

11.11. Protalinski 2011

12.12. Carson 2014

13.13. Federal Bureau of Prisons n.d.-d

14.14. Carson and Anderson 2016

15.15. Austin and Hardyman 2004;
Carson 2014

16.16. Lopez 2009

17.17. Mears 2005

18.18. Riveland 1999, 6

19.19. Stephan 2008

20.20. Federal Bureau of Prisons n.d.-a

21.21. Morris 2017, 98

22.22. Haney 2003; Lovell 2008

23.23. Riveland 1999, 7

24.24. Federal Bureau of Prisons 2017

25.25. Federal Bureau of Prisons n.d.-b

26.26. Sterngold 2006

27.27. Stephan 2008

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28.28. Davis et al. 2013

29.29. Adams et al. 1994

30.30. Brewster and Sharp 2002

31.31. Legislative Analyst’s Office 2008

32.32. Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse 2010

p.152

33.33. Stephan 2008

34.34. Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse 2010

35.35. Chari et al. 2016

36.36. Noonan 2016

37.37. Bureau of Justice Statistics 2006

38.38. Ross and Richards 2002

39.39. California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation
2014

40.40. DiIulio 1987, 73

41.41. Cooper v. Pate 1964

DIGITAL
RESOURCES

Sharpen your skills with SAGE edge at

edge.sagepub.com/krisberg2e

SAGE edge for students provides a
personalized approach to help you
accomplish your coursework goals in an

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easy-to-use learning environment. This
site includes mobile-friendly
eFlashcards and web quizzes as well as
web, audio, and video resources and
links to SAGE journal articles.

FOR FURTHER EXPLORATIONFOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
AND APPLICATION, TAKE A LOOKAND APPLICATION, TAKE A LOOK
AT THE INTERACTIVE EBOOK FORAT THE INTERACTIVE EBOOK FOR
THESE PREMIUM RESOURCES:THESE PREMIUM RESOURCES:

Career Video 6.1:Career Video 6.1: Former Drug

Investigator

Feature Video 6.1:Feature Video 6.1: Prison

Culture

Journal Article 6.1:Journal Article 6.1: Prison archi-

tecture and inmate misconduct: A
multilevel assessment

Journal Article 6.2:Journal Article 6.2: Mental

health issues in long-term solitary
and “supermax” confinement

SAGE News Clip 6.1:SAGE News Clip 6.1: HIV-Posi-

tive Inmates in Alabama

SAGE News Clip 6.2:SAGE News Clip 6.2: Attica

Prison Riot

p.153

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PRACTICE
AND

APPLY
WHAT

YOU’VE
LEARNED

edge.sagepub.com/krisberg2e

WANT A BETTER
GRADE ON YOUR NEXT

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TEST?

Head to the study site where
you’ll find:

• eFlashcardseFlashcards to strengthen
your understanding of key
terms.

• Practice quizzesPractice quizzes to test
your comprehension of key
concepts.

• Videos and multimediaVideos and multimedia
contentcontent to enhance your
exploration of key topics

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p.64

4
Ethics and
Corrections

Media Library

CHAPTER 4 Media Library

PREMIUM VIDEOPREMIUM VIDEO

Career VideoCareer Video

Payne career video 4.1: Former Drug
Investigator

SAGE News ClipSAGE News Clip

SAGE News Clip 4.1: Rikers

SAGE News Clip 4.2: New York
Corrections Officer

Feature VideoFeature Video

Schram Personal Perspective video
4.1: Drug Use

Journal ArticleJournal Article

Journal Article: 4.1: Ethics in a
Mountain State County Jail

p.65

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Explain the differences between
ethics and morality

• Describe the different ethical
frameworks

• Analyze why people are motivated to
commit ethical violations

• Identify why corrections workers

might be prone to ethics violations
and how such violations might be
prevented

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Test your knowledge about ethics and
corrections by answering the following
questions. Check your answers on page
390 after reading the chapter.

1. Ethics and morality are the same
thing. (True or false?)

2. What is the difference between
deontological and teleological
approaches to ethics?

3. The ethical formalism framework
includes the belief that there is a
universal law that includes clear
rights and wrongs. (True or false?)

4. Utilitarianism follows the principle
that what is good is that which results
in the greatest utility for the greatest
number. (True or false?)

5. Most religions include a universal set
of rights and wrongs. (True or false?)

6. Noble cause corruption is the idea
that it is okay to do the wrong thing if
it is for the right reasons. (True or
false?)

7. A correctional officer who engages in
unethical behavior for personal gain
is practicing official deviance. (True
or false?)

8. There are characteristics of
correctional work that make it more
susceptible to ethical violations. (True
or false?)

A NOVICE BOWS TO
SUBCULTURAL
PRESSURE
Mary K. Stohr

When I first started as a correctional
officer at an adult male prison in
Washington State, I was the second
woman hired (and the first was hired a
month before me). I was relatively well
educated (two bachelor’s degrees) and
had worked at all kinds of jobs since
age 10 but never in corrections. I was
young (25), scared, and naïve. My first
reports were rejected by my sergeant as
too wordy, and I was thought to be too
soft on the inmates. (I called the
inmates Mr. this and Mr. that and
treated them with courtesy.) After about
4 weeks on the job, and in an effort to
help me, a well-meaning sergeant took
me aside and said, “Stohr, I’m worried

about you. I’m not sure you can do this
job. You’ve got to learn to write better
[meaning less and in a more sparse
fashion—he might as well have said,
‘Just the facts, ma’am’], and you’ve got
to treat the

inmates with less respect, or you aren’t
going to make it on this job.”

We were in a back area of the control
room, and he pointed to an inmate at the
control room window—we’ll call him
Mr. Smith. He said, “That man Smith,
he’s a dirty baby raper [which I took to
mean that Smith was a child molester].
He’s been hanging around the window
when you’re here because you are too
nice to him. You’ve got to treat him
differently, or he’ll take advantage of
you.” Essentially, he said that you don’t
have to be mean (he wasn’t that kind of
man), but you shouldn’t be friendly
either.

Well, I took this sergeant’s advice to
heart because I knew he was trying to
help me and there were a few of the
staff at the prison who wanted to see me
and the other woman fail. I also paid
attention to his advice because he was
well respected and had welcomed me to
the job. (He was an uncle of the first
woman hired.) I diligently studied the
reports of other officers and tried to
imitate them. As a result, my reports

were suddenly accepted. But the thing I
did that was small, and that I regret, was
that I treated Mr. Smith with less
respect than he probably deserved; not
that he wasn’t a child molester (I read
his file when I became a counselor and
had access to it), but he was still a
human being, he was in my care, and
how I acted was not professional. The
next time Mr. Smith came to the
window for his meds, I did not meet his
eyes; he became Smith without the Mr.,
and I was quite abrupt with him. This
kind of behavior characterized most of
our interactions from then on. The
sympathetic sergeant witnessed this and
literally patted my back and said,
“Stohr, you’ll be all right,” and that was
it; I was accepted into the subculture, at
least by him, but I wasn’t entirely happy
about it or proud of myself.

p.66

INTRODUCTION: TO DO THE
RIGHT THING!

As you likely gathered from Chapters 2 and 3
on the history of corrections, ethical abuses
have always been a problem for corrections
workers. Their jobs are largely hidden from
public view, somewhat cloaked in secrecy,
with enormous amounts of discretion, and
they deal with people in their care who have

few rights and protections. Moreover, as we
will discuss throughout this book, these are
jobs (e.g., correctional officers, sergeants,
lieutenants, and captains; probation and parole
officers; correctional counselors) that do not
always have professional status in terms of
pay, training, experience, or educational
requirements (these problems all are
particularly true for correctional officers, less
so for the other positions listed here), which
would ensure that the best people are always
hired and that they use their discretion wisely.
Therefore, unqualified people are sometimes
in these demanding correctional jobs, and
because of this they are more likely to make
bad and sometimes unethical choices.

It cannot be overemphasized, however, that
the vast majority of correctional staff, whether
a correctional officer working in an adult
facility or a probation officer working with
youths in the community, are ethical in their
work practices, meaning that they do the right
thing. It is those few bad apples who leave a
negative impression of corrections work and
workers. Luckily, there are things an
organization and its managers and workers
can do to minimize abuse of power and
resources by staff and to correct the
misbehavior of some staff. The development
of codes of ethics, the professionalization of
staff, and the routinization of policies and
procedures all are key to preventing ethical
abuses. In this chapter, we review those
efforts to reduce corruption and abuses in
corrections that might be both unethical and

illegal (see In Focus 4.1), but first we discuss
what ethics is and is not and the source of
ethical and unethical behavior.

DEFINING ETHICS: WHAT IS RIGHT
(AND WRONG)?

As mentioned in the foregoing, ethics is the
study of what is right and wrong, and to be
ethical is to practice in your work what is
“right” behavior. But you might ask (rightly!),
“What is right behavior?” In a larger sense it
is what is legal (what the law is), and in an
organizational sense it is what is legal, too,
but also what is allowed and not allowed
according to codes of ethics and policies and
procedures of that workplace. So a person
could sexually harass others in the workplace
(e.g., make negative comments about them or
undermine their work because of their
gender), but this behavior, although unethical
and perhaps prohibited by the workplace code
of ethics and policies and procedures, might
not rise to the level of illegal behavior.

Morality, we should note, is not the same as
ethics because it concerns what is right or
wrong in the personal sphere, whereas ethics
is concerned with the professional sphere.
People tend to base their beliefs about what is
right or wrong, ethical or unethical, and moral
or immoral on what they have learned from
any number of sources. For instance, it is not
difficult to figure out what is the right thing to
do in the case of the death of Jason Echevarria
(as showcased in the In Focus 4.2 box)

because what we have learned from our
family, schools, religious teachings,
workplace policies, and other sources has
helped us to determine our own sense of right
and wrong in such instances.

p.67

IN FOCUS 4.1

A Lack of Ethics: Florida’s YSI
Private Prisons for Youths

In Florida, all of the juvenile prisons in
the state are operated by private
companies, and Youth Services
International (YSI), a for-profit
company owned by former hotelier
James F. Slattery, operates about 9% of
them (Kirkham, 2013, p. 1). YSI also
operates detention centers and boot
camps. Slattery’s company has been
able to secure these contracts and many
others in other states such as Georgia,
Maryland, Nevada, New York, and
Texas, worth more than $100 million in
the Florida contracts alone, despite the
fact that the Department of Justice has
investigated complaints about them in
several of these states. Auditors in
Maryland found that YSI workers have
encouraged fighting between inmates,
and staff reportedly routinely fail to
report “riots, assaults and claims of
sexual abuse” (Kirkham, 2013, p. 2). A

Bureau of Justice Statistics report
indicated that a YSI facility in Palm
Beach, Florida, had the “highest rate of
reported sexual assaults out of 36
facilities reviewed in Florida”
(Kirkham, 2013, p. 2). YSI had only 9%
of the state contracts for youth beds in
the state of Florida, but it had 15% of
the cases of excessive force and injured
youth (Kirkham, 2013, p. 8). Local
public defender offices and the Southern
Poverty Law Center have complained
about the handling of youths and
conditions at YSI facilities, with little
response from the state. In an
investigation by a Huffington Post
reporter, where official records were
reviewed and former employees were
interviewed, Kirkham (2013) found the
following:

• Staff underreported fights and
assaults to avoid scrutiny and the
possible loss of contracts.

• Staff abused youths in the facilities
by hitting and choking them,
sometimes to the point of fracturing
bones.

• Turnover of staff was high.

• Food was restricted and prepared
incorrectly or in an unsanitary
manner, and youths were
encouraged to gamble with others to
win their food portions.

When the reporter asked why, with this
dismal record of care, YSI was
continually offered contracts, the
answer he received from those
concerned about the treatment of
juveniles both inside and outside the
state of Florida was that YSI supported
the political campaigns of Florida’s and
other states’ politicians with hefty
donations. The company has donated
more to politicians in Florida than two
of the largest companies in the state,

donating more than $400,000 to
state candidates and committees
over the last 15 years, according to
the HuffPost’s review. The
recipient of the largest share of
those dollars was the Florida
Republican Party, which took in
more than $276,000 in that time.
Former Florida Senate President
Mike Haridopolos, an avid
supporter of prison privatization,
received more than $15,000 from
company executives during state
and federal races. (Kirkham, 2013,
p. 6)

According to sources cited in the article
(Kirkham, 2013), margins are narrow in
the operation of correctional facilities
(i.e., there is not a lot of “fat” in
publicly operated prisons or jails), so if
private prison companies want to make
money for their owners and investors, it

means that they need to cut staff pay or
benefits, slash programming, or feed
people less, and it appears that all three
of these things are happening at YSI
facilities, indicating unethical (if not
illegal) behavior by politicians,
company managers, and correctional
officers on the line.

Discussion Questions

1. Based on the above narrative, what
factors led to the abuses reported in
the YSI facilities?

2. What steps can be taken to reduce
the incidence of such abuses in like
facilities?

3. How is staffing tied up in the nature
and amount of the abuse?

p.68

ETHICAL FOUNDATION FOR
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

It is not clear how much of an ethical
foundation most humans are born with,
although it is clear that several institutions try
to instill one in their members. The family is
likely the most influential social institution to
inculcate ethics and morality. Educational
institutions, both K–12 schools and colleges,

all in some way or another—and usually in
many ways—discuss what is right and wrong
in many different situations. Diverse religions
all convey a sense of right and wrong, and a
key concept emanating from many of them is
the golden rule, or “do unto others as you
would have them do unto you.” Other
institutions—such as the military, social and
professional clubs, even kids’ sports teams,
and of course the work environment itself—
all strive to instill a moral or ethical
framework in their members. The larger
culture and life experiences doubtless also
contribute to one’s sense of right and wrong.

Much of the research on ethics also reviews
the theoretical bases for decisions involving
ethics (Braswell, McCarthy, & McCarthy,
1991; Pollock, 1994, 1998, 2010; Rohr, 1989;
R. Solomon, 1996). The philosophical
touchstones that are referenced as guides to
human decision making are ethical formalism,
utilitarianism, religion, natural law, the ethics
of virtue, the ethics of care, and egoism.

Moral behavior is shaped by both
deontological and teleological ethical systems,
and these touchstones are subsets of them.
Deontological ethical systems are
concerned with whether the act itself is good,
and teleological ethical systems are
focused on the consequences of the act. If the
act itself is moral or ethical, then someone
who is guided by a deontological framework
is not concerned about the consequences of
the act. It is enough to just act in a moral

PHOTO 4.1: A correctional officer
opens a gate for an inmate. The security
of an institution relies on the vigilance of
officers’ closing and locking gates.

fashion. Someone who is guided by a
teleological ethical system does not care so
much about the rightness or wrongness of the
act but instead cares about whether the
consequences of the act are good. Pollock
(1998, 2010) defined the ethical frameworks
that derive from these ethical systems in her
book Ethics in Crime and Justice: Dilemmas
and Decisions.

ETHICAL FORMALISM

Pollock (1998) defined ethical formalism
as “what is good is that which conforms to the
categorical imperative” (p. 48). Under this
system, there is the belief that there is a
universal law that includes clear rights and
wrongs. The philosopher Immanuel Kant
(1774–1804) noted that there is a categorical

United States Geological Survey

imperative requiring that each person act as he
or she would like all others to act (very much
like the golden rule mentioned in the
foregoing). Kant also believed that people
must seek to be guided by reason in their
decision making. Ethical formalism falls
under a deontological system because the
focus is on the act and its rightness (or
wrongness) rather than on the consequences
of the act and their goodness (or badness). It is
a position that does not account for gray areas;
an act is either right or wrong. So some acts,
such as murder, lying, and stealing, are always
wrong even when the end of these acts is
good.

p.69

IN FOCUS 4.2

Mentally Ill Inmate Dies at
Rikers

PHOTO 4.2: An aerial view of the
Rikers Island jail complex.

In a series of articles appearing in the
New York Times, reporter Michael
Schwirtz documented the abuse and
neglect suffered by mentally ill inmates
incarcerated in the Rikers Island jails
(Schwirtz, 2014a, 2014b). Rikers Island
jails are a complex of 10 jails on an
island in the East River of New York
City. Since 2009, 20 officers from
Rikers have been prosecuted for assaults
on inmates. In mid-March 2014, a
mentally ill inmate died from being left
in an overheated cell at Rikers. But the
particular subject of these articles was a
25-year-old inmate named Jason
Echevarria, who was diagnosed with
bipolar disorder. He was placed in a
special mental health unit at Rikers
because of his diagnosed mental illness
and because he had behavioral problems
when in the general population of the
jail. He had a record of attempted
suicides while incarcerated at Rikers
(Schwirtz, 2014a, 2014b).

SAGE News Clip

SAGE News Clip 4.1: Rikers

Because there were problems with raw
sewage coming out of toilets, on August
18, 2012, inmates were given a packet
of powdered detergent that they were to
use to clean up their cells (Schwirtz,
2014a, 2014b). By policy, inmates were
supposed to be given detergent that was
diluted by several gallons of water, but
an inexperienced officer instead gave
the full packets to inmates. Echevarria
swallowed the toxic detergent, and as a
result his tongue and mouth skin were
severely damaged as he vomited; he
experienced extreme pain and expelled
blood from his mouth over the course of
several hours. A correctional officer
claimed that he responded to Mr.
Echevarria’s cries for help by reporting
his health problems to his captain, who
told the correctional officer not to talk to
him about this again unless the inmate
was dead. Despite this warning, the
correctional officer claimed that he
reported to the captain twice more about
the inmate’s distress and even tried to
call for medical assistance at least once
but was prevented from doing so by the
captain. Both the captain and the officer
came off their shifts without getting any
medical assistance for the inmate.
Echevarria was dead the next morning.

The captain was demoted to an officer
position, was arrested by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and was
prosecuted for violating the civil rights
of Echevarria. The officer was fired and
filed a wrongful termination suit,
disputing the captain’s claim that he was
never told about Echevarria’s health
crisis.

An independent commission studying
Rikers Island recommended on April 2,
2017, that it be shut down over a period
of 10 years (Corasanti, 2017). New
York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was
supportive of this plan, as was the city
council and the state governor. The hope
is to reduce incarceration of those
accused of low-level offenses in the jail
(thus halving the city jail population)
and then to construct five small jails in
each of the five boroughs of the city.

Discussion Questions

1. Why aren’t correctional facilities
well suited to handle the mentally
ill?

2. Instead of incarcerating the mentally
ill, what should public policy be
instead?

3. What advantages and disadvantages
are there to shuttering Rikers Island?

PHOTO 4.3: An elaborate cathedral

p.70

UTILITARIANISM

Utilitarianism is defined as “what is good is
that which results in the greatest utility for the
greatest number” (Pollock, 1998, p. 48). So
morality is determined by how many people
were helped by the act. The philosopher
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) believed that
people will do a “utilitarian calculus”
regarding how much pleasure or pain a given
act will garner, and they will act on that to
maximize pleasure. But when one’s pleasure
conflicts with the greater good for society,
then one must bow to the greater good under a
utilitarian perspective. Because utilitarianism
is focused on the end—whether it is moral or
immoral or is ethical or unethical—achieved
by an act, it falls under the teleological
system.

RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE

front, symbolic of the wealth and artistry
devoted to religious practice over the
centuries.

People who employ a religious
perspective to guide their decisions believe
that “what is good is that which conforms to
God’s will” (Pollock, 1998, p. 48). This is a
perspective that weighs what is right or wrong
based on one’s religion and covers all facets
of living and relationships with others. How
one treats others, how one lives his or her life,
and one’s understanding of the meaning of life
itself all are influenced by this religious
perspective. Under this perspective, both the
means and ends are foci of interest and are
perceived through the lens of what one
believes his or her god or gods would want.
Most religions include a universal set of rights
and wrongs, much like ethical formalism, and
they have, as mentioned already, a form of the
categorical imperative or the golden rule.
Although there is widespread agreement
across religions on some matters, there is
much disagreement about social practices
such as drinking alcohol, dancing, certain
kinds of foods, behavior on holy days, how
appropriate clothing is, and the political and
social status of women and other minorities
such as members of LGBTI (lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, and intersex)
communities.

NATURAL LAW

Adherents of an ethical framework based on
natural law believe that “what is good is
that which is natural” (Pollock, 1998, p. 48).
Behavior is or should be motivated by what is
universally understood to be right and wrong.
Using reason, all humans can figure out these
rights and wrongs. The major difference
between a natural law believer and someone
who is guided by a religious perspective is
that in the latter case the supreme being(s) is
the one who determines what is right and
wrong, whereas under a natural law
perspective these rights and wrongs are just
clear and knowable through reason. Under
this perspective, we know what truth and
decency are, and so we just need to act on our
natural inclination in that direction. These
natural laws about what is right and wrong are
believed to be cross-cultural and true over
time; they are not relative to time or place.
Moreover, out of these natural laws flow
natural rights such as those accorded to
citizens under the Constitution of the United
States.

p.71

ETHICS OF VIRTUE

Believers in the ethics of virtue think that
“what is good is that which conforms to the
golden mean [the middle ground between
positions]” (Pollock, 1998, p. 48). Instead of
focusing on the nature of an action, the
question here is whether the person is virtuous
or good. The end to be achieved is to live a

good and moral life by performing virtuous
acts. Such virtues include “thriftiness,
temperance, humility, industriousness, and
honesty” (Pollock, 1998, p. 43). Models of
virtue provide examples for those interested in
living with integrity and according to a code
of ethics.

