3-11

Discussion Chapter 13: How have U.S. prisons changed since the big-house era? What do these changes mean for management?

Discussion Chapter 14: Are some rehabilitative programs more effective or valuable than others? Why or why not?

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THE DEFENDANT SAT QUIETLY AND LISTENED TO THE PROSE- CUTOR ADDRESS THE COURT. Michael Bowden was waiting to learn his sentence. Law enforcement officials accused Bowden of smuggling various forms of contraband, such as tobacco and methamphetamine, in return for cash into the Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington State. Bowden, who pled guilty to extortion, was not an organized crime figure, nor was he a powerful prison gang leader.1 At the time of his arrest, Bowden was a correctional officer at the facility. It is no secret that much of the contraband found in prisons comes in with staff. Researchers have talked about the corruption of prison officer authority for more than 50 years. For example, Gresham Sykes observed that prison officers sometimes tolerated minor rule violations in exchange for cooperation.2 And, more recently, investigations have focused on identifying and describing different types of relationships between incarcerated individuals and officers that violate departmental policies. Such actions not only jeopardize prison order, constitute an abuse of legal authority, and violate public trust, but they can also result in criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits. The Bowden case involved a lot more than an officer looking the other way while an incarcerated person engaged in low-level misconduct. As U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones put it, Bowden was “in a position of trust and power and it was abused.” Judge Jones went on to say that Bowden “compromised the safety of everyone in the facility.” Similarly, Michael Obenland, superintendent of the Monroe Correctional Complex, commented that the “presence of methamphetamine inside the prison endangers inmates and staff to additional risks as trades are made and debts are accrued, which often leads to increased violence.” Bowden was ultimately sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.3 The prison differs from almost every other institution or organization in modern society. It has unique physical features, and it is the only place where a group of employees manage a group of captives. Imprisoned people must live according to the rules of their keepers and with restricted movements. When reading this chapter, keep in mind that prison managers 1. Cannot select their clients 2. Have little or no control over the release of their clients 3. Must deal with clients who are there against their will 4. Must rely on clients to do most of the work in the daily operation of the institution— work they are forced to do and for which they are not paid 5. Must depend on the maintenance of satisfactory relationships between clients and staff Given these unique characteristics, how should prisons be run? Further, wardens and other key personnel are asked to perform a difficult job, one that requires skilled and dedicated managers. What rules should guide them? Remember that a wide range of institutions fall under the heading of “prison.” Some are treatment centers serving a relatively small number of clients; others are sprawling agricultural complexes; still others are ranches or forest camps. Although new facilities have opened in recent years, many prisons remain as large, fortress-like institutions with comparable management structures and incarcerated populations. In this chapter we look at how institutional resources are organized to achieve certain goals. At a minimum, incarcerated individuals must be clothed, fed, kept healthy, provided with recreation, protected from one another, and maintained in custody. In addition, administrators may face the tasks of offering vocational and educational programs and using the prison population as a source of labor in agriculture or industry. To accomplish all this in a community of free individuals would be taxing. To do so when the population consists of some of the most antisocial people in the society is surely a Herculean undertaking, one that depends on organization. Formal Organization The University of Texas, the General Motors Corporation, and the California State Prison at Folsom are very different organizations, each created to achieve certain goals. Differing organizational structures let managers coordinate the various parts of the university, auto manufacturer, and prison in the interests of scholarship, production, and corrections. A formal organization is deliberately established for particular ends. If accomplishing an objective requires collective effort, people set up an organization to help coordinate activities and to provide incentives for others to join. Thus, in a university, a business, and a correctional institution the goals, rules, and roles that define the relations among the organization’s members (the organizational chart) have been formally established. Amitai Etzioni, an organization theorist, uses the concept of compliance as the basis for comparing types of organizations. Compliance is obedience to an order or directive given by another person. In compliance relationships, an order is backed up by one’s ability to induce or influence another person to carry out one’s directives.4 People do what others ask because those others have the means—remunerative, normative, or coercive—to get the subjects to comply. Remunerative power is based on material resources, such as wages, fringe benefits, or goods, which people exchange for compliance. Normative power rests on symbolic rewards that leaders manipulate through ritual, allocation of honors, and social esteem. Coercive power depends on applying or threatening physical force to inflict pain, restrict movement, or control other aspects of a person’s life. Etzioni argues that all formal organizations employ all three types of power but that the degree to which they rely on any one of them varies with the desired goal. Thus, although the University of Texas probably relies mainly on normative power in its relationships with students and the public, it relies on remunerative power in relationships with faculty and staff. Although General Motors is organized primarily for manufacturing, it may appeal to “team spirit” or “safety employee of the month” campaigns to meet its goals. And although while managing staff, the warden at Folsom may rely on remunerative and normative powers to make this facility the best correctional facility in the United States, in working with prison residents he relies primarily on coercive power. The presence in high-custody institutions of “highly alienated lower participants” (the incarcerated), Etzioni says, makes the application or threat of force necessary to ensure compliance.5 Coercive power undergirds all prison relationships, but correctional institutions vary in their use of physical force and in the degree to which the incarcerated individuals are alienated. Correctional institutions can be placed on a continuum of custody or treatment goals. At one extreme is the highly authoritarian prison, where the movement of the prison population is greatly restricted, relationships between the supervisors and those who are supervised are formally structured, and the prime emphasis is on custody. In such an institution, treatment goals take a back seat. At the other extreme is the institution that emphasizes the therapeutic aspect of the physical and social environment. Here the staff members help incarcerated individuals overcome problems. Between these ideal types lies the great majority of correctional institutions. However, this custody–treatment continuum may neglect other aspects of imprisonment. After all, we expect a lot of prisons, including rehabilitating the deviant, punishing the wretched, deterring the motivated, and restraining the habitual. Broadly speaking, the purpose of imprisonment is to fairly and justly punish convicted individuals through periods of confinement that are commensurate with the seriousness of the offense. Thus, the mission with respect to incarcerated individuals has five features: 1. Keep them in: The facility must be secure, such that escapes do not happen and contraband cannot be smuggled in. 2. Keep them safe: Everybody inside the prison needs to be kept safe, not only from one another but from various environmental hazards as well. 3. Keep them in line: Prisons run on rules, and the ability of prison administrators to enforce compliance is central to the quality of confinement. 4. Keep them healthy: Individuals serving time in prison are entitled to have care for their medical needs. 5. Keep them busy: Constructive activities, such as work, recreation, education, and treatment programs, are antidotes to idleness.6 Prison work entails accomplishing this mission in a fair and efficient manner, without causing undue suffering. The state may run correctional institutions with other goals as well, but these are the main ones. The Organizational Structure For any organization to be effective, its leaders and staff must know the rules and procedures, the lines of authority, and the channels of communication. Organizations vary in their organizational hierarchy, in their allocation of discretion, in the effort expended on administrative problems, and in the nature of the top leadership. Concepts of Organization The formal administrative structure of a prison is a hierarchy of staff positions, each with its own duties and responsibilities, each linked to the others in a logical chain of command. As Figure 13.1 shows, the warden is ultimately responsible for the operation of the institution. Deputy wardens oversee the functional divisions of the prison: management, custody, programs, and industry and agriculture. Under each deputy are middle managers and line staff who operate the departments. Functions are subdivided according to prison size and population. Three principles are commonly used to organize the functioning of hierarchically structured organizations: unity of command, chain of command, and span of control. Unity of command is the idea that it is most efficient for a subordinate to report to only one superior. If a worker must respond to orders from two or more superiors, chaos ensues. Unity of command is tied to the second concept, chain of command. Because the person at the top of the organization cannot oversee everything, he or she must rely on lower-ranking staff to pass directives down. For example, the warden