ETHICS OF CARE

Relatedly, an ethics of care is centered on
good acts. It is a deontological perspective.
Those who subscribe to this framework
believe that “what is good is that which meets
the needs of those concerned” (Pollock, 1998,
p. 48). Under this perspective, the care and
concern for others is paramount. This is a
perspective that is regarded as more
“feminine” because it is believed that women,
as a group, are more attuned to the needs of
others. Carol Gilligan found in her research on
moral development that women’s perspective
differs from men’s perspective in this area
(Gilligan, 1982). Women are more likely to be
concerned about the care of others as guiding
how they behave. Peacemaking and
restorative justice are thought to derive from
the ethics-of-care framework.

EGOISM

The last ethical framework that Pollock
(1998) mentioned is one based on the
individual—namely, egoism. Under this
framework, the needs of the self are most
important, so acting to satisfy one’s own

wants and needs under this framework is
acting ethically. Because the act is the focus
here, egoism falls under the deontological
perspective. Even when acting on behalf of
others, it is believed that one is acting out of
enlightened egoism, or helping and caring for
others so they will do the same for you when
you are in need of assistance.

WHY PEOPLE BEHAVE
UNETHICALLY

Despite the influence of these ethical
frameworks, there are several reasons why
people behave unethically. The most obvious,
and perhaps the most common, reason is for
personal gain or out of selfishness. For
instance, the owner of YSI, which manages
private prisons for juveniles in Florida, clearly
benefits financially from cutting staff salaries
and inmate food (this must be unethical,
right?), and not surprisingly the result is
poorly operated and, at times, dangerous
facilities (see In Focus 4.1). If the captain
supervising the Rikers Island jail mental
health unit when Echevarria died did what he
is accused of doing—ignoring the desperate
health needs of an inmate—then he behaved
both criminally and unethically for selfish
reasons; he did not want to be bothered (see In
Focus 4.2 box). The remedy for such a
motivation is multifaceted and is discussed
momentarily.

SAGE News Clip
SAGE News Clip 4.2: New York
Corrections Officer

OFFICIAL DEVIANCE

Another reason people in corrections might
behave unethically is official deviance.
Official deviance was defined by Lee and
Visano (1994) as

p.72

actions taken by officials which violate
the law and/or the formal rules of the
organization, but which are clearly
oriented toward the needs and goals of
the organization, as perceived by the
official, and thus fulfill certain informal
rules of the organization. (p. 203)

ETHICAL ISSUE

What Would You
Do?

You are a new manager (2 weeks on the
job) of a public correctional institution
(jail) that has experienced several ethical
crises during the last year. Your jail has
been sued twice successfully during the
last year for overcrowding and neglect of
the mental health needs of inmates. You
were hired to “clean up” the ethical
environment of the facility, although you
already recognize that the staff subculture
in the jail is intransigent and resistant to
change. What steps would you take to
transform this jail to accomplish the
desired change? What resistance do you
expect to encounter, and how do you
think it can be overcome?

Lee and Visano (1994) studied officials’
behavior in both the United States and
Canada, and they found that many deviant
acts by criminal justice actors are not
committed for personal gain but rather are
committed to help the organization or to be in
compliance with subcultural goals. If the
subculture values secrecy and protection of
fellow officers, as is true for subcultures in
corrections, then one might be called on to lie,
even on the witness stand and under oath, to
protect an officer when he or she is charged
with wrongdoing (Stohr & Collins, 2014). The
important point here is that the organizational
member who lies or engages in other acts of
official deviance gains nothing from engaging
in the deviance; it is the organization or other

organizational members who benefit. The
penalty for organizational members who
refuse to engage in official deviance might be
shunning, harassment, or even firing for
unsubstantiated reasons. The remedies to
reduce official deviance are noted in the
following (after the discussion of noble cause
corruption).

NOBLE CAUSE CORRUPTION

A third reason why criminal justice workers
and corrections workers, in particular, might
engage in unethical behavior might be that
they are motivated by noble cause corruption.
Crank and Caldero (2000) defined the noble
cause for police officers as a

profound moral commitment to make the
world a safer place to live. Put simply, it
is getting bad guys off the street. Police
believe they’re on the side of angels and
their purpose in life is getting rid of bad
guys. (p. 35)

Crank and Caldero (2000) identified two
noble cause themes that explain police officer
behavior: “the smell of the victim’s blood”
and “the tower” (p. 35). What they mean by
the smell of the victim’s blood is that police
officers are motivated to act to protect and
save victims. But in the course of trying to
protect victims, they may step over an ethical
line and lie, plant evidence, or abuse force so
as to catch the “bad guy” by whatever means.
And it is always the ends (e.g., catching the

“bad guy”) that are more important than the
means (e.g., acting professionally and
ethically) with noble cause corruption.

What Crank and Caldero (2000) meant by
“the tower” is that police officers, when
confronted with a shooter in a tower, will run
to the tower (they will act in the face of
danger) when everyone else is running from
it. Because they are inclined to run to the
tower—metaphorically at least—and also
because their job requires that they act in
dangerous situations, they may cross the
ethical and legal line by overreacting or
making rash decisions. They will “run to the
tower” because they want to make things
right. Crank and Caldero (2011) and others
(e.g., Bartollas & Hahn, 1999; O’Connor,
2001) think that the police are motivated by
their desire to make the world right. They tend
to see the world in black and white, and when
a suspect interferes with this perception the
police might engage in unethical behavior
because it is inspired by acting in the cause of
“rightness.” The problem is that the police are
not always right, and they cannot always see
what is right (as with all of us).

p.73

Noble cause corruption, as an explanation for
unethical behavior by corrections workers,
makes a great deal of sense. One of the
authors, when working in a male prison as an
officer many years ago, was told right away
which inmates were in for “child molesting,”

PHOTO 4.4: Correctional staff confer in
the yard next to a housing unit at the
Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran,
California. Effective and honest
communication between officers is a key
component of correctional institutions.

although this information was supposedly
confidential between the counselors and their
clients (see the related story that appears at the
beginning of this chapter). It was boldly stated
that such inmates were not to be treated with
respect by staff and were to be regarded with
an additional dose of suspicion. Interactions
with other correctional professionals over the
years, in all kinds of correctional settings,
reinforced this experience that correctional
staff are motivated in their actions by “the

victim’s blood,” especially when that victim is
a child.

People who are attracted to work in
corrections are also doers and people who
want to make the world right. They will not
hesitate to “run to the tower” to accomplish
this feat either. The authors know of several
stories of officers in federal prisons, state
prisons, and jails who were thrilled to be
called to engage in the quelling of altercations
in corrections. These are stories of
correctional staff who enthusiastically “ran to
the tower” to “make the world right,” but in at
least a few of these cases those officers
admitted that more force by staff was used to
stop fights and put down disturbances than
was strictly necessary. Once the fists started
flying, the adrenaline took over and the sense
that force was being used to do good made its
use, even its excessive use, justified.

Noble cause corruption, as with official
deviance and deviance for selfish ends, is all
the more likely to occur in environments
where the behavior of actors is hidden and
little supervised and the clients are powerless.
These factors all accurately describe
correctional environments. Most correctional
work is done in some isolation from the larger
community, and this is particularly true of
prisons and jails. Even community
correctional officers operate in environments
where the interactions are personal and their
content is not documented. Supervisors’ span
of control is stretched, and they don’t always

have adequate time to review an individual
actor’s behavior. Correctional clients are some
of the most powerless people in the United
States. By law, they have very few rights and
legal protections, and thus they are subject to
the behavior of both ethical and unethical
correctional personnel. Top all of these
organizational and individual characteristics
off with the fact that correctional staff have a
great deal of discretion (defined here as the
ability to make choices and to act or not act on
those choices), and there is only one more
ingredient necessary to make the perfect
admixture for unethical behavior: the
influence of a negative subculture.

SUBCULTURE

In fact, a key feature of correctional
environments that would make staff and
management more prone to engage in
unethical behavior is the presence of a strong
negative subculture. Subcultures are subsets
of larger cultures with their own norms,
values, beliefs, traditions, and history. They
can be positive in their promotion of prosocial
values and support of their members, but they
can also be negative when they promote
antisocial values and, in correctional work
(and police work), unethical behavior. In an
ethics training course conducted by one of the
authors and a colleague for probation and
parole managers, the participants identified
several barriers to ethical practice in their
workplaces. Kauffman (1988, pp. 85–112)
identified most of these barriers in his study of

correctional officers, and Pollock (1994, p.
195) did so in her text on ethics and the
negative side of subcultures (see In Focus
4.2).

JOURNAL ARTICLE
Journal Article: 4.1: Ethics in a
Mountain State County Jail
CLICK TO SHOW

p.74

IN FOCUS 4.3

Subcultural Values of
Probation and Parole
Officers

In ethics training exercises in 1994 and
1995, probation and parole managers in
a western state identified the subcultural
values of the community corrections
officers they supervised (Stohr &
Collins, 2009). They were as follows:

1. Always aid your coworker.
2. Never rat on coworkers.
3. Always cover for a coworker in

front of clients.
4. Always support the coworker over

the client in a disagreement.
5. Always support the decision of a

coworker regarding a client.
6. Don’t be sympathetic toward

clients. Instead be cynical about
them (to be otherwise is to be
naïve).

7. Probation/parole officers are the
“us,” and everyone else is the
“them,” including administration,
the media, and the rest of the
community.

8. Help your coworkers by
completing your own work and by
assisting them if they need it.

9. Since you aren’t paid much or
appreciated by the public or the
administration, don’t be a rate
buster (i.e., don’t do more than the
minimal amount of work).

10. Handle your own work and don’t
allow interference. (p. 63)

Discussion Questions

1. Which of these subcultural values
do you think makes the workplace
better for staff but can lead to
unethical behavior?

2. How might correctional managers
and workers concerned about
unethical behavior in the workplace
prevent some of the most destructive
of these values from being embraced
in the workplace?

Source: Criminal justice management:

Theory and practice in justice-centered

organizations, by Stohr and Collins (2009, p.

63). By permission of Oxford University

Press, USA.

HOW TO PREVENT UNETHICAL
BEHAVIOR AND PROMOTE ETHICAL
WORK PRACTICES

As you can see, a few of these subcultural
values are positive in that they provide
support of coworkers, but the ones that
support coworkers even if they are wrong or
engaged in wrongdoing vis-à-vis their clients
or the work, are negative and promote an
unethical work environment. Most of the
managers at that ethics training session
reported that unethical behavior was common
on the job and ranged from the routine, such
as rudeness to clients and their families, to the
rare, such as lying on reports and verbally and
physically abusing clients. The subcultural
values listed before, however, made it difficult
for managers to address the unethical
behaviors.

p.75

This is why the organizational and individual
remedies to prevent unethical behavior,
whatever its motivation and in spite of the
subculture, are multifaceted and include at
least these:

1. Hire people who are less likely to be
motivated by personal gain. To do this,

correctional organizations need a well-
developed selection process with
extensive background checks on
potential hires (Stohr & Collins, 2014).

2. Pay people a professional wage because
then they will be less likely to be tempted
to engage in unethical behavior for
personal gain.

3. Encourage professional development of
employees through further education,
training, and engagement in professional
organizations because employees who
are immersed in a professional and
learning subculture are more likely to
encourage positive change in others and
improve the workplace, and they may be
less likely to be tolerant of a workplace
subculture that fosters unethical
behavior.

4. Develop an ethics code with employee
input and review it regularly in the
department. By involving a cross section
of staff in the development of an ethics
code, more staff are likely to feel like
they “own it” and therefore support it.

5. Require extensive training in ethics at
the beginning of employment and
throughout employees’ careers. More and
ongoing training will reinforce the need
to behave ethically, and it will undercut
negative subcultural influences.

6. Supervise people sufficiently and check
up on what they are doing and how they
are doing it.

7. Provide support for positive changes in

Mikael Karlsson/Alamy Stock Photo

PHOTO 4.5: Corrections officer
interacting positively with inmates.

the workplace that will enhance the
ability of workers to do the job right.
Sometimes, staff will claim that they
cannot act ethically because there are not
enough resources (e.g., time, staff) to do
so; by ensuring that there are enough
resources—and this is hard to do in the
public sector these days—managers
make it possible for employees to do the
work the right and ethical way.

8. Discipline violators of ethics, and if the
violations of the rules or laws are serious
enough, fire them. Doing this will
reinforce a positive subculture that is
supportive of ethical work practice.

9. Promote those who behave ethically, and
include ethics-related measures in
evaluations. By doing this, managers will
motivate all to support ethical practice.

10. Encourage whistleblowing (the reporting
of wrongdoing or problems in the
workplace), and make it possible for
people to do so anonymously. Despite an
ethical manager and workers’ best
efforts, there is sometimes illegal or
unethical behavior going on in the
workplace, and because of the power of
subcultures, correctional workers need to
be able to report this behavior without
fear of reprisal.

11. Develop the means for all employees to
provide input into the decisions that are
made by and for the organization because
doing so is more likely to be a check on
management; uses the knowledge
workers have; instills ownership of the
work by those who do it; and leads to
greater job satisfaction, less turnover, and
more commitment to the job (Stohr &
Collins, 2014).

p.76

IN FOCUS 4.4

The Abuse of Solitary
Confinement in Florida

In March 2016, the Florida American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a
letter to the U.S. Department of
Justice’s Civil Rights Division
requesting a federal investigation into
the overuse of solitary confinement

(also known as restricted housing and
isolation) by the Florida Department of
Corrections (Simon & Wetstein, 2016).
The ACLU noted that fully one in eight
inmates in Florida prisons was held in
solitary confinement. It also found that
the numbers revealed a potential racial
bias for male and female inmates and
those diagnosed with a mental illness in
Florida prisons given that African
Americans were overrepresented among
those in solitary when compared with
the number of blacks in the general
population. It also found that about 23%
of those with a mental illness in Florida
prisons were kept in solitary
confinement. Notably, much of this
information was obtained through
Freedom of Information Act requests,
not provided voluntarily by the Florida
Department of Corrections. Finally, the
ACLU detailed a number of cases, from
several prisons, where mentally ill and
other inmates placed in solitary died
because of neglect or outright torture by
correctional staff. Some of those cases
from the ACLU letter (Simon &
Wetstein, 2016) are summarized here:

Randall Jordan-Aparo died in
2010 “after being gassed three
times while in a solitary
confinement cell” (p. 4). He had
been ill and was denied medical
care despite the knowledge that he
had a rare blood disorder.

Rommell Johnson died in 2010
after being gassed twice with
chemical agents within a 5-minute
span of time. He was asthmatic,
and the medical examiner ruled
that he died as a result of the
gassing, which brought on a fatal
asthma attack.

Darren Rainey died in 2012
“when he was tortured in a locked
shower rigged to be controlled by
guards from the outside, with its
water temperature at approximately
180 degrees” (p. 4). Although his
skin was literally falling off of his
bones when he was found in the
shower, the medical examiner ruled
the death “accidental” and no one
had been disciplined or fired as of
March 2016.

Latandra Ellington died in 2014
alone in a solitary confinement
cell, reportedly from heart disease.
Her family claimed she had no
heart problems. “She had been
placed there after she filed a
complaint alleging that Sgt. Patrick
Quercioli had engaged in sex with
another prisoner and threatened to
kill Ellington” (p. 5). The family-
sponsored autopsy found no heart
disease “but found excessive
bruising, and a lethal level of
Amlodipine, a blood pressure
medication, in her system” (p. 5).

Yalex Tirado died in solitary
confinement in 2014 in a prison for
juveniles with no explanation for
his death provided by the facility.
“This is a prison where, as The
Miami Herald has reported, the
sodomizing of inmates with
broomsticks by other inmates has
been common, and where nine
guards have been charged over the
last two years with battery or
facilitating the entry of
contraband” (p. 5).

Discussion Questions

1. How likely do you think it is that
these deaths and the abuse of
solitary are isolated incidents and
not representative of regular practice
in these Florida prisons? What
evidence do you have to support
your argument?

2. If you had witnessed abuses such as
these, what action, if any, would you
have taken to stop them?

3. If staff are found to be guilty in the
deaths of these inmates, what
punishments do you think they
deserve? Do you think that the staff
who witnessed these kinds of abuses
but did not report them should also
be disciplined in some way? Why or
why not?

12. Encourage involvement of outsider
review and professional engagement
(have an oversight board; support
involvement in professional
organizations; and provide access to
researchers, politicians, and the media)
because more openness is more likely to
reduce unethical behavior and defuse the
power of negative subcultures.

p.77

By using these remedies, the correctional
manager and, where applicable, the
correctional worker are more likely to turn the
subculture into a positive support system that
promotes ethical behavior. The remedies are
also likely to increase professionalism and
reduce abuse of clients.

FIGUREFIGURE 4.14.1 Public Views on Drug
Policy in the United States

Source: “America’s New Drug Policy Landscape,”

Pew Research Center, Washington, DC (April, 2014),

http://www.people-

press.org/2014/04/02/americas-new-drug-policy-

landscape/4-2-14-1/

Note: Survey conducted February 14–23, 2014.

Feature Video
Schram Personal Perspective video
4.1: Drug Use

Gordon M. Grant/Alamy Stock Photo

PHOTO 4.6: The war on drugs led to
drug seizures like these.

WAR ON DRUGS = ATTACK ON
ETHICS?

Wars are a popular thing for politicians to
wage. Wars on poverty, crime, and drugs were
the brainchildren of several presidents and
carried on by others since the 1960s. The
terminology of war is powerful and connotes
a level of serious attention to a topic that few
other terms convey. Campaigns, assaults, and
offensives are waged in wars with some
urgency behind them. A war means that all
available resources and attention will be
devoted to that effort, and those who do not
agree—well, they are like traitors to a
righteous cause. Yet these political wars,
somewhat like wars waged with weaponry

made of steel, are problematic because they
are fighting social ills—poverty, crime, and
substance abuse—that, although admittedly
harmful, are somewhat intractable and very
complex and therefore require sustained effort
and multifaceted solutions. Because of the
nature of the problems, wars on them never
seem to end because the problems do not end.
Although the Iraq War seemed to never end
(lasting at least 8 years), consider that the war
on drugs was first mentioned by President
Richard Nixon in 1971 and has been waged
by every president since then. We currently
spend at least $51 billion each year on the war
on drugs in this country, and that does not
account for the millions of people who have
passed through correctional doors as enemy
combatants in the war and the billions of
dollars it has taken to pay for their arrest,
prosecution, and incarceration; nor does it
account for the lost tax revenue and disrupted
families and lives the war has left in its wake
(the collateral damage). Many scholars,
commentators, and even politicians now
consider the war on drugs to be an abject
failure in that it has not reduced the supply or
use of illicit drugs and instead has galvanized
the illegal drug trade and corrupted
government officials in this country, Mexico,
and Central and South Americas (Cullen,
Jonson, & Stohr, 2014). According to the
Drug Policy Alliance (2016, p. 1), an
organization whose mission is to end the war
on drugs, the following outcomes have
resulted from the war on drugs:

Career Video
Payne career video 4.1: Former Drug
Investigator

• Amount spent annually in the United
States on the war on drugs: More than
$51 billion

• Number of people arrested in 2014 in the
United States on nonviolent drug charges:
1.56 million

p.78

• Number of people arrested for a marijuana
law violation in 2014: 700,993

• Number of those charged with marijuana
law violations who were arrested for
possession only: 619,809 (88%)

• Number of Americans incarcerated in
2014 in federal, state, and local prisons
and jails: 2,224,400 or 1 in every 111
adults, the highest incarceration rate in the
world

• Proportion of people incarcerated for a

drug offense in state prison who are black
or Hispanic, although these groups use and
sell drugs at similar rates as whites: 57%

• Number of people killed in Mexico’s drug
war since 2006: 100,000+

• Number of students who have lost federal
financial aid eligibility because of a drug
conviction: 200,000+

• Number of people in the United States
who died from a drug overdose in 2014:
47,055

• The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention found that syringe access
programs lower HIV incidence among
people who inject drugs by 80%. One-
third of all AIDS cases in the United
States have been caused by syringe
sharing: 360,836 people. U.S. federal
government support for syringe access
programs: $0.00, thanks to a federal ban
reinstated by Congress in 2011 that
prohibits any federal assistance for them.

ETHICAL ISSUE

What Would You
Do?

You are a probation officer with a large
caseload of low-level drug offenders
(mostly pot smokers). Some might be
addicted to marijuana, and others might
not, but you need to monitor them and

ensure that they attend programming and
provide clean urinalysis (UA) samples.
The department of corrections you work
for is in transition, however, moving from
a more law enforcement focus to a
greater treatment orientation. The
department has given you and other
officers more leeway in decisions about
whether to violate (write up) offenders
who commit minor offenses. One of the
UAs you take comes up dirty for
marijuana, and you are faced with
“violating” a client on your caseload who
was convicted of felony drug possession
(i.e., there was enough to sell). In all
other ways, this client has done well in
that she has made all the meetings, been
employed, and attended drug
programming. Would you write a
violation on this offender? (Doing so may
result in jail time or a trip to prison.)
Would it make any difference in your
decision making if your client has two
dependent children who will be placed in
foster care should she be incarcerated?
Why or why not? Which ethical
framework do you think best fits the
decision you made?

So the point is that the war on drugs has been
a huge resource suck, which has distracted our
attention from drug treatment and real
prevention, punished addicts,
disproportionately incarcerated minority

group members, and likely cost trillions of
dollars over time. (It has been going on for 46
years at the time of this writing.) More to the
point, it has challenged the ethical behavior of
corrections officials by forcing them to
overincarcerate some relatively minor
offenders who got caught in its net.
Correctional workers in prisons, jails, and
detention centers or working in probation and
parole, and even their managers, have little to
no control over whom they are given to
incarcerate or supervise in communities. But
they are affected by the drug war because
their facilities and caseloads have been
crowded by such offenders, which has made
carrying out their tasks very difficult and
sometimes ethically challenging. They have
been involved in drug monitoring and
treatment to a much greater extent than if the
war had not been waged. They have needed to
supervise people who—compared with
robbers and rapists—do not really merit the
use of incarceration and perhaps even
community supervision. Therefore, we would
add one more remedy to the list that will help
organizations to prevent unethical behavior,
but this remedy must be understood by
policymakers: Consider the likely outcomes
of wars or other grand schemes on the ethics
of the actors or soldiers tasked with carrying
them out, and consider the larger social
impact of waging war on your own citizens.

p.79

SUMMARY

• Ethical work practice is a messy
business, sometimes clear-cut but
often fraught with anxiety. The
nature of corrections work and the
organization’s attendant subcultures
often create situations where ethical
dilemmas are common and their
resolution is difficult. Moreover, the
kinds of people hired in corrections
work, those with a noble cause bent,
are sometimes more susceptible to
engaging in ethical abuses, although
that is not their intent. Thankfully,
there are things that organizations
and individuals can do to prevent
ethical abuses, but they require
some resource commitment and
resolve.

KEY TERMS

Deontological ethical systems, 68

Discretion, 73

Egoism, 71

Ethical formalism, 68

Ethics, 66

Ethics of care, 71

Ethics of virtue, 71

Natural law, 70

Noble cause, 72

Official deviance, 71

Religious perspective, 70

Subculture, 73

Teleological ethical systems, 68

Utilitarianism, 70

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Where do we learn our sense of
right and wrong? Why do you think
that some sources are more
powerful in influencing people than
others?

2. What makes the correctional
workplace more susceptible to
unethical behaviors than most
workplaces? If you were to work in
corrections, how would you make
sure that you always made the
“right decision”?

3. What can organizations do to
prevent noble cause corruption? Do
you think that you are a person who
could be corrupted in this way?

4. Which ethical framework best
describes your feeling about ethics?
Why do you think that this is
applicable to you?

5. Discuss how the drug war has
affected corrections and how it has
threatened the ethical practice of
workers.

Review → Practice → Improve

Sharpen your skills with SAGE edge at
edge.sagepub.com/stohressentials3e.

SAGE edge offers a robust online
environment featuring an impressive
array of free tools and resources for
review, study, and further exploration,
keeping both instructors and students on
the cutting edge of teaching and learning.

FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
AND APPLICATION, TAKE A
LOOK AT THE INTERACTIVE
EBOOK FOR THESE PREMIUM
RESOURCES:

Career Video 4.1 Former Drug
Investigator

Feature Video 4.1 Drug Use

SAGE News Clip 4.1 Rikers

SAGE News Clip 4.2 New York
Corrections Officer

Journal Article 4.1 Ethics in a
Mountain State County Jail

p.108

6
Jails and
Detention
Centers

Media Library

CHAPTER 6 Media Library

PREMIUM VIDEOPREMIUM VIDEO

Career VideoCareer Video

Payne career video 6.1: Professor

SAGE News ClipSAGE News Clip

SAGE News Clip 6.1: Alabama
Prisons and HIV

SAGE News Clip 6.2: Prison Suicide
Amid Hernandez News

Journal ArticleJournal Article

Journal Article: 6.1: Integrated
Primary and Behavioral Health Care in
Patient-Centered Medical Homes for
Jail Releases With Mental Illness.
Criminal Justice and Behavior

p.109

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Describe the origins of jails

• Identify the types of jails in operation

• Explain how jails process individuals

• Assess how jails affect and are
affected by overcrowding, race,
ethnicity, gender, age, and special
needs of their inmates

• Describe the various approaches jails
take to address medical problems of
inmates

• Discuss how jails manage sexual
violence, gangs, and suicides

• Explain the kinds of innovations
happening in jails and how they are
working out

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Test your present knowledge of jails by
answering the following questions as true
or false. Check your answers on page
391 after reading the chapter.

1. Most jails are operated by states.

2. Jails for juveniles are usually
referred to as detention centers.

3. Most inmates of adult jails have been
convicted of crimes.

4. The drug war has disproportionately
affected the number of minorities and
women incarcerated in jails.

5. Jails have become the most likely
social institution to hold the mentally
ill in the United States.

6. Incarcerated women tend to have
fewer medical problems than

incarcerated men.

7. Female staff in jails are more likely
to be the perpetrators of sexual
victimization of male inmates than
are male staff.

A MENTALLY ILL INMATE IN
THE DONA ANA COUNTY
JAIL, NEW MEXICO

Stephen Slevin, 59, was an inmate for
22 months in the Dona Ana County Jail
in Las Cruces, New Mexico (“$15.5
Million Settlement,” 2014, p. 20). He
was first booked into the jail on charges
of driving while intoxicated and
receiving or transferring a stolen vehicle
in August 2005 (a friend had let him
borrow the car to drive across the
country). He had a history of suicide
attempts and mental illness, so the jail
officers in booking placed him in an
empty padded cell for 2 days before he
was assessed by the mental health unit.
He was then eventually sent to solitary
confinement, where he had no contact
with a judge or medical personnel for
the next 18 months. It was noted that on
entering the jail, he had been a well-
nourished and healthy male with a
mental illness. After the 18 months in

solitary confinement and a psychiatric
evaluation, however, he smelled bad,
had overgrown nails and hair, was
malnourished at 133 pounds, and
“complained of paranoia,
hallucinations, bed sores and untreated
dental problems” (“$15.5 Million
Settlement,” 2014, p. 21). Slevin had
pulled out his own infected tooth while
incarcerated because no dental care was
provided to him. A month after this
evaluation, he was again placed in
solitary confinement but was finally
released in June 2007, when the charges
were dismissed. He sued in federal
court, alleging a violation of his civil
rights and false imprisonment, and a
federal jury agreed and awarded him
$22 million. When Dona Ana County
appealed this decision, a federal judge
affirmed the punitive and compensatory
damages in the original award. To avoid
further appeals by the county, however,
Slevin settled with the county and its
insurer for $15 million in 2013 (“$15.5
Million Settlement,” 2014, p. 20).

p.110

INTRODUCTION: THE
COMMUNITY INSTITUTION

The American jail is a derivative of various
modes of holding people for trial that have

existed in Western countries for centuries.
Whether fashioned from caves, mines, or old
houses or as separate buildings, jails were
developed originally as a primary means of
holding the accused for trial, for punishment
(even execution), or in lieu of a fine. As was
noted in Chapter 2, jails were called gaols in
the England of the Middle Ages and were
operated by the shire reeve, or sheriff, and his
minions.

Jails have been in existence much longer than
prisons, and their mission is much more
diverse, especially now. These days, jails are
usually local and community institutions that
hold people who are presumed innocent
before trial; they hold convicted offenders
before they are sentenced; they hold more
minor offenders who are sentenced for terms
that are usually less than a year; they hold
juveniles (usually in their own jails or
separated from adults or before transport to
juvenile facilities); they hold women (usually
separated from men and sometimes in their
own jails); they hold people for the state or
federal authorities (there are some exclusively
federal jails); and, depending on the particular
jail population being served and the capacity
of any given facility, they serve to
incapacitate, deter, rehabilitate, punish, and
reintegrate.

Although described as correctional
afterthoughts by scholars, and despite their
multifaceted and critical role in communities,
jails have often received short shrift in terms

of monetary support and professional regard
(Kerle, 1991, 2003, 2011; Thompson & Mays,
1991; Zupan, 1991). The vast majority of jails
are operated by county sheriffs, whose
primary focus has been law enforcement
rather than corrections. As a result, jail
facilities have often been neglected, resulting
in dilapidated structures, and jail staff have
had less training and pay than probation and
parole officers in communities or correctional
staff working at the state or federal level in
prisons. Jail staff also often receive less pay
and training than deputy sheriffs working in
the same organization (sheriff’s office) as the
jail. Research indicates that many in the
general public may even view jails as more
punitive than prisons (see, e.g., May,
Applegate, Ruddell, & Wood, 2014). The late
comic Rodney Dangerfield’s perennial lament,
“I [They] don’t get no respect,” surely applies
to jails more than perhaps any other social
institution.

PHOTO 6.1: Travis County Jail

In this chapter, we discuss how this forgotten
social institution fulfills a vital community
role, one that includes all of the functions
described in the preceding paragraph as well
as serving as a repository for people who are
only nominally criminal and have nowhere
else to go (e.g., the homeless, the mentally
ill). The role of jails also includes the holding
of some state or federal inmates when prisons
are too full or prior to their transport to prison.
In some larger counties, the holding of longer-
term sentenced inmates or those who have
numerous physical, mental, and substance
abuse problems—not to mention educational
deficits—has led to more programming and
treatment in jails. Part and parcel of this
interest in treatment is the emergence of
community reentry programs, as will also be
discussed in Chapter 10, as a means of
preventing crime and addressing the
multifaceted needs of ex–jail inmates. In this
chapter, these emerging trends are explored,
as are the challenges jails face, but first we
discuss the types of institutions that constitute
jails.

p.111

JAIL TYPES

The typical jail is operated by the sheriff of a
county. However, some cities, states, and the
federal government operate jails, and
sometimes multiple jurisdictions combine

resources to administer a jail that serves a
region. Some counties have hired jail
administrators to oversee the operation of the
jail, taking it out of the hands of the local
sheriff. Jails for adults are sometimes called
detention centers, and jails for juveniles are
almost always referred to as detention centers.
Some American Indian tribes have their own
jails, and many police departments have short-
term lockup facilities to hold suspects or those
accused of crimes. Currently, there are about
2,900 jails in the United States, and 68 jails
are operated by American Indian tribes
(Minton, 2014; Minton & Golinelli, 2014;
Sabol & Minton, 2008). When a state or the
federal government (or another governmental
entity) has inmates for a jail but no facility of
its own in a given vicinity, the entity will
typically ask the county to hold that inmate.
Counties are usually more than willing to do
this because they are paid a fee that often
exceeds the cost of holding inmates, which
makes holding inmates for other jurisdictions
a money-making enterprise.

Most jails are composed of one or two
buildings in close proximity to each other.
They are usually operated somewhat close to
a city or town center except when located on
reservations or at military facilities. Larger
jail jurisdictions (more than 1,000 inmates)
will often operate more than one jail.

Many jails have adopted technological
changes that have greatly enhanced their
ability to supervise and control inmates. The

Getty Images/AFP PHOTO/Jeff Haynes

PHOTO 6.2: A double-bunk jail cell. The
pink interior paint is meant to soothe
detainees.

use of cameras, voice-operated and visual-
check-operated doors by a control center,
electronic fingerprint machines, and even
video arraignments and visiting are
revolutionizing the jail experience. Certainly,
these changes are making the facility more
secure, but they also, in the case of video
visiting, may make it easier to maintain
contact with the outside.

JAIL INMATES AND THEIR
PROCESSING

Jails operate 7 days a week, 24 hours a day,
because crime does not take a holiday. They
hold all kinds of inmates, from the serious
convicted offender awaiting transport to a
state or federal prison to the accused

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitatio
n

misdemeanant who cannot make bail. About
60% of jail inmates have not been convicted
of the crime for which they are being held;
they are awaiting court action (Minton, 2010;
Minton & Golinelli, 2014, p. 1). Jails receive
inmates from local, state, federal, and tribal
police officers. In 2015, they processed 10.9
million inmates (down from a peak of 13.6
million in 2008), with most inmates in and out
within a few days or a week, some within
hours, although others might be held for more
than a year, particularly if they are sentenced
state or federal inmates (Minton, 2010;
Minton & Zeng, 2016, p. 1). Because of their
complicated and diverse role, and as a means
of keeping track of the inmates they are
responsible for holding, jails will often follow
a set procedure that is prescribed by both
tradition and practice.

p.112

PHOTO 6.3: Inmates in the reception
housing area of a California state prison.
Prisons in California, like those in many
states, have suffered from severe
overcrowding during recent decades.

The first part of the typical processing of an
inmate at a county or city jail is the delivery
of the arrestee to the facility by a law
enforcement officer. As is discussed in the
following, many arrestees may be stressed,
upset, mentally disturbed, or intoxicated
and/or drug impaired. In the latter two cases,
the officer may choose to administer a
Breathalyzer and/or blood test at the jail. If
the arrestee is injured, the jail’s booking staff
may require that the arrestee be taken by the
police to the hospital to be checked out before
he or she is admitted to the jail.

If not injured, the arresting officer will fill out
the paperwork for admittance of the arrestee
to the facility. Usually, the arrestee is still with
the officer when this is occurring and often
still in handcuffs. Once the required
paperwork and processing are completed, the
jail will accept the arrestee, search him or her,
and begin its own paperwork for admitting the
arrestee. At this juncture and depending on the
alleged offense, the arrestee may be allowed
to contact family and friends and/or a bail
bondsman. The arrestee might be released
directly into the community if the alleged
offense is minor. However, if the alleged
offense is serious enough, the arrestee will

need to await arraignment by a judge to
determine bail and, during the interim, might
be booked into the jail.

During the booking process, jails will often—
although not always—strip search arrestees
(now inmates), take their property, and issue
clothing and other essentials. If the new
inmate is intoxicated or belligerent, booking
staff may place him or her in a special holding
cell. In the latter case, this might involve a
padded room or a restraint chair. Once the
inmate is sober and calm, he or she is then
classified and moved to a more permanent
housing area in the jail. Larger jails often keep
new inmates in a separate area or cell before
they place them in a general housing unit so
that they can be observed and classified
(based on their alleged offenses, alleged
criminal coconspirators, criminal histories,
gang involvements, health and other needs,
etc.).

TRENDS IN JAIL POPULATIONS

OVERCROWDING

As indicated in other sections of this book,
jails need to deal with the same kinds of
overcrowding issues that have afflicted
prisons. Overcrowding occurs when the
number of inmates exceeds the physical
capacity (i.e., the beds and space) available.
Each year and over the last several decades,
the number of jail beds needed by

jurisdictions has increased, and they have
been filled almost as soon as they have been
built (see Figure 6.1; Minton, 2010).
However, between 2008 and 2009, there was
an unprecedented decrease in jail inmates of
1.1%. As of 2015 (the latest data available at
the time of this writing), on average jails were
operating at nearly 80% of their capacity, and
the highest capacity for the last decade (2000–
2009) was achieved in 2006 and 2007 at 96%
(Minton, 2010, p. 5; Minton & Zeng, 2016, p.
7). Between 2014 and 2015, the amount of
bed space increased (Minton & Zeng, 2016, p.
1). This percentage use of capacity is actually
better than in past years, when jails of the
1980s and 1990s were operating at well over
their rated capacities (Cox & Osterhoff, 1991;
Gilliard & Beck, 1997; Klofas, 1991). In
addition, and notably, even an average of 80%
for 2015 means that half of the jails in the
United States are operating at over that
average.

p.113

Moreover, the percentages of capacity can be
misleading when one considers overcrowding.
Certain sections of jails are designated for
specific types of inmates who cannot or do not
mix well (males and females but also
juveniles, arrestees, inmates with medical
problems, gang members, etc.). The
percentage capacity may indicate that the jail
is not completely full, but any given section
might be overwhelmed with inmates.

FIGUREFIGURE 6.16.1 Inmates in Local Jails,
1980–2015

Source: Minton and Zeng (2016).

Such overcrowding limits the ability of the
jail to fulfill its multifaceted mission; less
programming can be provided, health and
maintenance systems are overtaxed, and staff
are stressed by the increased demands on their
time and the inability to meet all inmate
needs. From the inmates’ perspective, their
health, security, and privacy are more likely to
be threatened when the numbers of inmates in
their living units increase and the amount of
space—and possibly the number of staff—
does not. The jail staff also lose their ability to
effectively classify and sometimes control
inmates; they may be unable to keep the
offenders convicted of serious crimes away
from the presumed innocent unconvicted or
more minor-offending inmates. Judges and
jail managers will struggle over how to keep
the jail population down to acceptable limits,
and as a result even serious offenders may be
let loose into communities as a means of

reducing the crowding. Therefore, although
the “get tough” laws in many states were
passed with the explicit intent of incarcerating
more people for longer times, their actual
unintended effect in some jails may be to
incarcerate serious offenders less (because
there is no room) and all offenders in less safe
and less secure facilities.

Although suits by jail inmates are usually not
successful, some are. Welsh (1995) found, in
his study of lawsuits involving California
jails, that the issue courts gave greatest
credence to was overcrowding. Perhaps this is
because overcrowding is clearly quantifiable
(the rated capacity is clear, and the inmate
count is obvious), but it is likely that it was
regarded as so important by courts because it
can lead to a number of other seemingly
intractable problems such as those just
mentioned.

GENDER, JUVENILES, RACE, AND
ETHNICITY

As indicated from the data supplied in Table
6.1, most jail inmates are adult minority
males, although the number of whites
represents the largest racial grouping of the
men, and the number of whites as a proportion
of the total men has increased markedly,
particularly since 2010. Women comprised
more than 12.2% of jail inmates in 2009, but
that increased to nearly 15.0% by 2014 and
14.3% in 2015, both of which are more than
in 2000 (11.4%) (Minton & Zeng, 2015, p. 4;

Minton & Zeng, 2016, p. 5; see also Figure
6.2). The reason often cited for the overall
increases in incarceration in jails and prisons,
and the increases for women and minorities in
jails and prisons in particular, has been the
prosecution of the drug war since the 1980s
and 1990s. The “get tough” policies, which
have led to longer periods of incarceration in
prisons, have also led to a greater propensity
to catch and keep low-level drug offenders in
jails (Irwin, 2005; Owen, 2005; Welch, 2005;
Whitman, 2003). The focus of arrests in the
drug war has often been on the low-level
sellers, rather than on the buyers or the drug
kingpins, and that has netted more minorities
and women into the system. Mandatory
sentences, juvenile waivers, and sentence
enhancements for certain offenses have
collectively led to longer sentences for most
offenders and backed up the numbers of
offenders in some jails either awaiting transfer
to state or federal prisons or doing their time
in the jails rather than in the overcrowded
prisons.

p.114

PERSPECTIVE FROM A
PRACTITIONER

Brian Cole, County
Corrections Director

Position: Director of the county
department of corrections

Location: Shawnee County Department
of Corrections, Kansas

Education: B.A. in criminal justice and
B.A. in psychology, Washburn
University, 1989

What are the primary duties and
responsibilities of a director of a
county department of
corrections?

Under administrative direction of the
Board of County Commissioners, this
position administers the adult and
juvenile detention programs of Shawnee
County, Kansas; ensures offenders
placed in custody are housed in a safe
and secure manner and that offenders
receive appropriately fair and humane
treatment by staff; monitors the overall
security of the centers and regularly

tours the facilities to ensure the highest
security standards are maintained;
proactively seeks to improve offender
processes to enhance the security and
efficiency of the agency; creates and
expects a staff culture of integrity in the
reporting of misconduct by other staff
and offenders; and visits offender living
units and speaks with offenders to gain
a sense of morale of offenders and to
monitor operations.

This position oversees programs to
ensure compliance with federal, state,
and local laws, regulations, and
accrediting entity standards; plans and
coordinates the annual budget, staffing,
and program needs for the department;
and ensures expenditures are within
budget parameters and proactively seeks
and implements methods by which the
department can save funds.

This position also proactively
recommends changes to the physical
plant that will provide enhanced
efficiency and security; creates future
projections for physical plant
expansion; develops and maintains
positive working relationships with
employees of other county agencies,
other law enforcement agencies,
colleges and universities, and other
agencies and organizations as
appropriate; delegates an appropriate
amount of work to staff to encourage

their professional growth and seeks
opportunities for professional self-
growth; and seeks and completes public
speaking engagements to promote
positive community relations. The
person holding this position is expected
to respond to media requests, as
appropriate, and attend community
functions as a representative of the
department.

What characteristics make a
good director of a county
department of corrections?

• Integrity

• Leadership

• Flexibility

• Initiative

• Sense of humor

• Compassion for staff

• Proactive

• Confidence

• Public speaking skills

• Good written and verbal
communication skills

What is a typical day like for a
director of a county department
of corrections?

A typical day for me would be one that
starts with meeting with staff and

determining the priorities of the day. In
corrections, you never have a “clean
desk.” As one project ends, you always
are starting a new one. On a daily basis,
I speak with my executive team to get a
brief update on projects, personnel,
budget, special-needs inmates, and
physical plant issues. I also meet with
our mental health team leader daily to
review high-risk inmate statuses. Each
day, I spend time researching current
events and legal trends, trying to stay as
proactive as possible to avoid
complacency and litigation. I speak with
inmates on a daily basis and respond to
requests. I spend time meeting with the
public to ensure our agency is meeting
and exceeding citizen expectations, and
I provide feedback to our
commissioners.