asks the deputy warden to have custody staff conduct a shakedown; the deputy warden passes the directive to the captain of the guard, who then has the lieutenant in charge of a particular shift carry out the search. The term span of control refers to the extent of supervision by one person. If, for example, a correctional institution offers many educational and treatment programs, the deputy warden for programs may not be able to oversee them all effectively. This deputy warden’s span of control is stretched so far that a reorganization and further division of responsibilities may be required. Two other concepts clarify the organization of correctional institutions: line and staff. Line personnel are directly concerned with furthering the institution’s goals. They have direct contact with the prison residents; such personnel include the custody force, industry and agricultural supervisors, counselors, and medical technicians. Staff personnel support line personnel. They usually work under the deputy warden for management, handling accounting, training, purchasing, and so on. Custodial employees make up the majority of an institution’s personnel. They are normally organized along military lines, from deputy warden to captain to correctional officer. The professional staff—such as clinicians, teachers, and industry supervisors—are separate from the custodial staff and have little in common with them. All employees answer to the warden, but the treatment personnel and the civilian supervisors of the workshops have their own titles and salary scales. Their responsibilities do not extend to providing special services to the custodial employees. The top medical and educational personnel may formally report to the warden but in fact look to the central office of the department of corrections for leadership. The multiple goals and separate employee lines of command often cause ambiguity and conflict in the administration of prisons. For example, the goals imposed on prisons are often contradictory or unclear. Conflicts between different groups of personnel (custodial versus treatment staff) and between staff and those who are incarcerated present significant challenges to prison administrators. The Warden The warden is the chief executive of the institution. The attitude that he or she brings to the job affects the organization. Not long ago the prison warden was an autocrat who ran the institution without direction from departments of corrections or the intrusion of courts, labor unions, or prisoner support groups.7 Things are quite different today. Contemporary prison wardens need a broad set of skills to manage large groups of employees and to operate facilities in a way that keeps everyone safe. The primary duties and tasks of prison wardens are summarized in The prison warden is the institution’s main contact with the outside world. Responsible for operating the prison, he or she normally reports to the deputy commissioner for institutions in the central office of the department of corrections. When the warden directs attention and energy outward (to the central office, parole board, or legislature), he or she delegates the daily operation of the prison to a deputy, usually the person in charge of custody. In recent years, wardens in most states have lost much of their autonomy to managers in the central office who handle such matters as budgets, research and program development, public information, and legislative relations. However, the warden’s job security still rests on the ability to run the institution effectively and efficiently. At the first sign of trouble, the warden may be forced to look for a new job, and in some states the top management of corrections seems to be in constant flux. In short, today’s prison warden must function effectively despite decreased autonomy and increased accountability. Management Bureaucracies tend to increase the personnel and resources used to maintain and manage the organization. This tendency can especially prevail in public bureaucracies, which strongly emphasize financial accountability and reporting to higher government agencies. Correctional institutions are no exception. Bureaucratic functions often fall to a deputy warden for management, who is responsible for housekeeping tasks: buying supplies, keeping up the buildings and grounds, providing food, maintaining financial records, and the like. However, some states centralize many of these tasks in the office of the commissioner to promote accountability and coordination among constituent institutions. For example, buying supplies from one warehouse that serves all state agencies has decreased the discretion of prison management to contract locally for provisions. Most personnel assigned to manage services for correctional institutions have little contact with the incarcerated; in some facilities they work in buildings separate from the main plant. Only personnel who provide services directly, such as the head of food services, have direct contact with the residents. Custodial Personnel Later in this chapter we examine in detail the role of the correctional officer. Here, simply note that in most institutions the custodial force has graded ranks (captain, lieutenant, officer) with pay differentials and job titles following the chain of command, as in the military. However, unlike the factory and the military, which have separate groups of supervisors and workers or officers and enlisted personnel, the prison requires its lowest-status employee, the correctional officer, to be both a supervisor (of incarcerated individuals) and a worker (for the warden). This causes role conflict and makes officers vulnerable to corruption by members of the prison population. Officers know the warden is judging their performance by the way they manage their clients, and they can seldom manage without at least some cooperation from these clients. Officers ease up on some rules so residents will more willingly comply with other rules and requests. “Careers in Corrections” offers a view of work as a state correctional officer. Program Personnel The contemporary correctional institution is concerned not only with punishing but also with encouraging prisoners’ participation in educational, vocational, and treatment programs. Such programs have been a part of corrections since the late 1800s, but the enthusiasm for rehabilitation that swept corrections after World War II created a wider variety of programs, as discussed in Chapter 14. Here we need only mention that rehabilitative and educational personnel find it difficult to achieve their goals in institutions whose primary mission is custody. Industry and Agriculture Personnel Since the invention of the penitentiary, the prison population has provided labor for industry and agriculture. As we show in Chapter 14, the importance of these functions has varied over time and among regions. For instance, in some southern prisons, most residents spend their time tending crops. In the Northeast, prison farms have disappeared because they are uneconomical and ill matched to the urban backgrounds of most prison occupants. Like other programs, industrial and agricultural production is usually administered outside of the strict custodial hierarchy. But unlike educational or treatment programs, work in a factory or farm requires supervisors. For example, administrators must often mediate disputes over the need for officers in guard towers or housing units and the need for officers in fields or factories. The Impact of the Structure The organizational structure of correctional institutions has changed over time. The traditional custodial prison was run as an autocracy, with the warden dominating the guard force and often disciplining employees as strictly as those sentenced to prison. When rehabilitation became a goal and treatment and educational programs were incorporated, a separate structure for programs, often headed by a deputy warden, was added. Its employees were professionals in the social and behavioral sciences, who frequently clashed with autocratic wardens who emphasized custody As some institutions began to focus on rehabilitation, correctional planners and scholars frequently contrasted the traditional prison organization with a collaborative model. For example, a 1967 U.S. presidential commission report referred optimistically to the future correctional institution in which a dedicated and professionally trained staff would work with other administrators and with prison residents to identify problems and to strive for rehabilitation.8 Such an institution would require structural changes to deemphasize the traditionally rigid control function, enlarge the decision-making role of treatment personnel, and allow input from the prison occupants about the operation of the facility. However, by the 1980s it was hard to find either prisons being run this way or correctional leaders advocating that they be so run. Some observers say that no more than a few institutions really followed the collaborative organizational style. Correctional institutions are more humanely administered today than they were in the past. This change is in part a response to the presence of rehabilitative personnel and programs, the increased training and professionalism of correctional personnel, the intrusion of the courts, and the growth of citizen observer groups that monitor operations. Society will no longer tolerate the harsh conditions once prevalent in prisons. A formal organizational chart does not convey the whole story of a prison’s organization; no chart can show how the people who occupy the positions actually perform. As theorists explain, an informal organization, with its own rules and procedures, chain of command, and channels of communication, exists alongside the formal structure. Every organization has individuals who ignore directives, bypass the chain of command in communicating to the top, and negotiate with others who perform parallel or associated functions (see “For Critical Thinking”). Nature of the Work State correctional officers work in the great array of reformatories, prisons, prison camps, and penitentiaries that make up American corrections. Regardless of the setting, they maintain order within the institution and enforce rules and regulations. To keep the facility secure, officers must often search incarcerated individuals and their living quarters for contraband, settle disputes, enforce discipline, and communicate prisoner requests to higher levels. Officers may be assigned to housing units, perimeter patrols, or work assignments. Correctional officers usually work an eight-hour day, five