What is your advice to someone
either wishing to study or now
studying criminal justice to
become a practitioner in this
career field?

Working in the field of corrections takes
committed people. On a daily basis, you
work with incarcerated individuals who
have made (in some cases) some very
bad life decisions. You have to be one
who can separate emotion from your job
and understand that you are managing
people and managing problems. You
have to have an appreciation for the

environment you are working within.
This is a stressful but very rewarding
job. Corrections can be a career, not just
another job. You make decisions each
day that could mean the life or death of
inmates, staff, and community
members. You cannot take shortcuts.
Learn as much as you can about your
agency, the philosophy, and the culture
that the leader of the organization has
put in place. You have a great
opportunity to help others, work as a
team, and truly better your community.

p.115

What are the biggest challenges
facing corrections?

Mentally Ill Inmates

Jails are becoming community mental
health facilities for the mentally ill.
With this being a trend in some parts of
the country, a citizen has a better chance
of receiving treatment in a jail than in
his or her community. As directors, we
must educate our staff to meet this
challenge. One way is through crisis
intervention team (CIT) training.

It is a fact that some people with mental
illness will end up in jail. In some
instances, this may be the safest and
best option for them. However, inmates
in jail go into crisis, and correctional
staff must be able to handle these

emergency situations. Through CIT
training, our staff has been able to
identify crisis situations, defuse these
situations, communicate with the
inmates in crisis, and—most of the time
—see the incidents to positive
resolutions that do not result in harm to
the inmates or staff. The end result is
officer and inmate safety, and then we
will refer the inmate to mental health
services for treatment. We have CIT
training available two times a year for
all staff.

Transgender Inmates

Historically, correctional institutions
have classified inmates by their
genitalia, not by their gender identity.
Often transgender women are placed in
male housing units, and transgender
men are placed in female housing units.
Transgender inmates have the right to
be treated with dignity and respect and
be free from harm and harassment.

A key federal court opinion out of the
First Circuit Court of Appeals shed light
on an issue that all correctional
managers must be aware of.
Increasingly, correctional managers
must take the proactive steps to create
and implement policy that begins with
the early identification of transgender
inmates, completion of medical and
mental health evaluations and treatment

(including gender reassignment
surgery), proper housing, programs, and
clear protocols for routine interactions
such as showering and pat downs. As
with every category of individual
liberties, it is incumbent on correctional
leadership to identify and address
inmates’ rights, as framed by legislative,
executive, and judicial decisions.

It is not clear why there have been recent
declines in the numbers of minorities
(particularly African Americans and
Hispanics), vis-à-vis whites and women,
incarcerated in jails, a particularly notable
phenomenon in large-city jails (Minton, 2010;
Minton & Golinelli, 2014; Minton & Zeng,
2015). It could just be a minor shift that will
not become a trend, or it could signal a
longer-term change in the use of jails due to
the recession of 2007 to 2010, a rethinking in
the prosecution of the drug war, or some other
variable not yet identified by researchers.
Longer-term trends do indicate that the
number of adult males in jail from 1990 to
2006 nearly doubled while the numbers of
adult females and juveniles nearly tripled.
Percentage increases for women and juveniles
are also large; in 1990 women represented
only about 9% of jail populations and
juveniles about 0.6%, whereas by 2000
women composed 11.3% and juveniles 1.2%
of jail populations (Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2000, 2007; see also Table 6.1).
However, the percentage of inmates in adult

jails who were juveniles decreased by half
from 2000 to 2015 (from 1.0% to 0.5%) while
the percentage of females increased by 3
percentage points during that same time
period (see Table 6.1).

p.116

FIGUREFIGURE 6.26.2 COMPOSITION OF LOCAL
JAILS, 2015

Source: Minton and Zeng (2016).

Note: “Other” includes American Indians, Alaska

Natives,

Asians, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific

Islanders.

Across the two largest racial groupings
(whites and African Americans) and the
largest ethnic grouping (Hispanics), there
have been significant increases in jail
incarceration, but as indicated in Table 6.1, for
both groups there have been decreases since at
least 2000 and continuing through 2015 (the
latest year for which we have data). The raw

Thinkstock Images/Comstock

PHOTO 6.4: A female jail inmate awaits
her cell assignment. Women comprised
more than 12.2% of jail inmates in 2009
(Minton & Golinelli, 2014, p. 7).

number of whites has increased from 1990
(when there were fewer whites incarcerated in
jails than African Americans). Proportionate
to their representation in the population,
however, African Americans are much more
likely to be incarcerated in American jails
than are whites or Hispanics. As reported by

the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS, 2008),
for 2006, “Blacks were almost three times
more likely than Hispanics and five times
more likely than whites to be in jail” (p. 2).
Again, this higher proportional rate of
incarceration for African Americans, in
particular, can likely be attributed to their
greater concentration in impoverished
neighborhoods and to the focus of the drug
war that has tended to target such living areas
and the selling and use of crack cocaine (see
the discussion of enhanced sentences for crack
cocaine in Chapter 5). But as the drug war has
waned, in terms of not only crack cocaine
sentences but also marijuana prosecutions, as
both medical and recreational marijuana are
decriminalized and legalized, the number of
minorities has decreased as a percentage of
jail populations, particularly among African
Americans (from 41.3% in 2000 to 35.1% by
year-end 2015; Minton & Zeng, 2015, p. 4;
Minton & Zeng, 2016, p. 5), but also among
Hispanics (see Table 6.1).

p.117

TABLETABLE 6.16.1 Inmates in Local Jails, by
Characteristics, Midyear
2000 and 2005–2015

Source: Minton and Zeng (2016).

Note: May not sum to total due to rounding. – =

data not collected.

a. Includes juveniles who were tried or awaiting

trial as adults.

b. Excludes persons of Hispanic or Latino origin.

c. Includes American Indians, Alaska Natives,

Asians, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific
Islanders.

THE POOR AND THE MENTALLY
ILL

The late corrections scholar John Irwin once
referred to the types of people who are
managed in jails as the “rabble,” by which he
meant “disorganized and disorderly, the
lowest class of people” (Irwin, 1985, p. 2).
These were not just the undereducated, the
under- or unemployed, or even the poor and
mentally ill. He meant to include all those

descriptors as they related to the state of being
disorganized and disorderly and as those
designations might lead to permanent
residence in a lower class, but he also meant
that jail inmates tend to be “detached” and of
“disrepute” in the sense that they offend
others by committing mostly minor crimes in
public places.

Mental Illness, Homelessness,
Substance Abuse, and Poverty

Certainly, the fact of being homeless puts a
person at a greater risk for negative contact
with the police; lacking a home, private
matters are more likely to be subject to public
viewing in public spaces, and this disturbs or
offends some community members, which
leads to police involvement. Those who are
mentally ill are more likely to be homeless
because they are unable to manage the daily
challenges that employment and keeping a
roof over one’s head and food in one’s mouth
require (McNiel, Binder, & Robinson, 2005;
Severson, 2004).

p.118

IN FOCUS 6.1

High Schools in Jails

For many years, versions of high
schools have existed in juvenile
detention facilities. High school classes

and the ability to earn high school
credits and degrees have existed in
America’s prisons and larger jails. But
the Five Keys Charter School in San
Francisco, California, claims to be the
first complete high school inside an
adult jail (J. Tucker, 2014). Started in
2003, the Five Keys Charter School
graduated 20 students in 2014, and 600
total have received a high school
diploma or a certification of completion
or equivalency diploma since its
inception. “The school’s philosophy is
founded on the five keys to an inmate’s
success: connection to community; a
focus on family; recovery from
substance abuse; education; and
employment” (J. Tucker, 2014, p. 1).
Notably, these are the same areas that
are a focus of other reentry
programming. In a simple comparison
of graduates’ recidivism (44%) with
other inmates’ recidivism (68%), the
high school graduates do much better (J.
Tucker, 2014, p. 1). If subsequent
research includes matching of graduates
with those who didn’t graduate on key
characteristics (such as criminal history,
age, gender, and mental illness) and also
finds reduced recidivism, this high
school in an adult jail could save the
public millions of dollars while creating
safer communities.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think that earning a high
school diploma in a jail setting is
likely to benefit inmates and their
communities? Why or why not?

2. What are the likely barriers to
completion of high school in most
jails? How might such barriers be
overcome?

Jails in the United States are full of the
mentally ill, the homeless, and the poor. Data
from the BJS (based on interviews with local
jail inmates in 2002) indicate that about 64%
of jail inmates (75% of females and 63% of
males) have a mental health problem (as
compared with 56% of state prisoners and
45% of federal prisoners; see Figure 6.3)
(James & Glaze, 2006, p. 1). In a later BJS
study, it was determined that 26% of jail
inmates had symptoms of “serious
psychological distress” (Beck, Berzofsky,
Caspar, & Krebs, 2013, p. 25). In contrast,
about 10.6% of the U.S. population has
symptoms of mental illness. Moreover, for
virtually every manifestation of mental illness,
more jail inmates than state or federal
prisoners were likely to exhibit symptoms,
including 50% more delusions and twice as
many hallucinations (James & Glaze, 2006, p.
2). Of those jail inmates with a mental health
problem, the specific diagnoses included
mania (54%), major depression (30%), and
psychotic disorder (24%) (James & Glaze,
2006, p. 2). The specific identification of a

mental illness for each inmate by the BJS
research team was based on a recent clinical
diagnosis or symptoms that fit the criteria of
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).

A whole host of problems has been found to
be associated with mental illness, including
homelessness, greater criminal engagement,
prior abuse, and substance use (McNiel et al.,
2005). Among the findings from this BJS
study of jails was that those jail inmates with
a mental illness were nearly twice as likely to
be homeless as those without a mental illness
designation (17% as opposed to 9%) (James
& Glaze, 2006, pp. 1–2). More inmates with a
mental health problem had prior
incarcerations than those without such a
problem (25% as opposed to 20%). About
three times as many jail inmates with a mental
health problem had a history of physical or
sexual abuse than those without such a
problem (24% as opposed to 8%). Nearly
three-quarters of the inmates with a mental
health problem were dependent on or abused
alcohol or illegal substances (74% as opposed
to 53% of those without a mental health
problem). In short, mental illness, along with
poverty, was entangled in a whole array of
societal issues for jail inmates.

p.119

FIGUREFIGURE 6.36.3 Percentage of Inmates
With Mental Health

Problems

Source: James and Glaze (2006).

Further evidence for this supposition was
found by McNiel et al. (2005) in their study in
San Francisco County. They found that mental
illness, substance abuse, and jail
incarcerations were inextricably connected as
life events. Those who were mentally ill and
homeless were also more likely to have a
substance abuse problem, and it was also
likely that jail incarcerations were part of their
existence as well.

Mental Illness and Victimization

Moreover, in the BJS’s National Inmate
Survey—conducted in state and federal
prisons, jails, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement detention centers, and military
and Indian country facilities and focused
primarily on sexual victimization—the
researchers found that those who are mentally
ill are much more likely to be sexually
victimized while incarcerated than inmates
who are not (Beck et al., 2013). Among their
important findings were the conclusions that
inmates with serious psychological distress
reported high rates of inmate-on-inmate and
staff sexual victimization in 2011 and 2012
(pp. 6–8):

• Among state and federal prison inmates,
an estimated 6.3% of those identified with
serious psychological distress reported that
they were sexually victimized by another
inmate. In comparison, among prisoners
with no indication of mental illness, 0.7%
reported being victimized by another
inmate.

• Similar differences were reported by jail
inmates. An estimated 3.6% of those
identified with serious psychological
distress reported inmate-on-inmate sexual
victimization compared with 0.7% of
inmates with no indication of mental
illness.

• Rates of serious psychological distress in
prisons (14.7%) and jails (26.3%) were
substantially higher than the rate in the
U.S. noninstitutional population age 18 or

older (3.0%).

• For each of the measured demographic
subgroups, inmates with serious
psychological distress reported higher
rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual
victimization than inmates without mental
health problems.

• Among inmates with serious
psychological distress, nonheterosexual
inmates reported the highest rates of
inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization
(21.0% of prison inmates and 14.7% of jail
inmates).

p.120

What we might learn from these findings is
that jails hold more inmates with
psychological problems than do prisons, and
—as with prisons—this mental illness makes
them more vulnerable to sexual abuse. These
data tell us that the likelihood of abuse is also
heightened if the inmate is LGBTI (lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex) and
has serious psychological problems.

Mental Illness and Solitary
Confinement

Mental illness also makes jail inmates more
likely candidates for the use of solitary
confinement and targets of other violent
inmates. In a study of the Rikers Island 10-jail
complex by New York City, city health
officials noted that a disproportionate number

of inmates have a mental health diagnosis
(Pearson, 2015). It was reported that the
health care workers, who are employed by the
city but are bound by medical ethics, are
reticent to approve solitary confinement for
such inmates because they know it can
exacerbate their already precarious mental
health status. Yet the mentally ill in these jails
are more likely to be placed in solitary
because of their behavior problems and/or as
protection. In an earlier study of the Rikers
Island jail complex by the Department of
Justice and the New York Times, it was found
that a culture of violence was predominant in
these jails (particularly those for juveniles)
and that too often the targets of this violence
were adult and juvenile mentally ill inmates
(Seabrook, 2014).

Calls for Reform in the Care of the
Mentally Ill

The abuse and poor conditions for the
mentally ill are not a problem reserved for the
Rikers Island jail inmates. As A. Cohen
(2013) documented in an article in the
Atlantic Monthly, a number of reports
emanating from the Justice Department, the
American Civil Liberties Union, and a federal
judicial decision indicate that the abuse is
widespread and exists in both jails and
prisons. “Prison [and jail] officials have failed
to provide a constitutional level of care in
virtually every respect, from providing
medication and treatment to protecting the
men from committing suicide” (p. 1). In fact,

the problematic treatment of mentally ill jail
inmates has risen to crisis status for the
Council of State Governments. As a
consequence, on May 6, 2015, it launched a
national initiative to help counties address this
issue in their jails (Council of State
Governments Justice Center, 2015).
Remedies, embodied in what is termed an
evidence-based Stepping Up Program, will
focus on diversion from jail to other services
and the provision of treatment and better care
for mentally ill inmates.

MEDICAL PROBLEMS

One of the social issues that is particularly
problematic for jail inmates and the people
who manage them is the relatively poor health
of people incarcerated in jails. According to
the 2011–2012 study of jail inmates by the
BJS (Maruschak, 2015), half of jail inmates
reported a chronic medical problem such as
cancer or blood pressure or heart problems.
According to an earlier iteration of this study
(Maruschak, 2006, p. 1), most of these
medical maladies preceded placement in jail
and included the following (in order of
prevalence): arthritis, hypertension, asthma,
heart problems, cancer, paralysis, stroke,
diabetes, kidney problems, liver problems,
hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases,
tuberculosis, and HIV. A small percentage of
inmates (2%) were so medically impaired that
they needed to use a cane, walker, or
wheelchair. Nearly 75% were overweight, and

more than 60% were morbidly obese
(Maruschak, 2015, p. 1).

SAGE News Clip
SAGE News Clip 6.1: Alabama
Prisons and HIV

p.121

ELDERLY INMATES

As one might expect, the elderly—and in
prisons and jails, due to the premature aging
of inmates, that can mean anyone over age 50
—are much more prone to some of these
medical maladies than are younger inmates
(Hamada, 2015). In one BJS study, 61% of
those over age 45 reported a medical problem
(Maruschak, 2006, p. 1). With the exception
of asthma and HIV, which tended to be more
prevalent among younger inmates, the older
inmates were much more likely to have the
other medical problems tallied in this report;
this means that older inmates are more costly
to manage in jails because of their greater

need for medical care.

FEMALE INMATES

Like the older inmates, women were much
more likely to report medical problems to the
BJS researchers (53% for women as opposed
to 35% for men) (Maruschak, 2006, p. 2).
They reported a rate of cancer that was nearly
eight times that of men (831 per 10,000
female inmates compared with 108 per 10,000
male inmates), with the most common types
being cervical cancer for women and skin
cancer for men. In fact, of every medical
problem documented in the study, the women
reported more prevalence than the men, with
the exception of paralysis, where they were
even with men, and tuberculosis, where a
slightly greater percentage of men reported
more (4.3% for men as opposed to 4.0% for
women) (Maruschak, 2006, p. 2).

JUVENILE INMATES

Incarcerated youths have their own set of
potentially debilitating health problems that
also present an immediate health risk to
communities. In a study of adolescents in a
juvenile detention center in Chicago, about
5% of the teens had contracted gonorrhea, and
nearly 15% had chlamydia (Broussard et al.,
2002, p. 8). Girls were more than three times
more likely to have one of these diseases than
were boys in this study.

RIGHTS TO MEDICAL CARE

According to the 1976 Supreme Court case
Estelle v. Gamble, inmates have a
constitutional right to reasonable medical
care. The Court held that to be deliberately
indifferent to the medical needs of inmates
would violate the Eighth Amendment
prohibition against cruel and unusual
punishment. The Affordable Care Act of 2010
(ACA, commonly referred to as Obamacare)
also requires that jails provide medical and
mental health care within their facilities
(Tally, 2015), although at the time of this
writing during the spring of 2017 it was not
clear whether the ACA would be repealed or
not. Needless to say, treating such problems
while providing care that meets the ACA
mandate requires that a jail of any size have
budgetary coverage for the salaries of nurses;
contracts with a local doctor, mental health
provider, and dentist; and an arrangement with
local hospitals. Moreover, regular staff need
basic training in CPR (cardiopulmonary
resuscitation) and other medical knowledge
(e.g., to know when someone is exhibiting the
symptoms of a heart attack or stroke or the
symptoms of mental illness) so that when
problems arise staff recognize how serious
they might be and know how to address them
or whom to call (Kerle, 2011; Rigby, 2007).

Some jails are addressing these issues by
contracting with private companies to provide
medical services or using telemedicine as a
means of delivering some services. The
National Commission on Correctional Health
Care recommends that if jails go the route of

private provision of services, they should
make sure that such programs are properly
accredited so that the services provided meet
national standards (Kerle, 2011). When such
matters as obtaining and maintaining quality
care are not attended to, as is sometimes the
case in jails and prisons (Vaughn & Carroll,
1998; Vaughn & Smith, 1999), jail inmates
are likely to suffer the consequences in terms
of continued poor health (Sturgess & Macher,
2005). In addition, jails may be sued for
failure to provide care, and communities
might be exposed to contagious diseases along
with liability for legal bills (J. Clark, 1991;
Macher, 2007; Rigby, 2007). Clearly, the
provision of decent health care to incarcerated
persons is important not just because the
Supreme Court mandates it or because it is the
moral thing to do for people who are not free
to access health care on their own but also
because the vast majority of jail inmates
return to the community, most within 1 or 2
weeks (Kerle, 2011). Therefore, to prevent the
spread of diseases and to save lives both
inside and outside of jails, basic medical care
would appear to be called for. Some jails are
evidently expending energy to address this
area of incarceration given that 4 in 10 of the
inmates in the 2002 BJS study reported that
they had had a medical exam since their
admission (Maruschak, 2006, p. 1).

p.122

SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND JAILS

PHOTO 6.5: Female inmates line up for
their medications.

It is one of those oft-cited assumptions that
people in prisons and jails have substance
abuse problems, but this is one area of social
commentary that actually fits social reality.
According to a 2002 BJS study of jail inmates
(the latest available data at the time of
writing), fully 68% of jail inmates reported
substance abuse or dependence problems
(Karberg & James, 2005, p. 1). In fact, half of
convicted inmates reported being under the
influence at the time they committed their
offense, and 16% said they committed the
crime to get money for drugs. Female and
white inmates both were more likely to report
substance use at the time of the offense
(Karberg & James, 2005, p. 5). For convicted
offenders who used at the time of offense,
alcohol was more likely to be in their system
than drugs (33.3% for alcohol as opposed to
28.8% for drugs). The drugs of choice for
abusers and users varied and included, by

prevalence of use, marijuana, cocaine or
crack, hallucinogens, stimulants (including
methamphetamines), and inhalants (Karberg
& James, 2005, p. 6). Not surprisingly, those
who reported a substance abuse problem were
also more likely to have a criminal record and
to have been homeless before incarceration.
White, Goldkamp, and Campbell (2006)
found in their study conducted in New
Mexico that many people who are arrested
and subsequently come into contact with the
local jail have “co-occurring disorders” such
as mental illness and substance abuse
problems (p. 303).

Violent offenders were more likely to use
alcohol than other substances at the time of
the offense. But violent offenders were also
least likely, with the exception of public order
offenders, to report being on drugs or alcohol
at the time of the offense (Karberg & James,
2005, p. 6).