days per week, on rotating shifts. Required Qualifications Correctional officers must be at least 18 to 21 years of age, be a U.S. citizen with no felony convictions, and have at least a high school education and some work experience. Most states require qualifying examinations, including personality screenings. Candidates must be in good health and meet fitness, eyesight, and hearing standards. The American Correctional Association sets training guidelines for recruits. Most states have training academies with instruction on legal restrictions, custody procedures, interpersonal relationships, use of firearms, and self-defense. After graduation from the academy, trainees typically receive several weeks or months of training in the job setting under the supervision of an experienced officer. Earnings and Job Outlook As states have had to deal with the explosion of the prison population, the number of correctional officers has markedly increased during the past three decades. This rapid expansion has slowed in recent years, and growth over the next decade is projected to be about 4 percent. The median annual salary for state correctional officers is $42,670. More Information See the American Correctional Association website How, then, do prisons function? How do residents and staff try to meet their own goals? Although the U.S. prison may not conform to the ideal goals of corrections and the formal organization may little resemble the ongoing reality of the informal relations, order is kept, and a routine is followed. Governing Prisons Traditionally, prison sociologists have looked at prisons as social systems rather than institutions to be governed. Until fairly recently, our understanding of life inside prison was based on inmate balance theory. This perspective was developed in the pioneering works of Donald Clemmer and Gresham Sykes. This theory provides insights on the maintenance of order and the prevention of collective violence.9 According to this view, for the prison system to operate effectively, officials must tolerate minor infractions, relax security measures, and allow informal leaders to keep order. When officials go too far in asserting their authority by cracking down on privileges, the delicate balance of shared authority is upset, which in turn unleashes collective disorder. Criminologists have written about the effects of prison conditions on those who are incarcerated—racial and ethnic cleavages, language and roles, and the informal distribution of authority in prisons. However, as John DiIulio notes, sociological research on prison society does little to help correctional officials manage their facilities. In fact, most of this research implies that administrators can do little to govern because—despite formal rules and regulations—institutions are run mainly through the informal social networks of the keepers and the kept (see Table 13.2 for one set of formal rules of conduct). DiIulio finds shocking the extent to which correctional officials seem to have accepted sociological explanations for institutional conditions rather than correcting faulty management practices.10 inmate balance theory A governance theory which posits that for a prison system to operate effectively, officials must tolerate minor infractions, relax security measures, and allow informal leaders to keep order. TABLE 13.2 General Rules, Texas Department of Criminal Justice 1. The possession or use of any tobacco products, paraphernalia, or related products is prohibited. 2. No loud or boisterous talking, no vulgar or abusive language shall be allowed. 3. When talking to an employee or official, offenders will stand with arms by their side and call them Mr., Ms., or Officer (Last Name) or use their title. Offenders can identify the officer by the last name on his nameplate that is worn as part of the uniform. Offenders will show respect when talking with employees, officials, visitors and other offenders. Offenders shall answer “yes, sir”; “no, sir”; “yes, ma’am”; or “no, ma’am.” 4. No fighting, scuffling, horseplay, or similar activities will be allowed. 5. Offenders shall not litter. Trash and garbage will be placed in trash cans. 6. Offenders shall not alter, disfigure, damage or destroy any state property. 7. Offenders shall not have playing cards, dice or any other item that can be used for gambling. 8. Offenders shall not tamper with hand restraints, or any security equipment. 9. Offenders shall not take posted information from bulletin boards. 10. Offenders and their living areas may be searched at any time by staff. 11. Offenders are not allowed in unauthorized areas. 12. Offenders are not allowed in their work areas except during their work hours, unless approved due to special circumstances. 13. Offenders shall not traffic and trade postage supplies, or trade any offender’s personal property for other commissary items. 14. Offenders are expected to be dressed and ready when called for work, school, or other turnouts. There shall be no tardiness allowed by offenders. 15. Offenders shall not wear sunglasses indoors unless medically prescribed. DiIulio and others have developed an alternative explanation of prison disorder, which has been dubbed administrative control theory. 11 This perspective posits that disorder results from “unstable, divided, or otherwise weak management.”12 Thus, when officials lose control over their institutions, collective disorder and other unruly behaviors within the prison population become more likely. This administrative breakdown has several effects: 1. Incarcerated individuals come to believe their conditions of confinement are not only bad but unjust as well. 2. Officials become indifferent to routine security measures and the day-to-day tasks of prison management. 3. Weak management permits gangs and other illicit groups to flourish. These groups, in turn, may help mobilize disturbances.13 What distinguishes a well-run prison from a substandard prison? DiIulio argues that the crucial variable is not the ethnic or racial distribution of the population, the criminal records of those in prison, the size of the institution, the degree of crowding, or the level of funding. What is important is governance: sound and firm prison management. What quality of life should be maintained in a prison? DiIulio states that a good prison “provides as much order, amenity, and service as possible given the human and financial resources.”14 Order is defined as the absence of individual or group misconduct threatening the safety of others—for example, assaults, rapes, and other forms of violence or insult. A basic assumption should be that because the state sends people to prison, it is responsible for ensuring their safety there. Amenity is anything that enhances the inmates’ creature comforts, such as good food, clean bedding, and recreational opportunities. This does not mean that prisons are to function as luxury hotels, but contemporary standards stipulate that correctional facilities should not be deleterious to inmates’ mental and physical health. Finally, service includes programs designed to improve the life prospects of the incarcerated: vocational training, remedial education, and work opportunities. Here, too, we expect prison residents to be engaged in activities during incarceration that will make them better people and enhance their ability to lead crime-free lives upon release. If we accept the premise that well-run prisons are important for residents, staff, and society, what are some of the problems that correctional administrators must address? The correctional literature points to four factors that make governing prisons different from administering other public institutions: (1) the defects of total power, (2) the limited rewards and punishments, (3) the co-optation of correctional officers, and (4) the strength of inmate leadership. After we review each of these factors, we will consider the administrative systems and leadership styles that can help make prisons safe and humane and serve inmates’ needs. The Defects of Total Power In his classic study of the New Jersey State Prison, Sykes emphasized that although in formal terms correctional officials have the power to induce compliance from those they supervise, in fact that power is limited and in many ways dependent on cooperation.15 It is from this perspective that the inmate balance theory of management evolved. administrative control theory A governance theory which posits that prison disorder results from unstable, divided, or otherwise weak management. ▲ Correctional officers are heavily outnumbered in prisons, so they have to use their interpersonal skills to maintain authority and keep good order. Much of the public believes that prisons are run in an authoritarian manner: Correctional officers give orders, and their clients follow them. Strictly enforced rules specify what the captives may and may not do. Staff members have the right to grant rewards and to inflict punishment. In theory, any imprisoned person who does not follow the rules can be placed in solitary confinement. Because the officers have a monopoly on the legal means of enforcing rules and can be backed up by the state police and the National Guard if necessary, many people believe that no question should arise as to how the prison is run. Certainly, we can imagine a prison society made up of hostile and uncooperative individuals ruled by force. Incarcerated individuals can be legally isolated from one another, physically coerced until they cooperate, and put under continuous surveillance. Although all these things are possible, the public would probably not tolerate such practices for long because people expect correctional institutions to be run humanely. Also, unlike members of other authoritarian organizations such as the military, incarcerated individuals do not recognize the legitimacy of their keepers and therefore are not always moved to cooperate. No sense of duty propels people living in prison to compliance. This is an important distinction because duty is the backbone of most social organizations. With it, rules are followed—and need not be explained first. The notion that correctional officers have total power over prison residents has many other flaws. As Sykes points out, “The ability of the officials to physically coerce their captives into the paths of compliance is something of an illusion as far as the day-to-day activities of the prison are concerned and may be of doubtful value in moments of crisis.”16 Forcing people to follow commands is an inefficient way of making them carry out complex tasks; efficiency is further diminished by