Fully 63% of those with a substance abuse
problem had been in a treatment program
before (Karberg & James, 2005, p. 1). Most
such programs were of the self-help variety
such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics
Anonymous. However, 44% of these people
had actually been in a residential treatment
program or a detoxification program, had
received professional counseling, or had been
put on a maintenance drug (Karberg & James,
2005, p. 8). Treatment for convicted offenders
in jails, as of 2002, was at 6%. Notably,
provision of treatment in jails is difficult

because most inmates are out of the facility
within a week, and about 60% are
unconvicted, so as people who are presumed
innocent, they cannot be coerced into getting
treatment. Therefore, treatment programs are
usually focused on those who meet all of the
following criteria: They have a substance
abuse problem, they are convicted, and they
are longer-term inmates. Even having said
this, the amount of treatment programming in
jails does not fit the obvious need (Kerle,
2011).

p.123

SUICIDES, GANGS, AND
SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN JAILS

SUICIDES

As indicated from the data presented above,
those incarcerated in jails often enter them at
some level of intoxication. Moreover, many
have a mental disability, and if this is their
first experience with jail, it might be
exacerbated by the shock of incarceration.
Most who are booked into jails are
impoverished, and some are homeless. In
addition, being booked itself may represent
both the mental and physical low points of
their lives. Such a combination of conditions
may predispose some jail inmates to not just
contemplate suicide but to actually attempt it
(Winfree & Wooldredge, 1991; Winter, 2003).

SAGE News Clip
6.2: Prison Suicide Amid Hernandez
News

In 1986, the National Center on Institutions
and Alternatives (NCIA) did a study of
suicides in jails. Twenty years later, in 2006,
the National Institute of Corrections funded
another NCIA study of the status of jail
suicides. Based on 464 suicides that occurred
in 2005 and 2006, the NCIA published the
following findings regarding suicide victims
in jails and characteristics of the suicides:

• Sixty-seven percent were white.

• Ninety-three percent were male.

• The average age was 35.

• Forty-two percent were single.

• Forty-three percent were held on a
personal and/or violent charge.

• Forty-seven percent had a history of
substance abuse.

• Twenty-eight percent had a history of

medical problems.

• Thirty-eight percent had a history of
mental illness.

• Twenty percent had a history of taking
psychotropic medication.

• Thirty-four percent had a history of
suicidal behavior.

• Deaths were evenly distributed throughout
the year; certain seasons and/or holidays
did not account for more suicides.

• Thirty-two percent occurred between 3:01
p.m. and 9 p.m.

• Twenty-three percent occurred within the
first 24 hours, 27% between 2 and 14 days,
and 20% between 1 and 4 months after
incarceration. (Hayes, 2010, p. xi)

These data indicate that the profile of the
suicide-prone inmate in jail is that of someone
who is male, white, somewhat young
(although the BJS data indicate both younger
and older inmates are prone to committing
suicide), in jail on a violent offense charge,
with a history of substance abuse, and at the
beginning of his jail incarceration. Other data
from the BJS and other sources flesh out and
contextualize these findings (see Figure 6.4).

Data obtained by BJS in a multi-year study
(2000–2002) of deaths while in custody also
suggest that age, gender, and race are
important variables in predicting suicide along
with jail size (Mumola, 2005). White males

under age 18 and over age 35 and those
inmates with a more violent commitment
history were more likely to commit suicide
than African American males or those in other
age groups and who were not incarcerated for
a violent offense (Mumola, 2005; Winter,
2003). Winter (2003) found in her study of 10
years of suicide data from jails in one
midwestern state that those who committed
suicide tended to be younger, were arrested
for a violent offense, had no history of mental
or physical illness, did not necessarily
“exhibit suicidal tendencies,” and were more
likely to be intoxicated with alcohol when
admitted (p. 138).

p.124

Moreover, according to the authors of the BJS
study, the suicide rate for large, primarily
urban jails, which tend to hold fewer whites,
was about half that of the smaller jails (as
cited in Mumola, 2005). Similarly, in a study
by Tartaro and Ruddell (2006), the researchers
also found that smaller jails (with less than a
100-bed capacity) had a two to five times
greater prevalence of attempted and
completed suicides than larger jails did (p.
81). In this study, crowded jails and those with
“special-needs and long-term inmates” were
also more likely to have a higher rate of
suicide completion (p. 81). The shock of
incarceration may be one explanation for jail
suicide rates, although why this shock might
be greater for those in smaller jails is not
entirely clear. The BJS and NCIA data do

indicate that about half of the suicides occur
within the first 9 days—for women it was 4
days—and in the cell of the person
committing the suicide (Mumola, 2005).

Larger jails, with their greater resources and
higher level of training for staff, may be better
equipped than their smaller counterparts to
monitor and prevent suicides in their facilities.
For instance, if younger inmates are fearful of
being housed with and possibly abused by
older adults, some less crowded and perhaps
larger jails may have the luxury of segregating
young men from older men and thereby
lessening the fear that might precipitate some
suicides. Winter’s (2003) conclusion, after
studying 18 years’ worth of administrative
data on suicides in a midwestern jail, is that
keeping and accessing more complete records
regarding suicides is critical to preventing
them. It is possible that larger, more urban
jails are better able to handle this
responsibility. In their comparison study of
rural and urban jails, Applegate and Sitren
(2008) remarked on the greater capacity of
urban jails, relative to rural jails, to provide
services to inmates, which one assumes would
directly and indirectly affect the rate of
suicides in these jails.

However, large jails still have their share of
problems with suicides. In a study by Selling
et al. (2014) of suicides in the New York City
jail system, the researchers found that
between 2007 and 2011 there were eight
deaths resulting from suicide and 2,514 cases

of self-injury (out of yearly admissions of
80,000 and an average daily population of
about 12,500) (p. 163). The self-injuries had
increased in number during this time period.
The methods of self-injury included, among
others, “lacerations, ligatures tied around the
neck, attempted overdose, and swallowed
foreign objects” (p. 163). In response to this
research, the jail managers (there are several
New York City jails) improved the
surveillance system and the electronic health
records so they could better watch and
document those who would be most likely to
need help.

We do know that the rate of suicide among
inmates in jails, despite its marked decrease
over the last 9 years, is still twice as high as
would be true for a comparable group of free
citizens (Mumola, 2005). Jails have three
times the rate of suicides that prisons do,
although their homicide rates are comparable
(Mumola, 2005). The good news, however, is
that jail and prison deaths due to suicide (and
homicide) declined precipitously from 1983 to
2002, with the rate of prison suicides
declining by half during this time period and
jail suicides by nearly two-thirds (Mumola,
2005, p. 2). In 1983 jail suicides were the
major cause of death for inmates, but by 2002
illness had replaced suicide as the primary
reason for death.

p.125

GANGS

Gangs present myriad management problems
for jail and prison managers. Violence,
including robberies, assaults, drug smuggling,
and even murders, tends to naturally follow in
their wake and prevents the orderly and safe
operation of the facility for staff and inmates.
Because gangs are more prevalent in large
urban areas, they are more of a problem in
large urban jails. Yet the estimates of their
prevalence in large jail systems range from
16% to 25%, depending on the location of the
jail (Tapia, 2014, p. 258). However, these
estimates are likely to be low because gang
members are usually not forthcoming about
their membership in a correctional
environment (Ruddell, Decker, & Egley,
2006). It is generally true that larger urban
jails have more problems with gangs. Because
jails are more likely to involve a short-term
period of incarceration, however, they may be
less likely to hold as many gang members as
prisons (Alarid, 2000).

FIGUREFIGURE 6.46.4 Predictors of Jail Suicide

Source: Based on data from Hayes (2010, p. xi).

To counter the collective influence of gangs,
jails will try to separate members in housing
units, placing the most disruptive members in
segregation (Tapia, 2014). Another tactic is to
document those involved in gangs and to track
them and their activities throughout the jail
system. However, although gang members, by
their definition, might appear to present a
monolithic adherence to gang orthodoxy, there
is some indication that not all gang members
agree about how the gang should be operated

and the tactics they should employ. For
instance, in a study by Tapia (2014) of Latino
gangs in Texas, it was found that there were
intergenerational disputes on these matters,
with younger inmates tending to organize
themselves in more autonomous groups,
which are as much support groups as criminal
enterprises in jails. In that same research,
however, the gangs identified by correctional
officer respondents as most prevalent in Texas
jails were the Texas Mexican Mafia, Aryan
Brotherhood, Bloods, Texas Syndicate, Crips,
Tango Blast, Tango Orejon, Aryan Circle, and
Hermandad de Pistoleros Latinos (p. 262).

SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of
2003 mandated that the BJS collect data on
sexual assaults in adult and juvenile jails and
prisons and that it identify facilities with high
levels of victimization. According to the
National Inmate Survey for 2011 and 2012
(which included 358 local jails and was
conducted by BJS researchers), 3.2% of jail
inmates (as opposed to 4.0% of prison
inmates) reported experiencing sexual
victimization perpetrated by other jail inmates
or staff during the previous 12 months (Beck
et al., 2013, p. 1). Extrapolating these sample
findings to the national population of jail and
prison inmates, the BJS researchers estimated
that fully 80,600 inmates in prisons and jails
experienced sexual victimization during this
time period (Beck et al., 2013, p. 8). For jails,
it was estimated that there were 25,100

victims; of these incidents, 11,900 were
inmate on inmate and 13,200 were staff on
inmate, and of these, 2,400 reported being
victimized by both staff and inmates (Beck et
al., 2013, p. 8). Notably, some of these
victimizations were likely “consensual,”
although it is legally impossible for inmates,
who occupy a powerless position vis-à-vis
staff, to give consent to them.

p.126

ETHICAL ISSUE

What Would You
Do?

You are a correctional officer who works
in the booking area of a large urban jail.
About once per month, the jail admits
one or two transgender inmates. You
notice that there is one male colleague
named Joe who is particularly abusive of
the transgender female inmates (calling
them names, strip searching them,
making them stand around naked in front
of other staff and inmates while making
derogatory comments about their body
parts, doing unnecessary pat downs that
focus inordinately on their breasts and
genitals, referring to them by male
pronouns, etc.). Although Joe is the
primary instigator of this abuse, there are
a few others, both male and female, who
play along and others who try to ignore it

(including you). You know your sergeant
also has witnessed the abuse and has
done nothing to stop it. You are unaware
of any complaints being lodged by staff
regarding Joe’s or the others’ behavior,
although it is openly practiced in the
booking area at least once or twice a
month. You have heard that a lawsuit has
been filed by a former inmate about Joe’s
and the other officers’ treatment of her.
As a booking officer, you are likely to be
called to testify about what happened in
her case (all of the abuse mentioned
above). What will you do if called to
testify? How will you explain your
failure to report this abuse beforehand?
What do you think will be the likely
outcomes of the choices you made and
make?

Female inmates in jails (as well as in prisons)
were more than twice as likely as male
inmates to experience sexual victimization
perpetrated by another inmate (3.6% for
females as opposed to 1.4% for males) (Beck
et al., 2013, p. 17). Male inmates in jails and
prisons were slightly more likely to be victims
of staff perpetrators. There was higher
victimization among inmates who were two or
more races or were white by other inmates
and staff. In general, younger inmates (under
34 years) and those with a college degree
were targeted more by both inmates and staff
for sexual victimization.

As mentioned previously in this chapter,
LGBTI inmates were much more likely to be
victimized by both staff and inmates in both
prisons and jails. In prisons, 1.2% and 2.1% of
heterosexual inmates experienced inmate-on-
inmate and staff-on-inmate sexual
victimization, respectively, as compared with
12.2% and 5.4% of LGBTI inmates. In jails,
the figures were similarly startling, with 1.2%
and 1.7% of heterosexual inmates who
experienced inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-
inmate sexual victimization, respectively, as
compared with 8.5% and 4.3% of LGBTI
inmates (Beck et al., 2013, p. 18). In essence,
in jails, the LGBTI inmates were seven times
more likely to experience sexual victimization
by other inmates and 2.5 times more likely to
experience sexual victimization by staff than
were heterosexuals.

In addition, as mentioned previously in this
chapter, those with a mental illness were
much more likely to experience sexual
victimization than were inmates without such
a malady (Beck et al., 2013). Mentally ill jail
inmates experienced more inmate-on-inmate
and staff-on-inmate sexual victimization than
inmates without mental health problems.

In the Prison Rape Elimination Act–
prescribed surveys of adult correctional
authorities in prisons, jails, and other adult
correctional facilities, it was found that the
allegations of sexual victimization increased
from 2009 to 2011, although the number of
substantiated cases (those where an

investigation found that the allegation was
true) remained about the same since 2005
(Beck, Rantala, & Rexroat, 2014, p. 1).
Notably, in an earlier version of this research,
it was explained that most of these allegations
were not substantiated, nor were they
investigated or found to be supported by
evidence, by prison or jail officials (Beck,
Harrison, & Adams, 2007). Having said this,
however, we should recognize that in most
such instances of sexual violence, it would be
very difficult to find evidence, as it is in the
free world, particularly if the one perpetrating
the victimization was a staff member, which
of course is why the inmate survey data
presented first in this section become so
important.

p.127

More than half of the substantiated staff-on-
inmate sexual misconduct victimization was
committed by female staff on male inmates:

Among all substantiated incidents
between 2009 and 2011, the majority (84
percent) of those perpetrated by female
staff involved a sexual relationship that
“appeared to be willing,” compared to 37
percent of those perpetrated by male
staff. Any sexual contact between
inmates and staff is illegal, regardless of
whether it “appeared to be willing.”
(Beck et al., 2014, p. 1)

Other research has found that female staff

were more likely perpetrators in prisons,
although we know from research on Texas
prisons that when the offense was actual
sexual battery, the staff offender was more
likely to be male (Marquart, Barnhill, &
Balshaw-Biddle, 2001). Male staff were more
likely the perpetrators of sexual violence in
jails. For instance, in a 2007 case involving
the jail in Yuma County, Arizona, three male
officers were charged with unlawful sexual
conduct with three female inmates (Reutter,
2007).

When the allegation was substantiated, most
of the staff were fired (78%), and nearly half
(45%) were arrested, prosecuted, or convicted
(Beck et al., 2014, p. 1). Inmate perpetrators
in substantiated cases were more likely to be
placed in solitary confinement (73%), and
about half (48%) were prosecuted if the act
was a nonconsensual sex act (Beck et al.,
2014, p. 1).

Researchers at the Urban Institute (e.g., see La
Vigne, Debus-Sherrill, Brazzell, & Downey,
2011, p. 3) used a situational crime prevention
approach with the hoped-for result of reducing
violence and sexual assault after studying
three jails. Their recommendations were
multifaceted and included studying past
incidents of violence to determine what
characteristics of the situation might be
changed to reduce future violence; increasing
surveillance cameras outside of cells (having a
record of who goes in and out because cells
are a typical locus for violence); ensuring that

staff are around consistently; hiring better
quality staff; training staff in crisis
intervention and about violence, mental
illness, suicide, and sexual assault; having an
enforceable no-tolerance policy for staff
sexual misconduct; developing strategies to
reduce violence and sexual assault; reducing
the contraband coming into the jail because
this is often linked with violence; and making
sure that inmates who need medications and
mental health care get them because not
getting them on time may precipitate violence.

INNOVATIONS IN JAILS

NEW-GENERATION OR PODULAR
DIRECT-SUPERVISION JAILS

During the 1980s, a new kind of jail was
under construction in the United States, then
called a new-generation jail and now
known as a podular direct-supervision
jail. Its two key components are a rounded, or
podular, architecture for living units and the
direct, as opposed to indirect or intermittent,
supervision of inmates by staff; in other
words, staff were to be in the living units full
time (Applegate & Paoline, 2007; Gettinger,
1984; Jay Farbstein & Associates & Wener,
1989; Zupan, 1991). It was believed that the
architecture would complement the ability to
supervise and that the presence of staff in the
living unit would negate the ability of inmates
to control those units. Other important facets
of these jails are the provision of more goods

and services in the living unit (e.g., access to
telephones, visiting booths, recreation, and
library books) and the more enriched
leadership and communication roles for staff.

Career Video
Payne career video 6.1: Professor

p.128

Not surprisingly, several scholars recognized
that the role for the correctional officer in a
podular direct-supervision jail would need to
change. Zupan (1991), building on the work
of Gettinger (1984), identified seven critical
dimensions of new-generation jail officer
behavior: (1) proactive leadership and conflict
resolution skills, (2) building a respectful
relationship with inmates, (3) uniform and
predictable enforcement of all rules, (4) active
observation of all inmate doings and
occurrences in the living unit, (5) attending to
inmate requests with respect and dignity, (6)
disciplining inmates in a fair and consistent
manner, and (7) being organized and in the

Courtesy of Bergen County Sheriff’s Office/Bergen Co
unty Jail

PHOTO 6.6: A female correctional
officer operates a new-generation jail
control pod.

open with the supervisory style. Whether
officers in podular direct-supervision jails are
always adequately selected and trained to fit
these dimensions of their role is, as yet, an
open research question (Applegate & Paoline,
2007; Nelson & Davis, 1995; Wener, 2006).

New-generation jails, although hardly “new”
anymore, became popular in the United States
by the late 1980s and through the 1990s
(Kerle, 2011; Wener, 2005). Reportedly, in the
21st century, about one-fifth of medium and
larger jails are said to be new-generation
facilities (Tartaro, 2002). Their architecture,
although not all features of such jails, can be
seen in most new jails and prisons built these
days whether or not they include direct
supervision.

It is widely acknowledged by correctional
scholars and practitioners that although
podular direct-supervision jails or prisons are
not necessarily a panacea for all that ails
corrections today (e.g., crowding, few
resources), they often do represent a
significant improvement over more traditional
jails (Kerle, 2003; Perroncello, 2002; Zupan,
1991). If operated correctly and including all
of the most important elements, they are
believed to be less costly in the long run (due
to fewer lawsuits), be safer for both staff and
inmates, provide a more developed and
enriched role for staff, and include more
amenities for inmates. This is a big if,
however, and some research has called into
question these claims of a better environment
for inmates and staff and a more enriched role
for staff as the implementation of the new-
generation model has sometimes faltered or
been incomplete in many facilities (Applegate
& Paoline, 2007; Stohr, Lovrich, & Wilson,
1994; Tartaro, 2002, 2006). Clearly, more
research on new-generation jails is called for
to determine their success (or failure) in
revolutionizing the jail environment for staff
and inmates.

COMMUNITY JAILS

Another promising innovation in jails has
been the development of community jails
(Barlow, Hight, & Hight, 2006; Kerle, 2003,
2011; Lightfoot, Zupan, & Stohr, 1991).
Community jails are devised so that
programming provided on the outside does

not end at the jailhouse door because the
needs that such programming was addressing
have not gone away and will still be there
when the inmate transitions back into the
community. Therefore, in a community jail,
those engaged in education, drug or alcohol
counseling, or mental health programming
will seamlessly receive such services while
incarcerated and again as they transition out
of the facility (Barlow et al., 2006; Bookman,
Lightfoot, & Scott, 2005; National Institute of
Corrections, 2008). Whether one is in and out
of the facility within a few days or a few
months, needs are met and services provided
so that the reintegration into the community is
smoother for the inmate and the community in
question.

p.129

IN FOCUS 6.2

Prison Rape Elimination Act
Controversy

As mentioned in the text of this chapter,
the Prison Rape Elimination Act
(PREA) of 2003 required that the
Department of Justice and its
subdivisions—the National Institute of
Justice and the Bureau of Justice
Statistics—study and report on the
amount of sexual violence in adult and
juvenile prisons and jails. In reaction to
this reporting and court cases indicating

that LGBTI inmates were particularly
vulnerable to sexual abuse by inmates
and staff, and after studying the matter,
the National Prison Rape Elimination
Commission, which was created by the
PREA legislation, released its national
standards in June 2009. These standards
are extensive and require that states
train staff differently, monitor inmates
differently, report offenses, treat victims
and offenders, audit themselves, and
collect and keep relevant data related to
sexual violence. The U.S. Attorney
General was asked to release these
standards and require that the Bureau of
Prisons and each governor certify
compliance with these standards or
certify that they were working toward
compliance. If governors did not do
this, they risked losing 5% of any future
Department of Justice grants (U.S.
Department of Justice, 2015). As the
date for certification of compliance
neared during the spring of 2014,
governors from at least seven states and
one territory (Arizona, Florida, Idaho,
Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, and the
Northern Mariana Islands territory)
ignored the certification deadline of
May 15 or indicated that they would not
certify compliance with these standards,
some claiming that the standards were
too cumbersome and expensive to
comply with (Reilly, 2014, p. 1). On the
other hand, a few states, including New
Hampshire and New Jersey, certified

compliance, while 46 states or
territories promised to use their grant
monies from the Department of Justice
to work toward compliance with the
federal standards (Reilly, 2014, p. 1). By
spring of 2016, most states had certified
or promised to move toward
compliance.

Discussion Questions

1. What benefits would flow from
certification by states for jail
inmates?

2. How might non-LGBTQI inmates
benefit from certification?

3. Why would states be reluctant to
promise certification, and how might
that reluctance be overcome?

Managers of community jails also recognize
that they cannot staff or resource the jails
sufficiently to address every need of their
inmates. Rather, community experts who are
regularly engaged in the provision of such
services are the appropriate persons to provide
them whether the inmate is in a jail or free in
the community; in both instances, it is argued,
the inmate is a community member and
entitled to such services (Barlow et al., 2006;
Lightfoot et al., 1991).

Obviously, the development of community
jails requires that some resources (particularly

space) be devoted to the accommodation of
community experts who provide for inmates’
needs. Unfortunately, it is the rare jail that has
the luxury of excess space for allocation to
such programming. Therefore, the solution
may lie in inclusion of such space in jail
architectural plans, although this certainly is
not optimal given the immediacy of inmate
needs discussed in the foregoing section.

p.130

ETHICAL ISSUE
What Would You
Do?

You are a professor at a university, and
you do research on jails. Some of your
early research was on new-generation or
podular direct-supervision (PDS) jails.
One of the jails you profiled in that early
research was a model PDS jail in that it
practiced all of the principles of the best
of such jails. You happen to visit that jail
more than 20 years later, and other than
the physical podular architecture, there is
no longer anything new or progressive
about the jail; there is no evidence that it
is a PDS jail anymore. In fact, the
supervision practices now seem to you to
be abusive. Staff are no longer in the
living units 7 days a week, 24 hours a
day, and inmates are locked up in their
double- and sometimes triple-celled small

cells (made for one inmate) for up to 23
hours a day. Staff are not trained in how
to be leaders in their living units because
they are rarely in them, and inmates are
not out of their cells to be led; instead,
staff contact with inmates often includes
yelling through the steel cell doors or the
slight contact staff have with inmates
when let out for their 1 hour of exercise.
Inmates no longer have the support or
services that typified PDS jails—and this
jail—in the past. You are aware that fully
50% to 60% of the inmates in this jail
have not been convicted of a crime, yet
they are treated like they are serious
offenders with behavior problems in a
super-maximum-security prison. You
know how this jail used to be operated,
you know how it should be operated, and
you know it is not being operated in this
way. What would you do and why? Who
might you talk to? What do you think
would be the likely consequences of the
action(s) you choose?

The second problem that faces jail managers
interested in creating community jails is
convincing local service providers—and
lawmakers if need be—that people in jails
have a right to, and a continued need for,
services and that the continued provision of
such services by community experts benefits
both those inmates and the larger community.
Needless to say, making this case, as

reasonable as it might sound, can be a “hard
sell” to those social service agencies that
already have scarce resources and to
policymakers concerned that more tax dollars
might be required to fund such resource
provision in jails. For these reasons, larger
jails and communities, with their economies
of scale and a greater proportion of their
populations in need of social services, might
be better situated to operate community jails
and thus achieve their purported benefits of
less crime from the continuous provision of
services in jails (Kerle, 2011; Lightfoot et al.,
1991).

One interesting development on this front is
how the Affordable Care Act is being
implemented in jails. The ACA does not
expressly prohibit jail inmates, as long as they
are not convicted, from being able to sign up
for Medicaid or qualified health plans while
they are in jail. What this means is that a jail
can embrace this community function by
ensuring that its inmates are signed up.
Evidence indicates that mentally impaired
inmates with Medicaid coverage who
reentered communities from jails were more
likely to have a smooth transition to needed
care than those who were not so covered
(Robertson, 2014).

COEQUAL STAFFING

Another promising innovation in jails that has
occurred during the last couple of decades in
some sheriffs’ departments has been the

development of coequal staffing, which
provides comparable pay and benefits to those
who work in the jail with those who work on
the streets as law enforcement (Kerle, 2003,
2011). Historically, jails have been a dumping
ground (to use Irwin’s [1985] terminology)
not just for inmates but for staff as well. If a
sheriff deemed that a staff person could not
“make it” on the streets as law enforcement,
he or she was given a job in the jail, where
apparently the individual’s lack of skills and
ability was not seen as a problem. Moreover,
jail staff were (and often still are) paid less
and received less training than their
counterparts working on the streets (Stohr &
Collins, 2009). As a result, jails do find it
difficult to attract and keep the best personnel,
and even if they can attract the more talented
applicants, jail jobs were (and often still are)
used as “stepping stones” to better paying and
higher status jobs on the law enforcement side
of sheriffs’ agencies (Kerle, 2011).

p.131

Since the 1980s, however, many sheriffs’
departments, although far from a majority,
have recognized the problems created by
according this second-tier status to those who
work in jails (Kerle, 2011). Consequently,
they have instituted programs whereby staff
who work in the jails, who often are given
deputy status, are trained and paid similarly to
those who work in the free communities.
Some anecdotal evidence from sheriffs’
departments indicates that this change has had

a phenomenal effect on the professional
operation of jails (because they are better
staffed) and on the morale of those who labor
in them (Kerle, 2011).

REENTRY PROGRAMS FOR JAILS

Perhaps the newest “thing” in jails these days
(and in prisons, too) is a rethinking about how
to keep people out of them. (Reentry will be
discussed in greater detail in Chapter 10.)
Rather than focusing on deterrence or
incapacitation so much (as during the 1980s
and 1990s), jail practitioners are studying how
to make the transition from jails to the
community smoother and more successful so
that people do not commit more crimes and
return (Bookman et al., 2005; Freudenberg,
2006; McLean, Robarge, & Sherman, 2006;
Osher, 2007). Research by Wodahl, Boman,
and Garland (2015) indicates that community
sanctions for probation and parole violations
can be as effective as the use of jail and, at the
same time, cost much less, so there is
additional impetus for communities to try to
move their jail inmates back into the
community or to restrict their placement in the
jail in the first place.

JOURNAL ARTICLE
Journal Article: 6.1: Integrated Primary and
Behavioral Health Care in Patient-Centered
Medical Homes for Jail Releases With
Mental Illness. Criminal Justice and
Behavior
CLICK TO SHOW

As indicated by the discussion in the
foregoing material of all the medical,
psychological, and social—not to mention
educational—deficits that many inmates of
jails have, this transition back into the
community is likely to be fraught with
difficulties. That is why any successful
reentry program must include a recognition
of the problems individual inmates may have
(e.g., mental illness, physical illness,
joblessness, homelessness) and address them
systematically in collaboration with the client
and the community (Freudenberg, 2006;
McLean et al., 2006). In a study by
Freudenberg, Mosely, Labriola, and Murrill
(as cited in Freudenberg, 2006) conducted in
New York City jails, the researchers asked
hundreds of inmates what their top three
priority reentry needs were. For adult women,
they were housing, substance abuse treatment,
and financial support; for adult men, they
were employment, education, and housing; for
adolescent males, they were employment,
education, and financial support (Freudenberg,
2006, p. 15). Spjeldnes, Jung, and Yamatani
(2014) also argued that women’s and men’s
reentry needs may differ; these researchers
found, in their study of a large urban jail, that
more women than men reported chemical
dependency and mental health needs and that
women were more likely to value treatment
programming.

Effective interventions to improve reentry, in
the New York study, included everything from
referral to counseling to drug treatment to

post-release supervision, depending on the
needs of the inmate, his or her unique reentry
situation, and the services available in the
community. Clearly, reentry is a complex
process for people with multiple problems,
and it requires that jail personnel prioritize the
needs they will target and the interventions
they will apply and then network with
community agencies to provide the package of
services most likely to further the goal of
successful reentry (Freudenberg, 2006;
McLean et al., 2006). In fact, Bookman and
her colleagues (2005) argued that jail
personnel should expect to engage in
collaborative arrangements with community
agencies (sounds a bit like community jails,
doesn’t it?) if they hope to succeed during the
reentry process.

p.132

SUMMARY

• Jails in the United States are faced
with any number of seemingly
intractable problems. They are often
overcrowded—or close to it—and
house some of the most debilitated
and vulnerable persons in our
communities. They house the
accused, the guilty, and the
sentenced as well as low-level

offenders and serious and violent
ones. As with prisons, their mission
is to incapacitate (even the untried),
to deter, to punish, and even to
rehabilitate. The degree to which
they accomplish any of these goals
is, in large part, determined by the
political and social climate in which
the jail is nested. Since the 1980s,
the political climate has favored
“harsh justice” meted out by
policymakers and the actors in the
criminal justice system and has led
to the unrelenting business of filling
and building prisons and jails across
the country (Cullen, 2006; Irwin,
1985, 2005; Whitman, 2003).

• Jails have also served as a dumping
ground for those who are
marginally criminal and are unable
or unwilling to access social
services. Too often, the needs of
such persons go unaddressed in
communities, and as a result these
unresolved needs either contribute
to their incarceration (in the case of
substance abuse and mental illness)
or make it likely (in the case of
homelessness) that they will enter
and reenter the revolving jailhouse
door.

• Sexual violence in jails remains
problematic. It is likely true that the
rate of violence between inmates
and inmates or between staff and

inmates has gone down during
recent years. However, increased
monitoring of this phenomenon is
certainly called for and may serve
to further reduce violence through
the implementation of violence
reduction techniques and training
for staff. To that end, the
implementation of the Prison Rape
Elimination Act of 2003, with its
reporting requirement for
correctional institutions, represents
a positive move.

• Thankfully, there have been some
other hopeful developments on the
correctional horizon. Jails in a
position to do so have expanded
their medical and treatment options
to address the needs of inmates.
Architectural and managerial
solutions have been applied to jails
in the form of new-generation jails
and coequal pay for staff in sheriffs’
departments, and some jails have
even experimented with community
engagement to ensure that the needs
of people in communities are not
neglected when such folks enter
jails or reenter communities.

KEY TERMS

Coequal staffing, 130

Community jails, 128

Jails, 110

New-generation or podular
direct-supervision jails, 127

Overcrowding, 112

Prison Rape Elimination Act of
2003, 125

Reentry, 131

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Why are jails the “dumping
ground” for so many people in our
communities? What are the
consequences of this social policy?

2. What is the best use for jails? What
factors might make it difficult to
operate jails so that they are able to
focus on this best use?

3. What do you think are the best
practices (most effective) in
managing medically challenged or
potentially suicidal inmates?

4. How can jail managers best reduce
or eliminate sexual violence against
inmates in jails? What do you think
keeps managers from being
successful at eliminating such
violence?

5. What factors are likely to
compromise the ability of podular
direct-supervision jails to achieve

their promise?

6. Why are jail staff in most facilities
and sheriffs’ departments still paid
less than those on patrol? What
argument can be made for the same
or even higher pay for jail staff?

7. What are the relative advantages
and disadvantages of community
jails?

8. How might reentry programs
prevent recidivism?

p.133

Review → Practice → Improve

Sharpen your skills with SAGE edge at
edge.sagepub.com/stohressentials3e.

FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
AND APPLICATION, TAKE A
LOOK AT THE INTERACTIVE

EBOOK FOR THESE PREMIUM
RESOURCES:

Career Video 6.1 Professor

SAGE News Clip 6.1 Alabama
Prisons and HIV

SAGE News Clip 6.2 Prison
Suicide Amid Hernandez News

Journal Article 6.1 Integrated
Primary and Behavioral Health Care in
Patient-Centered Medical Homes for Jail
Releases With Mental Illness

p.326

15
Correctional
Programming
and
Treatment

AP Photo/Sean Rayford

Media Library

CHAPTER 15 Media Library

PREMIUM VIDEOPREMIUM VIDEO

Career VideoCareer Video

Peak career video 15.1: Internal
Affairs Investigator

SAGE News ClipSAGE News Clip

SAGE News Clip 15.1: US Jails
Mentally Ill

SAGE News Clip 15.2: Drug
Treatment

Feature VideoFeature Video

Schram Personal Perspective video
14.1: Rehabilitation Efforts

Journal ArticleJournal Article

Journal Article: 15.1: Defining
Probability in Sex Offender Risk

Assessment

p.327

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Understand what rehabilitation is and
why it is imperative

• Know the principles of evidence-

based practices

• Understand the risk, needs, and
responsivity model of treatment

• Learn something about cognitive-
behavioral therapy

• Understand the functions of
therapeutic communities in
corrections

• Know the special treatment modalities
applied to sex offenders

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Test your current knowledge of
correctional programming and treatment
by answering the following questions
true or false. Check your answers on
page 394 after reading the chapter.

1. Trying to rehabilitate criminals is
mollycoddling them and costs society
too much; therefore, we should stop
trying.

2. Programs to treat offenders and
prevent recidivism are the biggest
budget items in corrections after
salaries.

3. Even the best-run treatment
programs reduce recidivism by only

about 5%.

4. Personal experience will give you a
better understanding of what will or
will not work with criminals.

5. Because addiction is a brain disease,
the major way of attacking it in
corrections is through pharmaceutical
means.

6. Sex offenders are less likely to
reoffend than almost any other type
of offender.

7. Most people arrested in major cities
test positive for some kind of illegal
drug.

8. There are more mentally ill
individuals in U.S. jails and prisons
than in mental hospitals.

LIFE’S TURNING POINTS

Kathy Gardener was born to an “all-
American” family in Dayton, Ohio. Her
parents sent her to a Catholic girls’
school, where she did well in her
studies. All seemed to be going well for
Kathy until she was 16 years old, when
she went to a local air force base with
two older friends from the
neighborhood to meet the boyfriend of
one of the girls. The boyfriend brought
along two of his friends, and the six of

them partied with alcohol, drugs, and
sex. It was Kathy’s first time
experiencing any of these things, and
she discovered that she liked all of
them. Thus began a 9-year spiral into
alcohol, drug, and sex addiction and
into all the crimes associated with these
conditions such as drug trafficking,
robbery, and prostitution.

When Kathy was 25 years old, she was
involved in a serious automobile
accident in which she broke her pelvis,
both legs, and an arm and suffered a
concussion. She was charged with a
probation violation, drunken driving,
and possession of methamphetamine for
sale. Kathy spent 10 months
recuperating from her injuries, during
which she was drug, alcohol, and sex
free. Because of her medical condition,
she was placed on probation. Her
probation officer (PO) was a real
“knuckle-dragger” who demanded full
and immediate compliance with all
conditions of Kathy’s probation but who
also became something of a father
figure to her. While she was
recuperating, she was often taken care
of by a male nurse she described as
“nerdy but nice.” Her parents, who had
been estranged from her for some time,
became reacquainted with her, and her
PO and nurse taught her to trust men
again. She also occupied her time taking
online college courses on drug addiction

and counseling. She eventually married
her “nerdy nurse” with her parents’
blessing, and one of the guests was the
“knuckle-dragger.”

p.328

Kathy’s story illustrates some core ideas
in this chapter. No matter how low a
person sinks into antisocial behavior, he
or she is not destined to continue the
downward spiral. There are a number of
treatment programs available for all
sorts of problems that get people into
trouble with the law. Of course, not
everyone is confronted with such a
dramatic turning point in his or her life
as a major automobile accident, leaving
the person plenty of time to ruminate
about life and where he or she is going.
Kathy’s addictive personality got her
into all kinds of trouble, and she knew
it. People must come to this realization,
and when they do there must be
programs in place to help them turn
their lives around or else they will
probably fail and the community will
suffer.

Feature Video
Schram Personal Perspective video
14.1: Rehabilitation Efforts

INTRODUCTION: THE RISE AND
FALL (AND RISE AGAIN) OF
REHABILITATION

As we have seen, there are five primary goals
of the correctional system: deterrence,
incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, and
reentry. This chapter deals with the fourth of
these goals—rehabilitation. The term
rehabilitation means to restore or return to
constructive or healthy activity (habilitation),
but many offenders never experienced
anything close to habilitation in the first place,
so there is little to restore. Correctional
treatment or programming needs to begin at
the beginning and try to provide some of the
things previously missing from the lives of
offenders. Such programming obviously
cannot supply the warmth and nurturing so
critical during the early years of life or the
deep sense of attachment and commitment to
social institutions that comes from such
experiences. However, programming and
treatment can provide some of the concrete
rewards, such as an education and job
training, that most of us have had largely

thanks to the attachments to the family and
other social institutions we enjoyed as
children, and it can do its best to change the
destructive thinking patterns that infect
criminal minds.

We try to rehabilitate criminals with the
realization that whatever helps offenders helps
the community. As former U.S. Supreme
Court Chief Justice Warren Burger opined,
“To put people behind walls and bars and do
little or nothing to change them is to win a
battle but lose a war. It is wrong. It is
expensive. It is stupid” (as cited in
Schmalleger, 2001, p. 439). In this chapter, we
look at various ways that treatment personnel
have been fighting the war. When reading this
chapter, keep in mind that the vast majority of
money assigned to correctional agencies is
spent on surveillance and control functions.
According to the National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse (2010),
among the 1.5 million inmates in jails and
prisons nationwide in 2006, only 11.2% had
received professional treatment since
admission.

The American Prison Association (now the
American Correctional Association, ACA)
declared its commitment to rehabilitation in
the following excerpt from its Declaration of
Principles written nearly a century and a half
ago (see In Focus 11.1).

Influenced by British pioneers Alexander
Maconochie and Walter Crofton,

rehabilitation was the goal of the early
American prison reformers such as Zebulon
Brockway. The ideal of rehabilitation reached
the pinnacle of its popularity from about 1950
through the 1970s when the medical model of
criminal behavior prevailed. The medical
model viewed crime as a moral sickness that
required treatment, and prisoners were to
remain in custody under indeterminate
sentences until “cured.” Consistent with the
switch from a punishment role to a more
rehabilitative corrections role, classification
systems, individual and group counseling,
therapeutic milieus, and college classes were
added to the usual rehabilitative fare of labor,
basic education, and vocational training
(Cullen & Gendreau, 2001).

p.329

IN FOCUS 15.1

The American Correctional
Association’s 1870
Declaration on Treatment

Corrections is responsible for providing
programs and constructive activities that
promote positive change for responsible
citizenship.

Opportunity for positive change or
“reformation” is basic to the concept of
corrections because punishment without
the opportunity for redemption is unjust

and ineffective. Hope is a prerequisite
for the offender’s restoration to
responsible membership in society.

Sound corrections programs at all levels
of government require a careful balance
of community and institutional services
that provide a range of effective,
humane, and safe options for handling
juvenile and adult offenders.

Corrections must provide classification
systems for determining placement,
degree of supervision, and programming
that afford differential controls and
services for juvenile and adult
offenders, thus maximizing opportunity
for the largest number.

Corrections leaders should actively
engage the community to assist in the
restoration and reintegration of the
offender.

Offenders, juvenile or adult, whether in
the community or in institutions, should
be afforded the opportunity to engage in
productive work, participate in
programs including education,
vocational training, religion, counseling,
constructive use of leisure time, and
other activities that enhance self-worth,
community integration, and economic
status.

Source: American Correctional Association

(2013). Reprinted with the permission of the

American Correctional Association,

Alexandria VA.

The rehabilitative goal was questioned and
then fell apart with the publication in 1974 of
Robert Martinson’s article, “What Works?
Questions and Answers About Prison
Reform,” in which the author concluded that
“with few and isolated exceptions the
rehabilitation efforts that have been reported
so far have no appreciable effects on
recidivism” (Martinson, 1974, p. 25).
Unfortunately, the rhetorical question “What
works?” got translated into a definitive
“Nothing works” and became a taken-for-
granted part of corrections lore. Before we can
decide whether something does or does not
work, we need to define thresholds for what
we mean. If we demand 100% success, then
we can be sure that “nothing works.” A
program designed to change people is not like
a machine that either works or does not.
Human nature being what it is, nothing works
for everybody, some things work for some
people some of the time, and nothing will
work for anybody all of the time. High failure
rates existed in many fields at their inception,
but as practitioners in those fields learned
from their mistakes and their successes,
failure rates inevitably dropped.

THE SHIFT FROM “NOTHING

WORKS” TO “WHAT WORKS?”

Many of the correctional programs Martinson
(1974) surveyed sought to change behaviors
unrelated to crime, used programs that were
not intensive enough, and used staff who were
not adequately skilled. Few programs were
based on the proper assessment of offender
risks and needs, and programs often were
faddish “Let’s see what happens” programs,
including everything from acupuncture to Zen
meditation. While both these practices are
beneficial in their own right, they are hardly
useful for changing criminal lifestyles. One
probation department actually insisted that
male offenders should “get in touch” with
their feminine side by requiring them to dress
in female clothes, and another required
“poetry therapy” (Latessa, Cullen, &
Gendreau, 2002). Correctional resources are
scarce and should be expended only on
programs that have proven themselves useful
in reducing recidivism.

p.330

ETHICAL ISSUE

What Would You
Do?

You are the chairperson of your state’s
financial appropriation committee. The
director of state corrections is again
asking for a substantial increase in the

prison budget for new treatment
counselors in the state’s five prisons.
Given a realistic reduction in recidivism
of about 10%, and given other pressing
needs the state has, would you
recommend appropriating the money or
simply deny the request without taking it
to the committee?

How have Martinson’s (1974) conclusions
stood up over the last 30 years? Gendreau and
Ross (1987) reviewed a number of studies of
treatment programs and concluded, “It is
downright ridiculous to say that ‘Nothing
works’ . . . Much is going on to indicate that
offender rehabilitation has been, can be, and
will be achieved” (p. 395). Others have stated
that properly run community-based programs
could result in a 30% to 50% reduction in
recidivism (Van Voorhis, Braswell, & Lester,
2000), although on the basis of major
literature reviews, reductions in the 10% to
20% range are more realistic expectations
(Cullen & Gendreau, 2001). A “success rate”
is the difference in recidivism between a
treatment group and a control group. A review
of studies from prison, jail, probation, and
parole settings conducted by Pearson, Lipton,
Cleland, and Yee (2002) found that 55.7% of
the subjects in treatment groups did not
reoffend versus 43.3% of control group
subjects. This difference translates into an
average of 22.3% decrease in offending for
treatment group members (55.7 – 43.3 =

12.4/55.7 = 22.3). Although there are still
plenty of failures, if treatment programs
managed only half this success rate, the
financial and emotional savings to society
would be truly enormous.