the ratio of residents to custody staff (10.3 to 1 in federal prisons and 4.9 to 1 in state facilities) and by the potential danger.17 (See “Myths in Corrections.”) Of course, physical coercion is used to control incarcerated people. Such tactics may violate criminal statutes and administrative procedures, but they have long occurred in prisons throughout the United States—and cannot be considered idiosyncratic or sporadic. For example, a study of a Texas prison found that a small but significant percentage of the officers used physical punishment. Force both controlled the prison population and induced cohesion among officers, maintaining a status differential between officers and residents and helping officers win promotions.18 Rewards and Punishments Correctional officers often rely on rewards and punishments to gain cooperation. To maintain security and order among a large population in a confined space, they impose extensive rules of conduct. Instead of using force to ensure obedience, however, they reward compliance and punish rule violations by granting and denying privileges. Several policies may be followed to promote control. One is to offer cooperative individuals rewards, such as choice job assignments, residence in the honor unit, and favorable parole reports. People who follow the rules receive good time. Informers may also be rewarded, and administrators may ignore conflict among individuals on the assumption that conflict keeps them from uniting against authorities. The system of rewards and punishments has some deficiencies. One is that the punishments for rule breaking do not represent a great departure from the incarcerated individuals’ usual circumstances. Because the residents are already deprived of many freedoms and valued goods—heterosexual relations, money, choice of clothing, and so on—not being allowed, say, to attend a recreational period does not carry much weight as a punishment. In addition, according to the inmate code in a particular prison, the defiant individual may gain standing among the others in the prison. Finally, authorized privileges are given to the client at the start of the sentence and are taken away only if rules are broken, but few further rewards are authorized for progress or exceptional behavior. However, as a resident approaches release, opportunities for furloughs, work release, or transfer to a halfway house can serve as incentives to obey rules. Gaining Cooperation: Exchange Relationships One way that correctional officers obtain inmate cooperation is by tolerating minor rule infractions in exchange for compliance with major aspects of the custodial regime. The correctional officer plays the key role in the interpersonal relationships among the incarcerated individuals and serves as the link to the custodial bureaucracy. The correctional officer must supervise and control the inmate population in concrete and detailed terms . . . [and] must see to the translation of the custodial regime from blueprint to reality and engage in the specific battles for conformity. Counting prisoners, periodically reporting to the center of communications, signing passes, checking groups of inmates as they come and go, searching for contraband or signs of attempts to escape—these make up the minutiae of [the officer’s] eight-hour shift.19 Officers are in close association with those they supervise both day and night—in the cell block, workshop, dining hall, recreation area, and so on. Although the formal rules require a social distance between the officers and those who are incarcerated, their physical proximity makes them aware that each depends on the other. To look good to their superiors, the officers need the cooperation of the people they supervise, and the members of the prison population count on the officers to relax the rules or occasionally look the other way. Even though officers are backed by the state and have the formal authority to punish any individual who does not follow orders, they often discover that the best course of action is to make “deals.” As a result, officers buy compliance or obedience in some areas by tolerating rule breaking elsewhere. Officers are expected to maintain “surface order.” They must ensure that the residents conform voluntarily to the most important rules, things run smoothly, and no visible trouble and no cause for alarm emerge. Because officers’ job performance is judged on the ability to maintain surface order, both officers and those who are incarcerated have a tacit understanding and bargain accordingly. The assumptions underlying these accommodative relationships can be summarized as follows: 1. Negotiations are central to maintaining control because correctional officers cannot have total control over the prison population. 2. Once an officer defines a set of informal rules with those who are incarcerated, the rules must be respected by all parties. 3. Some rule violations are “normal” and consequently do not merit officers’ attention or sanctioning.20 Correctional officers must be careful not to pay too high a price for the cooperation of their charges. Under pressure to work effectively, officers may be blackmailed into doing illegitimate favors in return for cooperation. When leadership is thus abdicated, authority passes to the incarcerated. Informal Leadership In the traditional prison of the big-house era, administrators asked some members of the prison population to act as informal leaders and help maintain order. As Richard Korn and Lloyd McCorkle observed long ago, Far from systematically attempting to undermine the inmate hierarchy, the institution generally gives it covert support and recognition by assigning better jobs and quarters to its high-status members provided they are “good inmates.” In this and other ways the institution buys peace with the system by avoiding battle with it.21 However, descriptions of the contemporary maximum-security prison raise questions about administrators’ ability to run institutions in this way. When the racial, offense, and political characteristics of prison populations began to change in the mid-1960s, the centralized leadership structure was replaced by multiple centers of power. As official authority broke down, some institutions became violent, dangerous places. Prisons seem to function more effectively now than they did in the recent past. Although prisons are generally more crowded, riots and reports of violence and escapes have declined.22 In many prisons the inmate social system may have reorganized so that correctional officers again can work through residents respected by their peers. Yet some observers contend that when wardens maintain order in this way, they enhance the positions of some incarcerated individuals at the expense of others. The leaders profit by receiving illicit privileges and favors, and they increase their influence among others who are incarcerated by distributing benefits. Discipline in Prison Maintaining order can be burdensome to prison administrators, given the factors just discussed. In an earlier era, people in prison were kept in line with corporal punishment. Today, withholding privileges, erasing good-time credits, and placing individuals in “the hole” (the adjustment center, or administrative segregation) constitute the range of punishments available to discipline the unruly. The U.S. Supreme Court has curbed administrators’ discretion in applying these punishments: Procedural fairness must accompany the process by which the disobedient are sent to solitary confinement and by which good-time credit can be lost because of misconduct. On entering the prison, the newcomer receives a manual, often running up to a hundred pages, specifying the rules that govern almost all aspects of prison life, from permitted clothing to dining-room conduct and standards of personal hygiene. Prominently listed are types of behavior that can result in disciplinary action: rioting, gambling, sexual activity, possession of currency, failure to obey an order, and so on (see “For Critical Thinking”). Prison inhabitants are warned that some rule infractions also violate the state’s criminal law and may be handled by the criminal justice system. However, an institutional committee handles most rule violations. This disciplinary committee may commit an individual to punitive segregation for the number of days specified for each class of offense or hand down other sanctions. The manuals vary from state to state; some merely list violations and allow disciplinary committees to exercise their discretion when determining the appropriate punishment. The Disciplinary Process Custodial officers act like police officers with regard to most prison rules. Minor violations may warrant merely a verbal reprimand or warning, but more-serious violations can result in a “ticket”: a report forwarded to higher authority for action. Some corrections systems distinguish between major and minor violations. Major tickets go to the disciplinary committee; minor ones receive summary judgment by a hearing officer, whose decision may be appealed to a supervising captain, whose decision may, in turn, be appealed to the committee. In some systems all disciplinary reports go to a hearing officer, who investigates the charges, conducts the hearing, and determines the punishment. The commissioner of corrections can review hearing officers’ decisions and reduce punishments but not increase them. ▲ Correctional officers have power, but they have to exercise it carefully. For a prison to run efficiently, correctional staff must rely on the routine willingness of people serving time there to respect the staff’s authority. LUCY NICHOLSON/Reuters FOR CRITICAL THINKING Michael Bowden was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. As was noted, however, Bowden’s smuggling operation also involved individuals who were incarcerated at the facility. 1. Should the individuals receiving the smuggled goods be punished? If so, what type of punishment should they receive? Transfer to a higher-security prison? Additional years tacked on to their sentences? A period of time served in administrative segregation? 2. Can the threat of punishment be a successful strategy for preventing those who are incarcerated from becoming involved in the distribution of prison contraband, such as cell phones and drugs? What other steps can be taken to limit opportunities in trafficking prohibited goods? Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 13 Institutional Management 335 Such procedures are relatively new. Less than 50 years ago, formal codes of institutional conduct either did not exist or were ignored; the warden had full discretion in punishment, and those who were punished had no opportunity to challenge the charges. In a series of decisions beginning in 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court granted incarcerated individuals certain limited procedural rights: to receive notice of a complaint, to have a fair hearing, to confront witnesses, to have help in preparing for the hearing, and to be given a written statement of the decision (see Chapter 5).23 However, the Court has also emphasized the need to balance prisoners’ rights with state interests. Thus, two years after it guaranteed incarcerated individuals fundamental due process rights, the Court ruled that counsel was not included.24 As a result, most prisons developed rules that specify some elements of due process in disciplinary proceedings. In many institutions a disciplinary committee receives charges, conducts hearings, and determines guilt and punishment. Normally, disciplinary committees comprise three to five members of the correctional staff, including representatives of custody, treatment, and classification, with a senior officer acting as chairperson. Sometimes the committees also include a member of the prison population or outside citizens. As part of the procedure, the incarcerated individual is read the charge and is allowed to present his or her version of the incident and to present witnesses. In some institutions another incarcerated person may help the charged individual. If he or she is found guilty, a sanction is imposed. In such cases an appeal to the warden and ultimately to the commissioner is available. Even with these protections, incarcerated individuals may still feel powerless and fear further punishment if they challenge the disciplinary decisions of the warden too aggressively. Sanctions Administrative segregation and loss of privileges and good time are the sanctions most often imposed for violating institutional rules. The privileges lost may include visits, mail, access to the commissary, and recreational periods. The most severe sanction by a disciplinary committee is confinement in administrative segregation. Most institutions limit the amount of time that someone can spend in segregation and regulate conditions with respect to food, medical attention, and personal safety. Twenty days of continuous administrative segregation is the maximum in many prisons, but individuals can be returned to “the hole” after a token period outside. Maintaining order among individuals who live in close proximity under conditions of deprivation is a challenge. Officers recognize they must walk a narrow line between being too restrictive and overly permissive. They must recognize, too, that their objective is to encourage cooperation and conformity to the rules. But they must also understand that rewards and punishments are limited and that courts now insist that due process be observed in disciplining violators and proceeding against them. This presents a tall order, but with good management practices the objective can be reached. One index of a poorly run institution is a large number of disciplinary violations, showing that staff and their clients cannot prevent disruptive behavior or function with mutual tolerance, let alone respect. Leadership: The Crucial Element of Governance As Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey observed, any prison is made up of the synchronized actions of hundreds of people, some of whom hate and distrust one another, love one another, fight one another physically and psychologically, think of one another as stupid or mentally disturbed, “manage” and “control” one another, and vie with one another for favors, prestige, power, and money.25 Still, most prisons do not fall into disarray, although at times certain institutions have approached chaos. Examples include Soledad in California, during a period of racial and political unrest in the 1960s; Walla Walla in Washington in the 1970s, when an experiment with inmate self-government was attempted; and the Eastham Unit and some other Texas prisons prior to court-ordered reforms in the 1980s. But these are exceptions, and many correctional facilities are well governed. How, then, does management effect a reasonable quality of life in U.S. prisons? Management styles vary, even in bureaucracies. In his study of prison management in California, Michigan, and Texas correctional facilities, John DiIulio argues that prisons should be run in a paramilitary fashion with strict adherence to official rules, regulations, and policies.26 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 336 PART 2 Correctional Practices Set in the woods outside of Bradford, Pennsylvania, is the Federal Correctional Institution, McKean. Opened in 1989 as a medium-security facility, it houses more than 1,000 men. Until he retired in July 1995, McKean’s warden was Dennis Luther, an administrator who, during his 16 years in prison work, gained a reputation for unorthodox policies. At a time when politicians were railing against “country club” prisons and the need to “make ’em bust rocks,” Luther ran an institution that earned a 99.3 accreditation rating from the American Correctional Association, the highest in the Bureau of Prisons. Badly overcrowded and with an increasing number of residents convicted of violent offenses, McKean cost taxpayers $15,370 per year for each person, well below the federal average of $21,350. Amazingly, in six years there were no escapes, no murders, no suicides, and only three serious assaults against staff and six recorded against prison residents. How did he do it? According to Luther, each prison has its own culture, which is often violent and abusive, based on gangs. The staff in such institutions feel they are unable to change it. At McKean, Luther set out to build a different type of culture, based on unconditional respect for the residents as people. As he says, “If you want people to behave responsibly, and treat you with respect, then you treat other people that way.” This credo has been translated into 28 beliefs, the product of Luther’s years of experience. These “Beliefs About the Treatment of Inmates” are posted all over the institution to remind both staff and their clients of their responsibilities. They include the following: 1. Inmates are sent to prison as punishment and not for punishment. 2. Correctional workers have a responsibility to ensure that inmates are returned to the community no more angry or hostile than when they were committed. 3. Inmates are entitled to a safe and humane environment while in prison. 4. You must believe in man’s capacity to change his behavior. . . . 10. Be responsive to inmate requests for action or information. Respond in a timely manner and respond the first time an inmate makes a request. . . . 12. It is important for staff to model the kind of behavior they expect to see duplicated by inmates. . . . 14. There is an inherent value in self-improvement programs such as education, whether or not these programs are related to recidivism. . . . 18. Staff cannot, because of their own insecurities, lack of self-esteem, or concerns about their masculinity, condescend or degrade inmates. . . . 26. Inmate discipline must be consistent and fair. Merely posting the “Beliefs” in prominent places will not create a superior prison culture. The credo must be put into practice. Here are some examples: 1. Front-line staff: If you want to get front-line staffers to treat residents with respect, top managers must treat staffers with respect. Luther has said, “Line-level people have good ideas, not only about how to do their job, but about how to do your job better.” With this in mind, he created the Line Staff Advisory Board, a rotating group of front-line workers who meet with him to talk through complaints, suggestions, and rumors. 2. “Management by walking around”: Through contact with staff and residents in the dining hall, on the yard, and in the cell blocks, a warden becomes a visible presence who can hear suggestions and complaints. Often he or she can nip problems before they fester and explode. This presence sets an example of the extent to which the warden is concerned about the problems of residents and staff. 3. Inmate involvement: Regular “town hall” meetings provide opportunities for two-way communication. Proposed changes in regulations or procedures are first brought to the residents for comment (for example, items to be offered in the commissary). 4. Inmate Benefit Fund: The Inmate Benefit Fund (IBF) was created to generate money that prison residents could use to purchase items for which taxpayer dollars were not available. Using their own funds, they could order from Bradford stores and restaurants items that would ease their stay in McKean. Orders were placed with the IBF and delivered to the institution for a modest handling charge. With 2,000 occupants, substantial sums were generated by these surcharges. The residents could use these funds to purchase additional educational and recreational programs for the population. Besides helping prison occupants gain access to these programs, the IBF spending contributed to the local economy. 5. Education: McKean has a higher percentage of people enrolled in classes than does almost any other federal prison. Luther believes prison time should be spent preparing residents for their return to the community. Courses are taught by staff members of the prison’s education department, professors from neighboring colleges, and other incarcerated individuals, who teach adult continuing education courses and act as mentors and tutors. FOCUS ON CORRECTIONAL POLICY: A Model Prison Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 13 Institutional Management 337 Others note the value of alternative approaches. For example, Hans Toch argues that prison administrators should involve staff in problem-solving activities.27 In his study of higher-custody state prisons, Michael Reisig found that flexible and adaptive managerial approaches are most effective at maintaining low levels of prison disorder.28 Despite the controversy regarding which management style works best, the consensus among practitioners and researchers is that the quality of prison life is mainly a function of management. (“A Model Prison” describes the unique management practices of Warden Dennis Luther.) Prison systems perform well if leaders can cope with the political and other pressures that contribute to administrative uncertainty and instability. In particular, management is successful when prison directors 1. Are in office long enough to learn the job, make plans, and implement them. 2. Project an appealing image to a wide range of people, both inside and outside of the organization. 3. Are dedicated and loyal to the department, seeing themselves as engaged in a noble and challenging profession. 4. Are highly hands-on and proactive, paying close attention to details and not waiting for problems to arise. They must know what is going on inside yet also recognize the need for outside support. In short, they are strangers neither in the cell blocks nor in the aisles of the state legislature.29 From this perspective, making prisons work is a function of administrative leadership and the application of sound management principles. DiIulio’s research challenges the traditional assumption of many correctional administrators that “the cons run the joint.” Rather, as the success of such legendary administrators as George Beto of Texas, William Fauver of New Jersey, Anna Kross of New York’s Rikers Island, and William Leeke of North Carolina demonstrates, prisons can be managed so that residents can serve their time in a safe, healthy, and productive environment.30 Correctional Officers: The Linchpin of Management Over the past 30 years, the correctional officer’s role has changed greatly. No longer responsible merely for “guarding,” the correctional officer is now considered a crucial professional who has the closest contact with those who are in prison and performs a variety of tasks. Officers are expected to counsel, supervise, protect, and process the individuals under their care (see “A Day on the Job—in Prison”). In many jurisdictions, hours are long, pay is low, entry requirements are minimal, and turnover is high. Given these conditions, why would someone want to enter this field? Luther expects his charges to be responsible, and he holds them to a higher standard than found in most prisons. For example, after a few minor incidents the warden ordered “closed movement” during evening hours. This restricted inmate activity and was meant to be permanent. A group of residents asked if he would restore “open movement” if the prison was incident-free for 90 days. Luther agreed, and the prison has remained “open.” Those who meet the standards are rewarded. Weekly inspections are held in each cell block, and residents who score high receive additional privileges. Those whose disciplinary records are clean and who excel in the programs can earn their way to the “honor unit.” And those who show consistently good behavior are allowed to attend supervised picnics on Family Day. Dennis Luther is convinced that his methods will work in any prison, even those plagued by violence, overcrowding, and gangs. Many staff members feel the same way. They believe that McKean is a shining example of the difference that good management can make. Sources: Adapted from Tom Peters, Liberation Management (New York: Knopf, 1992), 247–55; Robert Worth, “A Model Prison,” Atlantic, November 1995, pp. 38–44. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 338 PART 2 Correctional Practices Phil Carvalho holds the rank of senior correctional officer. He has covered virtually every custody assignment in the eight years he has been in a prison that has been jarred by inmate riots and strikes by its personnel. Since last January, his post has been Ten Block, the segregation unit where Massachusetts houses up to sixty of its toughest and most incorrigible inmates. . . . Ten Block is a steel, barred island within the walled continent of the prison . . . insulated and isolated for those who live there and those who work there. It is an island cut off from the institutional mainland by more than the click, bang of steel. Because it confines or segregates those who have assaulted guards and inmates, it is often territory that is ostracized by other guards and inmates. When Carvalho arrives, nine young officers already are beginning to fill cardboard trays with muffins, cereal, and paper cups of coffee from the kitchen wagon. Like Carvalho, all are volunteers for Ten Block. “Yeah, you gotta be crazy to work here,” one of them says, “but it’s got good days off.” Most of the officers have been spit at by some of their charges. Some have been hit by urine and excrement. Before Carvalho has a chance to move through the door of the cubicle that serves as an office, one of the three phones inside rings. “Ten. Carvalho.” The phone is sandwiched between the cheek and the shoulder of the 220-pound, six-foot two-inch Carvalho. For the next eight hours, it will ring incessantly, with rare moments of silence. For Carvalho, the telephone is something more than an electronic instrument. He growls at it, purrs into it, persuades, cajoles, allowing the cadence of his voice to vary with the purpose of his message. “Yeah, right. Hey, sweetheart, do me a favor.” . . . An officer comes into the cubicle with a handful of small brown envelopes. Carvalho counts them, records the total and the time in the dog-eared logbook in front of him. “Medication,” he says. “O.K., give ’em out.” Ten Block distributes medication more frequently than meals. Four times a day, inmates may receive prescriptions that include sedatives, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills. During the morning distribution, fourteen of twenty-eight inmates on the first floor receive pills. Five milligrams of Valium four times a day plus a sleeping pill at night is not unusual. “I can’t understand it,” says Carvalho. “These guys when they’re on the street can’t be gettin’ that medication. Impossible. Some of ’em need it for their nerves. Being in this situation they need something to calm them down. But the pain pills they put out, the depressants . . . it’s unbelievable.” . . . “Yeah, Charlie?” “Listen, Phil, you gotta get that son-of-a-bitch out of here.” . . . The voice in the dimly lighted cell details a complaint against an officer on the three-to-eleven shift. Other inmates shout their own litany of complaints. Hands holding mirrors protrude from the other fourteen cells in the section, giving their owners a glass-reflected picture of the officer and the visitor. “The only thing I can tell you,” Carvalho responds, “is that I’ve got to get McLaughlin down here.” Thomas McLaughlin is deputy superintendent at Walpole. He is one of the key reasons why Phil Carvalho volunteered for Ten Block. “He backs you up. And he’s there when you need him. All these guys,” Carvalho says, pointing to the young officers, “they’re there when you need ’em.” . . . When McLaughlin arrives, Carvalho takes him through the corridor where the inmates are complaining about the officer. They move from cell to cell like army medics making rounds in a crowded hospital. The deputy superintendent is a listener. Occasionally, he asks a question, sometimes he nods, but his face shows neither a flicker of sympathetic agreement nor cynical disbelief. Later, he tells Carvalho there will be a meeting with the night officer at the end of the shift. “Hey, Phil . . . Phil . . .” Another voice from the cell in the corridor. Carvalho again moves into the narrow hallway. “Hey, Phil, I need a legal visit. My case comes up on the fourteenth.” “O.K. I’ll take care of it.” From a hall phone, Carvalho dials an extension, “Yeah, Phil Carvalho. I need a legal visit for . . .” . . . The demands made on Carvalho are not phrased in convoluted euphemisms. They are direct. They deal with basic wants in the limited, cramped world of the segregation unit . . . an appointment for a visitor, a phone call to a relative . . . some writing paper. Sometimes the demands attempt to stretch the narrow boundaries of Ten Block. Either way, the answers are equally direct. Carvalho’s booming voice, intoning, “I’ll try,” or “Yes,” or “No,” leaves little room for doubt. The noon food wagon arrives, and the officers dish out the meal into the paper trays. After the inmates are served, the officers grab a tray and bring it into the office, a few at a time. Some have brought their lunch and eat it piecemeal between running upstairs or into the cell corridors. Elsewhere in the prison, most corrections officers eat in the staff mess hall. In Ten Block, there is no formal sit-down dining. Carvalho, between bites, dials the phone again. “Yeah, Russ. He’s back in Block TWho Becomes a Correctional Officer? The early criminal justice literature either ignored the prison officer or painted a picture of an individual with a “lock psychosis” resulting from the routine of numbering, counting, checking, and locking. Some prison studies gave the impression that officers were incompetent and psychologically inferior, performing the only job they could get. They were viewed as the primary opponents of rehabilitation. Who are the correctional officers? Have they been accurately depicted? What kind of person accepts a job that offers low pay and little hope of advancement? Studies have shown that a primary incentive for becoming a correctional officer is the security of a civil service job. In addition, because most correctional facilities are located in rural areas, prison work is often better than other available jobs, and overtime or part-time work can often supplement the salary. Until the push of the last 40 years for greater professionalism among correctional workers, many guards joined the ranks because they had few employment opportunities. Today, because of the demand for well-qualified correctional officers, most states have given priority to recruiting quality personnel. Salaries differ from state to state. In addition to their salaries, most officers can earn overtime pay to supplement their base salary. Over the past 40 years, federal courts, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and affirmative action programs have dramatically changed the composition of the correctional officer force. How do increases in the number of minority and female officers shape the work environment among correctional officers? One study of more than 4,000 staff members employed in 98 prisons found that men and white employees believe that women and racial and ethnic minorities have better opportunities regarding career advancement. However, the analysis suggests that such opportunities do not actually differ between men and women, nor between whites and members of racial and ethnic minority groups.31 Women officers are no longer limited to only working in women’s prisons. In state prisons an estimated 73,815 correctional officers (or 25 percent) are women. Many of these women work in adult male correctional facilities. In the Federal Bureau of Prisons, however, women make up only 12.8 percent of the correctional officer force.32 Just as female police officers have often found themselves excluded from certain assignments and from full integration into the force, women who work in corrections have also had to deal with discrimination. What do men in prison think of the female officers who supervise them? A Texas study examined inmate perceptions of whether female officers performed as well as men. Men serving sentences in minimum custody had a relatively low opinion hree. Yeah, he’s back. My count is fifty-eight.” The count of inmates is reported to control at