Lipsey and Cullen (2007) reviewed numerous
studies of a variety of correctional
intervention programs conducted from 1990
to 2006 and concluded that treatment works
moderately well in reducing recidivism.
Lipsey and Cullen believed that the biggest
problem in offender treatment is not that
“nothing works” but rather that correctional
systems do not use the available research to
determine what works—and then implement
it. Rather, they tend to rely on convenience
(“Who is available and what methods do they
use?”), custom (“We’ve always done it this
way and see no reason to change”), and
ideology (“Criminals are scumbags; why
waste time and money on them?”).

EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES

Moving from the medical model to the just
deserts/risk management model in corrections
did not mean the death of the rehabilitation
goal, but terms such as “assessment” and
“programming” have replaced medical terms
such as “diagnosis” and “treatment.” The
main concern of corrections is to reduce the
risk that offenders pose to society, not to
improve offenders’ lives. Of course, the two
goals are not incompatible; if more offenders

can be taught to walk the straight and narrow,
the risk of community members being
victimized by them is reduced proportionately.
Even though programs are run on a financial
shoestring, prison officials like programming
because it keeps inmates busy and out of
trouble. Inmates also like it because it gives
them something to do outside of their cells
and looks good on their parole board records.

The movement to a “what works” frame of
mind has resulted in the most progressive
agencies moving to evidence-based
practices (EBP). EBP simply means that in
order to reduce offender recidivism,
corrections must implement practices that
have consistently been shown by rigorous
empirical assessment to be effective in that
endeavor. Extensive research has identified
the following eight principles of evidence-
based programming as formulated by the
National Institute of Corrections and
illustrated in Figure 15.1:

p.331

1. Assess Actuarial Risk/Needs—
Assessing offenders’ risk and needs
(focusing on dynamic and static risk
factors and criminogenic needs) at the
individual and aggregate levels is
essential for implementing the
principles of best practice.

2. Enhance Intrinsic Motivation—
Research strongly suggests that

Comstock/Comstock/Thinkstock

PHOTO 15.1: In addition to basic
educational courses and vocational
training, college classes are also offered
as part of the rehabilitative role of
correctional programs.

“motivational interviewing” techniques,
rather than persuasion tactics,
effectively enhance motivation for
initiating and maintaining behavior
changes. Motivational interviewing is a
method of prompting behavior change

by helping clients to explore and
resolve discrepant thinking, that is, the
ambivalent feelings of wanting, and not
wanting, to change. The task of the
counselor is to facilitate and engage
intrinsic motivation on the assumption
that if people can resolve the
ambivalence themselves, they will
value it more than if it is resolved by
others, and they will develop a “can do”
attitude.

3. Target Interventions

a. Risk Principle—Prioritize
supervision and treatment resources
for higher risk offenders.

b. Needs Principle—Target
interventions to criminogenic needs.

c. Responsivity Principle—Be
responsive to temperament, learning
style, motivation, gender, and culture
when assigning to programs.

d. Dosage—Structure 40% to 70% of
high-risk offenders’ time for 3 to 9
months.

e. Treatment Principle—Integrate
treatment into full sentence/sanctions
requirements. Take a proactive
approach to treatment using
cognitive-behavioral therapy.

4. Skill Train With Directed Practice—
Provide evidence-based programming
that emphasizes cognitive-behavior
strategies and is delivered by well-
trained staff.

5. Increase Positive Reinforcement—
Apply four positive reinforcements for
every one negative reinforcement for
optimal behavior change results.

6. Engage Ongoing Support in Natural
Communities—Realign and actively
engage prosocial support for offenders
in their communities for positive
reinforcement of desired new behaviors.

7. Measure Relevant
Processes/Practices—An accurate and
detailed documentation of case
information and staff performance,
along with a formal and valid
mechanism for measuring outcomes, is
the foundation of EBP.

8. Provide Measurement Feedback—
Providing feedback builds
accountability and maintains integrity,
ultimately improving outcomes.

Taking a closer look at some of these
principles, the psychosocial assessment of
offenders typically begins with the risk,
needs, and responsivity (RNR) model.
The RNR model is the premier treatment
model in corrections today in the United
States and in many other countries (Ward,
Melser, & Yates, 2007). The risk principle
refers to an offender’s probability of
reoffending, and those with the highest risk
are targeted for the most intense treatment
(“dosage” under Principle 3). The needs
principle refers to offenders’ needs, the lack
of which puts them at risk for reoffending,

and suggests that these needs receive high
priority. The responsivity principle
maintains that if offenders are to respond to
treatment in meaningful and lasting ways,
counselors must be aware of their different
development stages, motivation, and learning
styles as well as their need to be treated with
respect and dignity (Andrews, Bonta, &
Wormith, 2006). The crux of these three
principles is that we can no longer rely on
“one size fits all” models, and treatment must
be tailored to individual offenders’ risks and
needs.

p.332

Offenders’ risks and needs are assessed by
two separate scales: one for risk and one for
needs. These scales are used to make
predictions about offenders’ success/failure
based on actuarial data (Principle 1), that
is, what has actually occurred and been
recorded over many thousands of cases. It has
been found time and time again across many
professions that decisions made on the basis
of actuarial statistical norms trump decisions
based on the insight of individuals the great
majority of the time (Andrews et al., 2006).
Offender risk refers to the probability that a
given offender will reoffend and thus the
threat that he or she poses to the community.
This is assessed by assigning numerical scores
to the scale according to the extent that the
offender evidences factors known to correlate
with recidivism. Risk factors are either static
or dynamic. Static risk factors are those that

cannot change (gender, age, ethnicity, and
other background variables). Dynamic risk
factors (e.g., substance abuse, attitudes,
values, behavior patterns) are factors that are
targeted for change.

FIGUREFIGURE 15.115.1 Integrated EBP Model
Illustrated

Source: Crime and Justice Institute at Community

Resources for Justice (2009). United States

Department of

Justice.

Offender needs refer to deficiencies in
offenders’ lives that hinder their making a
commitment to a prosocial pattern of
behavior. Scores on the risks and needs
sections of the scale tend to be highly

correlated—offenders with high risk tend to
have high needs. Table 15.1 identifies and
describes risks and dynamic needs that must
be addressed; note that identifying needs
mirrors the identification of risk. The other
principles of EBP are either self-explanatory
or addressed elsewhere in this book.

COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL
THERAPY

The therapeutic concepts and methods that
proponents of the RNR model find most
useful in addressing offender risks and needs
are cognitive-behavioral (Ward et al., 2007).
Most of today’s programming consists of
cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
CBT is an approach that tries to solve
dysfunctional cognitions, emotions, and
behaviors in a relatively short time through
goal-oriented, systematic procedures and has
been called “the most overtly ‘scientific’ of all
major therapy orientations” (McLeod, 2003,
p. 123). CBT combines the principles of
operant psychology, cognitive theory, and
social learning theory. Operant psychology
asserts that behavior is determined by its
consequences (rewards and punishments).
Cognitive theory asserts that at a more
proximal level, self-defeating behaviors are
the result of unproductive thought patterns
relating to our history of rewards and
punishments (D. Wilson, Bouffard, &
Mackenzie, 2005). We can do nothing about
past experiences, but we can do something to

put the way we think about those things into
proper perspective. Finally, social learning
theory is a sociological view of socialization
that asserts behavior is learned by modeling
and imitation as well as by our history of
rewards and punishments.

p.333

TABLETABLE 15.115.1 Major Risk and/or Need
Factors and Promising
Intermediate Targets for
Reduced Recidivism

Source: Andrews, Bonata, and Wormith (2006, p.

11). Reprinted with permission of SAGE

Publications.

A. Ellis (1989) claimed that the great religious
leaders of the past were cognitive-behavioral
therapists because they were trying to get
people to change their behavior from self-
indulgence to temperance, from hatred to
love, and from cruelty to kindness by

appealing to their rational long-term self-
interest. The common message imparted by
religion is the need for personal change and
the rewards that such change brings with it:
“Do these things and you will feel good about
yourself now, and you will be eternally
rewarded.” This is what CBT tries to do:
change offenders’ antisocial and self-
destructive behavior into prosocial and
constructive behavior by changing the way
offenders think and by showing them that it is
in their best interests to do so.

The first lesson of CBT is that criminals think
differently from the rest of us. Yochelson and
Samenow (1976) and Samenow (1999)
pioneered treatment theories based on
challenging criminal thinking errors when
they realized that modalities based on “outside
circumstances” theories did not work. The
task is to understand how criminals perceive
and evaluate themselves and their world so
that we can change them. Criminal thinking is
destructive; it lands offenders in trouble with
family, friends, employers, and the criminal
justice system. Habitual offenders tend to
perceive the world in fatalistic fashion,
believing that there is little that they can do to
change the circumstances of their lives. To
illustrate this fatalism and other criminal
thinking patterns, B. Sharp (2006) cited a
cartoon in which one of the characters named
Calvin says,

p.334

I have concluded that nothing bad I do is
my fault. . . . I’m a helpless victim of
countless bad influences. An
unwholesome culture panders to my
undeveloped values and it pushes me into
misbehavior. I take no responsibility for
my behavior. I’m an innocent pawn of
society. (p. 3)

Criminals think like Calvin in the context of a
society where many people prefer to claim
victimhood rather than personal responsibility
(“McDonald’s made me fat,” “cigarette
companies made me smoke,” etc.). Many
mainstream criminological theories locate the
blame for crime on external factors such as
poverty and peer pressure rather than on
allowing criminals the dignity of owning
responsibility for their behavior. Criminals are
eager to jump on authoritative
pronouncements that excuse their behavior,
and defense lawyers are equally quick to
argue them in court. All of this reinforces the
patterns of criminal denial that treatment
providers find so frustrating (B. Sharp, 2006;
Walsh & Stohr, 2010). Challenging and
changing maladaptive thought patterns takes
on a central role in treatment as corrections
workers strive to impress on offenders that
whatever influences external factors may have
on behavior, before they can affect behavior
they need to be evaluated by individuals. The
frustrations we experience do influence our
behavior, but the important thing is not their
presence but rather whether we deal with
them constructively or destructively. The task

of correctional workers is to teach criminals to
stop blaming outside circumstances for their
problems, how to take responsibility for their
lives, and how to deal constructively with
adversity.

CBT methods are used to address issues
relating to self-control, victim awareness,
relapse prevention, critical reasoning, and
anger control (Vanstone, 2000). CBT literally
“exercises the thinking areas of the brain and
thereby strengthens the [neuronal] pathways
by which the thinking brain influences the
emotional brain” (Restak, 2001, p. 144).
Receive a high enough “dosage” of CBT, and
it can literally reorganize the brain’s wiring
patterns (Vaske, Galyean, & Cullen, 2011). A
number of brain imaging studies show that
CBT changes brain processes exactly the way
that drugs such as Prozac do (Linden, 2006).
A systematic review of brain imaging studies
revealed neurobiological changes in people
undergoing CBT. These studies show that
CBT modifies the brain circuits involved in
the regulation of negative emotions and fear
extinction in treatment subjects. In short, CBT
is able to change dysfunctions of the brain
(Porto et al., 2009). However, these studies
have been conducted only with individuals
with problems such as depression, anxiety,
and obsessive–compulsive disorder in which
patients, unlike most criminals, are intensely
motivated to overcome their problems.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE

PROGRAMMING

Alcohol is at the same time our most popular
and most deadly way of drugging ourselves.
Police officers spend more than half of their
law enforcement time on alcohol-related
offenses. One-third of all arrests (excluding
drunk driving) in the United States are for
alcohol-related offenses, about 75% of
robberies and 80% of homicides involve a
drunken offender and/or victim, and about
40% of other violent offenders in the United
States were drinking at the time of their
offenses (Mustaine & Tewksbury, 2004).

SAGE News Clip
SAGE News Clip 15.2: Drug
Treatment

Alcohol is a very powerful and addictive drug
and is the biggest curse of the criminal justice
system despite the system’s current obsession
with illegal drugs. Illegal drug use presents
almost as big a problem, with about 67% of
state prisoners and 56% of federal prisoners

PHOTO 15.2: Substance abuse often
contributes to poor decision making and
criminal engagement for inmates.

being regular drug users prior to their
imprisonment (Seiter, 2005). Clearly, mind-
altering substances, both legal and illegal, are
strongly associated with criminal behavior,
and as such the tendency of many criminals to
over-indulge in them must be addressed by
correctional agencies.

p.335

Substance abuse problems are extremely
difficult to treat because individuals most at
risk for becoming addicted share many of the
same traits associated with chronic criminal
behavior, with many of these traits being
strongly genetic (Vaughn, 2009). For instance,
alcoholism researchers divide alcoholics into
two types: Type I and Type II. Type II
alcoholics start drinking and using other drugs
earlier, become more rapidly addicted, and
exhibit many more character disorders,
behavior problems, and criminal involvement,
both prior and subsequent to their alcoholism,
than Type I alcoholics (Crabbe, 2002).
Genetic researchers maintain that genes are
much more heavily involved in Type II
alcoholism than in Type I alcoholism (Crabbe,
2002).

It has been shown that drug addiction and
criminality are part of a broader propensity to
engage in many forms of deviant and
antisocial behavior (Fishbein, 2003; Vaughn,
2009). For instance, the U.S. government’s
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM)
program collects urine samples from arrestees
across the country to test for the presence of
drugs. Figure 15.2 shows the percentage of
adult arrestees in five large U.S. cities who
tested positive for illicit drugs over a 3-year
period. The numbers show that illicit drug
abuse is clearly strongly associated with
criminal behavior, but the association is not
necessarily a causal one. A large body of
research indicates that drug abuse does not

appear to initiate a criminal career, although it
does increase the extent and seriousness of
one (Menard, Mihalic, & Huizinga, 2001). In
other words, research seems to point to the
fact that chronic drug abuse and criminality
are part of a broader tendency of some
individuals to engage in a variety of deviant
and antisocial behaviors. Numerous studies
have shown that traits characterizing
antisocial individuals such as conduct
disorder, impulsiveness, and psychopathy also
characterize drug addicts (Fishbein, 2003;
McDermott et al., 2000). The large body of
research indicating a strong genetic
vulnerability to alcoholism/drug addiction
helps to explain why many millions who drink
and/or experiment with drugs do not descend
into the hell of addiction and why others are
“sitting ducks” for it (Walsh, Johnson, &
Bolen, 2012).

DRUG TREATMENT WITH SWIFT
CONSEQUENCES FOR FAILURE:
HAWAII’S HOPE PROGRAM

The state of Hawaii has a drug treatment
program highly touted by the National
Institute of Justice (NIJ, 2012) called Hawaii’s
Opportunity Probation with Enforcement
(HOPE). The results of this program are based
on 493 drug-using probationers with an
elevated risk of violating probation, two-thirds
of whom were randomly assigned to the
HOPE program, with the rest being assigned
to regular supervision. The program
emphasizes a “no nonsense” delivery of both

treatment and “swift and certain” punishment
for violations. HOPE probationers are more
closely monitored for drug use and other
violations than control probationers. Figure
15.3 shows that this program had very
positive results after 12 months. For instance,
HOPE participants were 55% (47 – 21 = 26/47
= 55.3%) less likely to be arrested and 72%
less likely to have used drugs. This
experiment needs to be repeated in other
locations with larger samples, and if results of
any further studies come close to Hawaii’s,
there is real cause for optimism.

p.336

PERSPECTIVE FROM A
PRACTITIONER

Margaret Jackson, Drug
Treatment Specialist

Position: Drug Treatment Specialist

Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Education: Northern Arizona
University, B.S., criminal justice; Boise
State University, M.A., criminal justice
administration; Rio Salado University,
drug and alcohol counseling courses

Career Video
Peak career video 15.1: Internal
Affairs Investigator

How long have you been a drug
treatment specialist (DTS)?

I have been a drug treatment specialist
for 3 years; I have been in the
correctional field for a total of almost 5
years.

The primary duties and
responsibilities of a drug
treatment specialist:

My primary duties are to provide drug
abuse treatment to inmates in the federal
prison system. I provide individual and
group counseling/therapy to drug-
/alcohol-addicted inmates incarcerated
in the federal prison system. The

Federal Bureau of Prisons provides a
voluntary but criteria- based program
called Residential Drug Abuse Program
(RDAP), a 9-month (minimum of 500
hours of direct treatment) modified
therapeutic community (TC). I provide
clinical services using CBT techniques
and introduce community as method to
the inmates and develop a working
system of a therapeutic community. The
first step in working with inmates in this
process is to determine their eligibility
to receive counseling/therapy; one of
the tools I use for this is a psychosocial
assessment. If an inmate is eligible for
treatment, I will use the psychosocial
assessment to create an individual
treatment plan for the inmate. Once
eligibility and an assessment for
treatment have been conducted, a team
of three other therapists and I are
responsible for providing residential
treatment to the offenders. The inmates
are assigned a series of workbooks and
attend daily meetings. I construct the
inmates’ individual therapeutic
treatment plans, reviews, and
recommendations for further treatment
on release from federal prison.

The qualities/characteristics that
are most helpful for one in a
probation or parole career:

• Be fair and consistent

• Have good judgment

• Be aware of population at hand

• Know your craft well

• Be reliable

• Be a team worker

• Be able to communicate with
multiple agencies

• Be attentive to detail when writing
reports and preparing inmate charts

In general, a typical day for a
drug treatment specialist in
corrections:

Monday through Friday, the TC starts
with a morning meeting called
“community meeting.” This meeting is
an inmate-run self-help meeting, with
drug treatment staff supervising. During
the treatment meetings/groups, inmates
are learning and demonstrating
therapeutic language and actions in a
public “community” setting. After
community meeting, inmates are
separated into their appropriate phase
groups, based on the date they entered
treatment. RDAP, similarly to other
TCs, uses a hierarchical form for the 9
to 12 months inmates are in treatment.
Program participants typically have 3.5
hours of treatment daily; during this
time, I am working directly with the
inmates providing therapy. Therapy
consists of using their RDAP
workbooks and a facilitator guide to

treat the inmates’ addictions/behaviors.
In RDAP, there are three phases of
treatment, with new inmates entering
treatment every 3 months
(approximately 25 inmates per phase).
With inmates phasing in and out of
treatment, creating individual treatment
plans, review of progress, and treatment
summaries of each inmate are my
responsibility to maintain and develop.

My advice to someone either
wishing to study, or now
studying, criminal justice to
become a practitioner in this
career field:

It would be important to understand the
population for which you are providing
therapy. In this regard, being an intern
in a correctional setting would be
beneficial to someone becoming a
practitioner due to the nature of working
inside a prison. Finally, practice
development and presentation of
lectures/seminars to groups as this will
be a skill used often when providing
group therapy.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this
article are those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the opinions of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons or the
Department of Justice.

p.337

THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITIES

Therapeutic communities (TCs) are
residential settings for drug and alcohol
treatment that use the community spirit
generated by the influence of peers and
various group processes to help individuals
overcome their addiction and develop
effective social skills. Most such communities
offer long-term (typically 6–12 months)
residence, in which opportunities for attitude
and behavioral change operate on a
hierarchical model, whereby treatment stages
reflect increased levels of personal insight and
social responsibility. The interactions of the
residents are both structured and unstructured,
but they are always designed to influence
attitudes and behaviors associated with
substance abuse (Litt & Mallon, 2003). TCs
provide dynamic “mutual self-help”
environments, in which residents transmit and
reinforce one another’s acceptance of and
conformity with the highly structured and
stringent expectations of the TC and of the
wider community. Life in a TC is extremely
hard on people who have never experienced
any sort of disciplined expectations from
others, and as a consequence there are many
dropouts; some residents withdraw
voluntarily, and others are removed by TC
staff for non-compliance.

TCs also operate within prison walls and are
most often known as residential substance

abuse treatment (RSAT) communities.
These RSATs typically last 6 to 12 months
and are composed of inmates in need of
substance abuse treatment and whose parole
dates are set to coincide with the end of the
program. RSAT inmates are separated from
the negativity and violence of the rest of the
prison and are provided with extensive
cognitive-behavioral counseling and attend
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics
Anonymous (NA) meetings as well as many
other kinds of rehabilitative classes (Dietz,
O’Connell, & Scarpitti, 2003). Most
participants in these RSATs are positive about
most aspects of their experience, with most
inmates listing cognitive self-change
programs as the most positive aspect of their
treatment (Stohr, Hemmens, Shapiro,
Chambers, & Kelly, 2002). Dietz et al. (2003)
also found that most inmates in prison-based
TCs were positive about the program and that
they had significantly fewer rule violations
and rates of grievance filing than inmates in
the general population.

FIGUREFIGURE 15.215.2 Percentage of
Arrestees Testing Positive
for Drugs in Five U.S.
Cities, 2007–2013

Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy

(2014).

p.338

An interesting program implemented in a
prison setting and transitioning into the
community is the Delaware Multistage
Program (Mathias, 1995). In the beginning
stage, offenders spend 12 months in a prison-
based TC called Key; in Phase 2, they spend 6
months in a pre-release TC called Crest; and
finally, in Phase 3, they receive an additional 6
months of counseling while on parole or in
work release. Figure 15.4 compares drug use
and arrest outcomes for offenders completing
all phases (Key, Crest, and Key-Crest) 18
months after release from prison and a
comparison group of offenders who did not
participate in any of the phases. We see that
76% of Key-Crest members remained drug
free, and 71% remained arrest free compared
with only 19% and 30%, respectively, of the
control group. Put another way, three times as
many Key-Crest participants were drug free

after 18 months than the comparison group,
and 2.37 times more Key-Crest participants
were arrest free than the comparison group.