14)

WOLF BOYS IS A CELEBRATED NONFICTION ACCOUNT OF TWO MEXICAN AMERICAN TEENS from Laredo, Texas, who get involved with the Zetas drug cartel from Mexico, ending up as murderers who are desperately pursued by local Detective Robert Garcia, himself an immigrant. Written by Dan Slater, the book is a harrowing tale of the chaos at the southern U.S. border, the depraved violence of drug gangs, the way lives get ruined by the drug trade, and—in the end—the apparent futility of the “drug war.” Selected as a “Best Book of 2016” by the Chicago Public Library, it is considered by many people a “must read” for anyone who wants to be informed about today’s debates on drugs, violence, and the border. If you are incarcerated in Texas, however, you are not allowed to read it. It has been banned. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice Director’s Review Committee put it on the blacklist before it was even published. According to a newspaper report, the Texas authorities were made nervous by a couple of sentences that described some techniques used to smuggle drugs into the United States.1 So they banned the book, even though the moral of the true story seems unassailable: The two main characters are serving decades in the Texas prison system for their crimes. Wolf Boys joins a list of 15,000 books banned for people behind bars in Texas. The authorities have decided that for prison residents to read them is bad for the prison—so by definition it is bad for the people in the prison. Prison censorship illustrates the paradox of prison programming. Free-world rights do not apply; security trumps everything. The effect can feel arbitrary and even self-defeating. Hidden goals often overcome manifest aims. Limitations in prison programs seem to make sense only as they are refracted through the prism of institutional prerogatives. And most important, in the end all prison programs boil down to the same set of fundamentals: occupying time. There are other aspects of prison programs that matter, including developing skills, helping the prison run well, and—perhaps most importantly— giving hope. But no prison program can undermine the prison itself. In this chapter we examine the wide variety of programs in today’s prisons. We investigate the role that these programs play in prison life, and we evaluate their effectiveness. We draw conclusions about the value of various kinds of programs and how they fit into the modern prison context. LEARNING OBJECTIVES After reading this chapter, you should be able to . . . 1 Describe how correctional programs help address the challenge of managing time in the correctional setting. 2 Describe the ways that security acts as a constraint on correctional programs offered in institutional settings. 3 Explain the meaning of the “principle of least eligibility” and illustrate its importance. 4 Discuss the importance of the classification process and how “objective classification” works. 5 Describe the major kinds of institutional programs that are offered in correctional institutions. 6 Analyze recent developments in the field of correctional rehabilitation. 7 Describe the main types of correctional industries and explain how each works. 8 Explain the current pressures facing correctional programming policies. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 352 PART 2 Correctional Practices Managing Time The median time served in U.S. prisons is about 23.6 months.2 Imagine where you were that many months ago and what you were doing. Now imagine that you had spent every day, every hour, since then living behind bars. Think of what you would have missed. Think, too, of how long the prison term would have seemed to have lasted—decades, an eternity. The theme in prison, the one thread that links all people in prison, is time: “time in the joint,” “doing time,” “good time,” “time left,” “straight time.” “How much time did you get?” “When do you come up for parole?” “What’s your maximum release date?” Many cells prominently display calendars, and some occupants carefully mark the passing of each day. As Adam Gopnik once put it, “The basic reality of American prisons is not that of lock and key but that of lock and clock.”3 Institutional programs mitigate the oppressiveness of time. They also provide opportunities for people in prison to improve their lives, whether the programs involve counseling, education, or merely recreation. When rehabilitation is a dominant correctional goal, the parole board sees participation in a treatment program as an indication of readiness for supervision in the community. Perhaps the main merit of programs is that they keep prison time from becoming dead time. When minutes crawl, the soul grows bitter. Prison administrators use institutional programs to help manage time. Work assignments occupy the middle hours of the day, treatment and recreational periods are held before and after work assignments, and special programs (Junior Chamber of Commerce meetings, Bible study, Alcoholics Anonymous sessions) take up the remaining hours. Experienced administrators know that the more programs they offer, the less likely that boredom will translate into hostility toward the staff. The less cell time, the fewer tensions. As J. Michael Quinlan, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, once said, “It is absolutely the most important ingredient in managing a safe and secure institution to keep the inmates productively occupied, in either work or education or drug treatment or structured recreation.”4 Administrators use prison programs as incentives for good behavior. People in prison know that when they break the rules, they will be denied access to programs, and this will make time go more slowly. In this chapter we use the broadest possible definition of prison program: any formal, structured activity that takes people out of their cells and lets them do something. Programs range from group therapy sessions to chair-making factories, from baseball teams to reading groups. Some programs are designed to rehabilitate; others involve labor; still others deal with spiritual and medical needs. All prison programs serve the fundamental goal of managing time. There are five types of programs. The most debated programs attempt to provide rehabilitation. Many such programs attempt to improve job skills or education; others use psychological, behavioral, or social treatment to try to alter the propensity for criminal behavior. A second type provides medical services. A third type is industrial. Here, people in prison make various products. The fourth type involves daily maintenance of the facility. The fifth comprises recreational programs designed for physical fitness and involvement in positive activities. ▲ Managing time in prison is a priority. In California’s Vacaville prison, a drought-tolerant garden using reclaimed water from the prison’s kitchen teaches environmental and gardening skills—and occupies time. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images prison program Any formal, structured activity that takes people out of their cells and sets them to instrumental tasks. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 353 Constraints of Security No matter how beneficial a program is, it must not conflict with security. As the late criminologist Donald J. Newman once joked, even if a thousand evaluations showed that pole-vaulting was a valuable skill, it still would never be taught in prison. Security requirements impinge on programs in a variety of ways. Whenever a program requires sharp tools or materials that could be fashioned into weapons, heavy security prevails. This is a particular problem for maintenance, but it also affects many industrial programs. Plumbing and electrical operations use knives, pipes, hammers, and wrenches—in other words, weapons. Common prison industries such as woodworking, welding, and auto repair likewise use potentially lethal objects and materials. Security requires tool counts, searches, and detailed accounting of materials. Often, correctional officers conduct personal searches twice a shift and take inventories three or more times a day. The heavy emphasis on security has two important consequences. First, unceasing surveillance further demoralizes imprisoned people and sharpens their sense of captivity. People in prison are lined up and checked out so often that their consciousness of themselves as security risks is constantly reinforced. The most rudimentary tasks call for a level of control that exacerbates an already dehumanizing environment. Second, security requirements make maintenance and industrial programs inefficient. Each time a tool is used, it must be signed out and signed in; each time material is obtained, paperwork must be done. Even coffee breaks are circumscribed by security measures. Captives are seldom the most industrious workers, and prison security measures do not improve efficiency. Despite these negative effects, most authorities strenuously support tight control of potentially dangerous items. A handcrafted knife or bludgeon is a potential serious physical risk to everyone in the prison. Yet these stringent security measures may not do much good; even in the most closely monitored prisons, shakedowns uncover hundreds of contrived weapons and other contraband. Many people in prison are ingenious at creating weapons, even out of such items as spoons and ballpoint pens. The only remedy—however weak—is unremitting vigilance. Some institutional programs are simply impractical because the equipment and materials are too easily misused. Institutional security affects rehabilitative programs in a different way. In classroom work or counseling, everyone knows that all interactions are observed closely for security violations. Even in therapy, a person knows that any remark made to a staff member touching on a possible violation may lead to trouble. Here, too, security makes it difficult to bridge the gap between the keepers and the kept. The effect of that gap on rehabilitative programs can be quite serious. Treatment success depends on the relationship between the therapist and the client. Many