FIGUREFIGURE 15.315.3 Comparison of
Outcomes Between HOPE
and Control Probationers

Source: National Institute of Justice (2012).

Inciardi, Martin, and Butzin (2004) followed
this same group 5 years after release from
prison. As expected, the greater the time lapse
between treatment and evaluation, the greater
the relapse rate. Over the 5-year period, it was
found that 71% of drug abusers who went
through a residential treatment program and
who received additional treatment on release
(the Key-Crest group) had relapsed and 52%
had been rearrested. However, the contrast
with the comparison group still makes the
Key-Crest program impressive. Among the
comparison subjects, 95% had relapsed and

77% had been rearrested. This study shows
how extremely difficult it is to battle addiction
even after a long period of forced abstinence
and extensive psychosocial treatment.

PHARMACOLOGICAL TREATMENT

Leshner (1998) informed us that addiction is a
brain disease and a “prototypical
psychobiological illness, with critical
biological, behavioral, and social context
elements” (p. 5). Because addiction is
basically a brain chemistry problem,
pharmacological treatment with drug
antagonists (drugs that work by blocking the
effects of other drugs) stabilizes brain
chemistry and renders addicts more receptive
to psychosocial counseling. Proponents of
pharmacological treatment emphasize that it is
not a magic bullet and that it augments, not
replaces, traditional treatment methods.

There are many drug antagonists, but only one
has claimed success in curbing both alcohol
and drug addiction—naltrexone. Naltrexone
reduces craving among alcohol/drug abstinent
addicts and reduces the pleasurable effects of
those who continue to use (Schmitz, Stotts,
Sayre, DeLaune, & Grabowski, 2004). A
study of drug addicts on federal probation
found that about one-third of probationers
who received naltrexone plus counseling
relapsed as opposed to two-thirds of those
who only received counseling (Kleber, 2003).
A new drug called Vivitrol is a slow-release
version of naltrexone (it releases the drug into

the blood stream slowly over a period of days)
that controlled clinical trials have shown to be
effective not only in preventing drug abuse
relapse but also in diminishing the cravings
that drive it. “Vivitrol is the first non-narcotic,
non-addictive, extended release medication
approved for the treatment of opioid
dependence—marking an important turning
point in our approach to treatment” (Volkow,
2010).

p.339

FIGUREFIGURE 15.415.4 Delaware Multistage
Correctional Treatment
Program 18 Months
After Release From
Prison

Source: Mathias (1995). National Institute on Drug

Abuse and Addiction.

Proponents of pharmacological treatment
claim that the effects of such treatment are

more effective and immediate and wonder
why the correctional system is relatively
uninterested in pharmacological treatment
(Kleber, 2003). It could be that corrections
professionals received their training primarily
in the social sciences, and there are some who
have genuine ethical problems regarding
chemical treatments for behavioral problems.
However, according to the National Institute
on Drug Abuse (2006), while medication is
important for treating many addicts because
medication helps them to stabilize their lives,
it must be combined with counseling.

ANGER MANAGEMENT

A central component of many treatment
programs in corrections is anger management,
particularly in violent, drug, and sex offender
treatment programs. Anger management
programs consist of a number of CBT
techniques by which someone with problems
in controlling anger can learn the cause and
consequences of anger to reduce the degree of
anger and avoid anger-inducing triggers.
Anger is often central to violent criminal
behavior, and given the frustrations resulting
from being in custody or under correctional
supervision in the community, it often leads to
violence. Anger is a normal and often
adaptive human feeling that is aroused when
we feel that we have been offended or
wronged in some way. The tendency to undo
that wrongdoing by retaliating is motivated by
anger and is adaptive in the sense that it warns

those who have offended or wronged you that
you are not to be treated that way. The
problem, however, is not anger per se but
rather the inability of some to manage it.
These individuals often become excessively
angry over minor real or imagined slights to
the point of rage.

Anger management classes are taught in
groups and designed to increase offenders’
responsibility for ownership of their emotions
(anger) and their reactions to them. Offenders
often become frustrated and angry because
they think that life is not fair to them (“I’m a
victim of circumstances”) and the world owes
them a living. This kind of destructive
thinking must be challenged and replaced by
individual responsibility. Anger management
classes also teach such skills as rational
thinking (“Did this person really mean to diss
me?”) to increase offenders’ ability to react to
frustration and conflict in assertive rather than
aggressive ways and to develop effective
communication skills (Jolliffe & Farrington,
2009). There appears to be a growing
consensus that properly conducted anger
management programs reduce inmate violence
and reduce violent recidivism for program
completers versus control subjects by about
8% to 10% (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2009;
Serin, Gobeil, & Preston, 2009). Although this
seems like a small return on a corrections
investment, even an 8% reduction in violent
offenses prevents much needless suffering and
millions of dollars in expenses.

p.340

ETHICAL ISSUE
What Would You
Do?

You are the chief psychologist in the
largest state prison in the state. One of
your counselors hasn’t recommended that
any inmate be put on a program of pre-
release in 6 months, and you get a lot of
complaints about his “hard-nosed”
attitude. The counselor tells you that he
operates from a therapeutic theory with a
“no nonsense, no excuses” framework
and that he’s not going to let these “trailer
trash out of here until they’ve completed
their full minimums.” What would be
your response to this counselor?

SEX OFFENDERS AND THEIR
TREATMENT

The American public harbors all sorts of very
negative images of sex offenders. We lock
them up under civil commitment orders after
they have completed their prison terms, and
all 50 states have sex offender registration
laws (Talbot, Gilligan, Carter, & Matson,
2002). However, the term sex offender defines

a very broad category of offenders ranging
from “flashers” to true sexual predators, just
as property offenders include everyone from
petty shoplifters to career burglars. At least
98% of all sex offenders are either in the
community on probation or parole or will be
some day (Carter & Morris, 2002), making
the issue of sex offender treatment of the
utmost importance.

JOURNAL ARTICLE
Journal Article: 15.1: Defining
Probability in Sex Offender Risk
Assessment
CLICK TO SHOW

Although it is part of popular lore that sex
offenders are untreatable and will never stop
their offending, as a category of offenders
they are actually less likely to reoffend than
any other category. Looking at many years of
British crime statistics, it was found that
burglars are the most likely of all criminals to
be reconvicted (76%) within 2 years of being
released from prison, with sex offenders being
the least likely (19%) (Mawby, 2001, p. 182).
A review of 61 studies of sex offender
recidivism found an average rate of
reconviction for sexual crimes of 13.4% over
a 4- to 5-year follow-up (Hanson & Bussiere,
1998). Perhaps the most instructive study of
recidivism conducted to date was a study by
the Bureau of Justice Statistics, whose
researchers tracked 9,691 sex offenders
released from prisons in 15 states in 1994
(Langan, Schmitt, & Durose, 2003). Over the

3-year period of the follow-up, sex offenders
had a lower rearrest rate (43%) than 272,111
non–sex offenders released at the same time
in the same states (68%). Rearrest rates
included all types of crimes and technical
violations such as failing to register as a sex
offender and missing appointments with their
parole officers. Only 3.5% of the sex
offenders were reconvicted of a new sex
crime during the follow-up period. Because
recidivism rates include only those offenders
who have been caught, in common with other
types of offenders, the above figures should be
considered bare minimums.

State-of-the-art treatment of sex offenders
must include a thorough assessment of
psychosocial problem areas, deviant arousal
patterns, and polygraph (“lie detector”)
assessment (Marsh & Walsh, 1995). Deviant
arousal patterns are assessed by a device
called a penile plethysmograph (PPG), which
measures blood flow in the penis (the level of
the swelling of the penis) when exposed to
deviant sexual images. These measures are
then compared with measures in response to
consensual adult sexual images. If, for
instance, a man achieves a 10% erection
viewing non-deviant heterosexual
pornography, but achieves a 75% erection
viewing sex involving young boys, we know
where his sexual tastes are—the penis finds it
difficult to lie. Of course, the PPG is far from
foolproof.

Counselors are in agreement that effective

PHOTO 15.3: Group work is often used
in offender programming both inside and
outside of correctional facilities.

treatment is impossible until the full extent of
the offender’s sex offending history is
acknowledged by him or her and known to
treatment personnel (Walsh & Stohr, 2010).
But sex offenders are notorious for hiding
their sexual histories, so polygraph assessment
is needed to access their sexual histories. In
comparing self-reports pre- and post-
polygraph testing across 2 decades of
research, it was found that child molesters
underreport the number of sex crimes they
have committed by about 500% and
overreport their own childhood sexual
victimization (the “I’m a victim too” excuse)
by about 250% (Hindman & Peters, 2001).
The polygraph therefore may be seen as a
very useful tool if the first goal of treatment is
to honestly acknowledge one’s sexual history.

p.341

Unlike treatment for other problems in
corrections, there has been a great deal of
interest in the pharmacological treatment of
sex offenders. Numerous researchers have
concluded that optimal treatment (following a
thorough psychosocial and physiological
assessment) combines the biomedical and
cognitive-behavioral approaches (Walsh &
Stohr, 2010). The biomedical approach
involves so-called chemical castration
with a synthetic hormone called Depo-
Provera, which is also sold as a method of
female birth control. Depo-Provera works in
males to reduce sexual thoughts, fantasies,
and erections by drastically reducing the
production of testosterone, the major male sex
hormone. Depo-Provera prevents testosterone
production, and it is testosterone activating a
part of the brain called the hypothalamus that
controls the male sex drive. Depriving the
brain of testosterone allows offenders to
concentrate on their psychosocial problems
without the distracting fantasies and urges
(Marsh & Walsh, 1995).

Following the State of California in 1997,
several states now mandate chemical
castration (“castration” is reversible on
withdrawal from the drug) for repeat
offenders. Not all sex offenders should be
treated with this drug because there are
sometimes negative side effects, and treatment
can be provided only by a medical doctor.
However, a number of reviews of the
literature from Europe and America show that

anti-androgen drugs such as Depo-Provera
result in recidivism rates for repeat rapists and
child molesters that are remarkably low (in
the 2%–3% range) when compared with
offenders treated with only psychosocial
methods (Maletzky & Field, 2003). A review
of 11 meta-analyses covering 353 separate
studies from 1943 to 2009 found that surgical
castration had the strongest effect on lowering
recidivism, followed by chemical castration
(B. Kim, Benekos, & Merlo, 2016). Insight-
oriented therapies such as psychoanalysis had
essentially no effect, while CBT had a
significant effect, but much less if not
combined with some form of anti-testosterone
medication.

MENTALLY ILL OFFENDERS

As graphically indicated in Figure 15.5 from
the Council of State Governments Justice
Center (2014), mental illness lurks behind
many factors that are linked to criminal
behavior. Mentally ill offenders under
correctional supervision present a particularly
difficult treatment problem. Alcoholics and
drug addicts ingest substances that alter the
functioning of their brains in ways that
interfere with their ability to cope with
everyday life, although their brains may be
normal when not artificially befuddled.
Mentally ill persons also have brains that limit
their capacity to cope, but that limitation is
intrinsic to their brains, not attributable to
intoxicating substances. Studies around the

world have found that mentally ill persons
(mostly schizophrenics and manic
depressives) are at least three to four times
more likely to have convictions for violent
offenses than persons in general (Fisher et al.,
2006). Most mentally ill persons, however, are
more likely to be victims than victimizers, and
many of them make their problems worse by
abusing alcohol and/or drugs (Walsh & Yun,
2013). It is because of their substance abuse
and greater propensity for violence, in
addition to mental hospital
deinstitutionalization, that the mentally ill are
overrepresented in the correctional system.

SAGE News Clip
SAGE News Clip 15.1: US Jails
Mentally Ill

p.342

Torrey and his colleagues (2014) told us that
there were an estimated 356,268 inmates with
severe mental illness in prisons and jails in the
United States in 2012 and approximately

35,000 severely mentally ill patients in
psychiatric hospitals. In addition, the Bazelon
Center for Mental Health Law (2008)
estimated that 16% of individuals on
probation or parole have some form of mental
illness. This state of affairs results from the
deinstitutionalization of all but the most
seriously ill patients from mental hospitals
that occurred during the 1960s. For instance,
there were 559,000 persons in U.S. mental
hospitals in 1955; in 2000 (with a U.S.
population about 80% greater), there were
only 70,000 (Gainsborough, 2002), and as we
have seen, it was down to 35,000 in 2012.
Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill from
mental hospitals has shifted to their
institutionalization in jails and prisons, which
in essence has resulted in the criminalization
of mental illness (Lurigio, 2000). Table 15.2
presents the highlights of a Bureau of Justice
Statistics report on the mental health problems
of prison and jail inmates (James & Glaze,
2006).

Mentally ill offenders in jails and prisons are
often victimized by other inmates, who call
them “bugs” and exploit them sexually and
materially (stealing from them), although
most inmates seek to avoid them. Mentally ill
offenders are also punished by corrections
officers for behavior that, while not pleasant,
is symptomatic of their illness. These
behaviors include such things as excessive
noise, refusing orders or medication, self-
mutilation, and poor hygiene. Obviously,
correctional facilities are not the ideal place

for providing mental health treatment, even
assuming that the staff are aware who the
mentally ill are among their charges. Few
correctional or probation/parole officers have
any training about mental health issues, and
one nationwide survey of probation
departments found that only 15% of them
operated special treatment programs for the
mentally ill (Lurigio, 2000). It is not that
anyone expects correctional workers to
become treatment providers because that’s a
job for psychologists and psychiatrists.
However, they should be expected to
recognize signs and symptoms of mental
illness, know how to effectively deal with
situations involving mentally ill persons, and
have a basic understanding of the causes of
and treatment for the major mental illnesses.

FIGUREFIGURE 15.515.5 Mental Illness Lurks
Behind Many Other
Problems

Source: Council of State Governments Justice

Center (2014).

p.343

TABLETABLE 15.215.2 Prevalence of Mental
Health Problems Among
Prison and Jail Inmates

Source: James and Glaze (2006). U.S. Department of

Justice.

*Includes items not shown.

Treatment for the mentally ill in prisons and
jails consists primarily of antipsychotic and
antidepressive medication, typically
administered by a nurse. Many mentally ill
individuals, especially paranoid
schizophrenics, often refuse to take their
medication. It is permissible in a number of
states to forcibly treat mentally ill inmates if
they meet state-specific criteria, which is
typically if inmates pose a risk to others or

themselves. This is determined on a case-by-
case basis by a review committee composed
of correctional and medical professionals
(Torrey et al., 2014). Of course, just because
such procedures are authorized by the state
does not mean that they are used or that the
inmate will be treated. According to Torrey
and his colleagues (2014),

Given the many legal difficulties in
providing treatment for individuals with
serious mental illness in prisons and jails,
it is not surprising that many of them,
including those who are most severely
ill, receive no treatment whatsoever. This
leaves corrections officers with few
options for controlling mentally ill
inmates’ psychotic, often violent
behavior. One option is seclusion, which
often makes the inmate’s mental illness
worse. (p. 10)

What is both morally and fiscally required of
the criminal justice system is to provide
offenders with mental illness the support and
structure they need to avoid further criminal
behavior. One of the ways this is attempted is
through mental health courts modeled on drug
courts in use across the nation (and discussed
in Chapter 5). As with drug courts, mental
health courts seek to divert offenders from
jails and prisons by facilitating their access to
services, providing intensive judicial
monitoring, and promoting collaboration
among the court, probation, mental health
service, and social service providers.

Offender
Treatment

p.344

COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The treatment of criminal offenders in
modern Western nations is fairly
uniformly centered on the RNR model.
Countries that care little about the civil
rights and treatment of their citizens in
general obviously are not very concerned
about the humane treatment of their
prisoners. A modern country concerned
with rehabilitation, but with some
different assumptions about how to
achieve it, is Japan. A large cultural
difference between Japan and Western
nations such as the United States is that
whereas the latter emphasizes
individualism and a great degree of
personal freedom, the Japanese emphasis
is on collectivism and individual
conformity to community norms. Unlike
the general tendency in American
criminology to shift the blame for crime
away from the individual and onto
“society,” the Japanese place
responsibility for criminal behavior
squarely on the shoulders of the
individuals who commit it.

Western CBT counselors tend to play
down introspection (gaining insight into
one’s self) as too time-consuming and

believe that criminals need the
participation and direction of counselors
in order to benefit. Japanese correctional
counselors, on the other hand, see their
role as a kindly guide on the edge rather
than as a trainer at the center providing
definite directions (Bindzus, 2001). One
type of counseling favored in Japanese
corrections is called Naikan, which
means “inside looking” and is designed
to get offenders to see themselves as
others see them. According to Kanazawa
(2007), inmates undergoing Naikan
therapy will spend many hours alone
asking themselves three questions:
“What has my mother (and other
significant persons in my life) done for
me?”; “What have I done for her (and
other significant persons in my life) in
return?”; and “What problems have I
caused her (and other significant persons
in my life)?” (p. 762). Thinking about
these things is supposed to generate
feelings of remorse, sadness, empathy,
guilt, and consciousness of responsibility.
The counselor will enter the offender’s
cell every hour or so to check on
progress. Only if the offender displays
tendencies to blame outside forces for his
or her criminal behavior, or has not
adequately explored the questions, will
the counselor intervene to clarify.

Could such introspective methods work
with Western prisoners who exist in
cultures that seem to have little respect

for individual responsibility? Bindzus
(2001) expressed “doubts about the
physical and psychological ability of
European prisoners to stick through
NAIKAN for a one-week period, with
daily sessions up to sixteen hours” (p.
266). What works in one cultural context
might not work in others for a variety of
reasons. Of course, inmates require some
sort of concrete help as well as
introspective self-knowledge even in
Japan. Indeed, Eskridge (1989) listed a
large number of vocational training
courses available in Japanese penal
institutions, ranging from auto
mechanics, to seamanship, to welding.

SUMMARY

• Although the vast majority of the
correctional budget is spent on
security, rehabilitation efforts have
not completely ceased. The success
rates of many rehabilitation
programs are low, but outcomes are
significantly better for treated
offenders than for similarly situated
offenders who did not receive
treatment.

• Successful treatment programs

implement evidence-based practices
(EBP) that proceed by conducting a
thorough assessment of offenders’
risks and needs and then address
these issues using cognitive-
behavioral techniques along with
the principles of responsivity.
Treatment is best accomplished for
severe substance abusers in
therapeutic communities, although
even then there is a significant
percentage of failure. Much of this
failure has to do with the intense
psychological craving for the
substance of abuse, which is
something that may be significantly
alleviated by certain alcohol/drug
antagonists such as naltrexone.

• Similar observations were made
about sex offenders who have
difficulty in refraining from acting
out their sexual fantasies with
inappropriate targets. Repeat sex
offenders treated with Depo-
Provera combined with cognitive-
behavioral counseling have much
lower recidivism rates compared
with offenders treated only
psychologically.

p.345

• Mentally ill individuals are
represented in the correctional
system by a factor of at least 3 or 4
times their prevalence in the general

population. The correctional system
is not equipped to deal with
mentally ill people, who are often
victimized by other jail/prison
inmates or disciplined by
corrections officers for exhibiting
behavior that is basically part of
their mental disease syndrome.

KEY TERMS

Actuarial data, 332

Addiction, 338

Anger management programs,
339

Chemical castration, 341

Cognitive-behavioral therapy
(CBT), 332

Evidence-based practices (EBP),
330

Needs principle, 331

Offender needs, 332

Offender risk, 332

Residential substance abuse
treatment (RSAT), 337

Responsivity principle, 331

Risk, needs, and responsivity
(RNR) model, 331

Risk principle, 331

Therapeutic communities (TCs),
337

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. In your estimation, are the time,
effort, and finances spent on
rehabilitative efforts worth it given
the low success rates? Would longer
periods of incarceration better
protect the public?

2. Cognitive-behavioral approaches
stress thinking and rationality. How
about emotions? Do you think that
human behavior is motivated more
by emotions than by rationality?

3. Given the greater involvement of
genes in Type II alcoholism, in what
ways would you treat Type II
alcoholics differently from Type I
alcoholics if you were a treatment
provider? How about if you were a
probation/parole officer?

4. Should all sex offenders undergo
Depo-Provera treatment? What are
the ethical problems of such
invasive treatment?

5. Discuss the various component
parts of the responsivity principle.

Review → Practice → Improve

Sharpen your skills with SAGE edge at
edge.sagepub.com/stohressentials3e.

FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
AND APPLICATION, TAKE A
LOOK AT THE INTERACTIVE
EBOOK FOR THESE PREMIUM
RESOURCES:

Career Video 15.1 Internal Affairs
Investigator

Feature Video 15.1 Rehabilitation
Efforts

SAGE News Clip 15.1 U.S. Jails
Mentally Ill

SAGE News Clip 15.2 Drug
Treatment

Journal Article 15.1 Defining
Probability in Sex Offender Risk

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HE HUMAN STORIES BEHIND MASS INCARCERATION (13:40)

ARTICLE: EVEN IN PRISON, HEALTH CARE OFTEN COMES WITH A CO-PAY

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