writers have analyzed this matter in some detail; a vivid description by Thomas Harris appears in his groundbreaking book I’m OK, You’re OK.5 Harris points out that patients in therapy find it difficult to solve their problems as long as they feel what he calls “not OK”: dependent, untrustworthy, incompetent. Yet these are precisely the feelings that security practices in prisons arouse. Prison therapists must therefore fight the environment in which they work: It’s not easy to make someone in prison feel OK. In short, the prison environment adversely affects every program that operates in that setting. People in prison are often coerced into programs or treated as immature or dangerous by staff. Further, whatever people learn inside prison, no matter how sensible, is inevitably distorted by the fact that life inside has little resemblance to life outside, where those lessons are applied and their effectiveness judged. That is why inventive administrators try to make the prison resemble, as much as possible, the outside world into which the released must eventually go. Instead of being treated as docile subjects, people who are incarcerated are enabled to make many decisions about their daily lives and are held accountable for those decisions. For example, the Oregon Department of Corrections promotes an “accountability model” in which people in prison are expected to work, get training, and take responsibility for planning their lives after release.6 Even in Texas, that bastion of “tough on crime” politics, there is active support for replacing the policies of the past with an emphasis on education Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 354 PART 2 Correctional Practices and training. This kind of change is new in contemporary corrections, and it is too soon to know how well it will work and how much it will change the basic dynamic between the keepers and the kept. Still, although the objectives of a prison program—to improve people’s sense of themselves or to make them more vocationally competitive—may be laudable, achieving such objectives in a prison is difficult. The need for tight security dilutes the effectiveness of prison programs. The Principle of Least Eligibility Institutional programs are also affected by society’s expectation that people in prison will not receive for free any extra services for which law-abiding citizens must pay. According to this principle of least eligibility, people in prison, having been convicted of wrongful behavior, should be the least eligible of all citizens for social benefits beyond the bare minimum required by law. Taken to its extreme, the principle would prohibit many institutional benefits for anyone in prison, such as educational courses and cosmetic surgery. A good example is provided by what happened to the Pell Grant program in 1994. This program, which provides college loans with beneficial repayment rules, came under attack by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican who argued that paying tuition for prison college courses used $2 million and displaced 100,000 law-abiding students. Even though her facts seemed patently wrong—any student who met Pell eligibility requirements, in prison or in the community, was given funds, and of the four million grants awarded that year only 23,000 went to people in prison—the uproar led Congress to deny eligibility for people in prison. To some it was simply unfair to allow people in prison access to free-world financial benefits. The principle of least eligibility thus outweighed the fact that taking educational programs while incarcerated is one of the surest ways to make a person less likely to return to prison. Yet policy makers continue to recognize the value of education for rehabilitation: In 2017 the U.S. Department of Education undertook the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program to determine the impact of making Pell Grants available to college students inside prison. The experiment will run in 67 colleges and universities for three years and will end up enrolling about 12,000 students in Pell-eligible classes.7 The money used in this program joins another $17 million made available through the Higher Education Act’s Grants for Youthful Offenders program, aimed at people in prison who are under age 25 and have fewer than 5 years to serve. (For one college program that survived, see “Education in Prison.”) Offering people in prison any services of better quality than those available to law-abiding citizens is difficult for administrators to justify. The general public is often quite hostile to creative programming in prison, and this sentiment affects virtually all programs. The story is told of a miniature golf course in a Connecticut prison, built by prison labor during off hours and using no state funding. It was closed down after a newspaper reporter “exposed” it in a series of stories on the “country-club prison.” The principle of least eligibility reflects a strong public ambivalence about correctional programming. Surveys consistently find that citizens support rehabilitation as part of correctional policy. Yet the public also does not want programs that seem to reward criminal conduct, and the public resists paying for programs that seem extravagant. Therefore, prison programs frequently represent only weak versions of free-society programs. If the prison offers job-training programs, they do not prepare people for positions in the most-prestigious or high-paying occupations. If the prison offers psychological services, they frequently take the form of group or individual counseling sessions rather than intensive therapy. Educational classes tend to be basic and barely remedial. Consider the public reaction to a suit brought by a person incarcerated in an Oregon prison who forced the state to pay $17,000 for a sex-change operation. The surgery is considered a legitimate procedure in free society. This kind of medical care is often justified as crucial to the recipient’s psychological or social well-being. However, many observers interpreted its being given free to a member of the least-eligible class as unwarranted exploitation of the public. principle of least eligibility The doctrine that people in prison ought to receive no goods or services in excess of those available to people who have lived within the law. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 355 Together, the principle of least eligibility and the constraints of security can have a devastating impact on the quality of correctional programming for mental health. No wonder so many correctional programs are understaffed, underfunded, and operate with limited capacity. Classification People who wish to participate in prison programs face still another constraint: the procedures used to classify them with respect to security and programs. At Elmira Reformatory in the 1800s, Zebulon Brockway initiated a process of classification to group people in prison according to custody requirements and program needs. During the rehabilitation era, classification was important because treatment was based on a clinical assessment of needs. Although rehabilitation is less emphasized today, prison management still relies on classification, which now focuses on the potential for escape, violence, or victimization. During incarceration, people in prison may be reclassified as they encounter problems or finish treatment programs. Classification also changes upon transfer to another institution or if clients are approaching release to the community. The Classification Process In most corrections systems, all those who are prison bound pass through a reception and orientation center where, over three to six weeks, they are evaluated and classified. In some states the center is a separate facility, but often each institution has its own reception center. Social scientists have likened reception and classification to a process of mortification. Much as the army recruit is socialized to military life by basic training, or the college student to a fraternity by pledge week, after sentencing there is a new status of “prison resident” that is shaped by the reception process. classification A process by which people in prison are assigned to different types of custody and treatment. Walter Fortson is a prison success story. In 2013 he got his master’s degree in criminology from the University of Cambridge in England—his tuition paid by the Harry S. Truman Foundation. Fortson was one of that year’s 54 Truman Fellows. It did not seem that it would be that way. Six years earlier, Fortson had been snatched out of his life as an honors student at Temple University, where he was paying for college in part by selling cocaine. In 2007 he was arrested in an Atlantic City project by police who had been following his bright red Chevrolet Suburban with Pennsylvania tags and chrome modifications—very obviously out of place. “One of them aimed a gun at my head while another put cuffs on me,” he said. “In the back of the [squad] car, I heard an officer saying, ‘Your life is over, huh?’” Fortson was charged with possession of illegal substances with intent to distribute, while armed. The court imposed a six-year sentence. He ended up in the Mountainview Correctional Facility in Annandale, New Jersey. Early on in his sentence, Fortson met Rutgers University Professor Donald Roden, a specialist in Japanese history and the founder of the Mountainview Project, a program that offered college classes in New Jersey’s prison system and helped the successful students obtain admission to Rutgers. Fortson became a prize pupil. When Fortson was paroled at his minimum term, Roden helped him get into Rutgers. He excelled, winning awards for academic excellence, being recognized for “giving back,” and eventually being named a Truman Fellow, which opened the doors to Cambridge. After he finished his master’s degree, Fortson returned to New Jersey, where he began a career advocating for prison reform. In 2017 he took a position as managing director of the Prison Bridge Program at College Unbound!, an innovative educational program in Providence, Rhode Island, that has received $25 million in support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His life has been changed by college in prison, and now he will “pass it on.” Sources: Edward Collmore, “Former Inmate Named a Truman Scholar at Rutgers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 7, 2012; Big Picture Learning, www .bigpicture.org. FOCUS ON CORRECTIONAL PRACTICE: Education in Prison Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 356 PART 2 Correctional Practices This is a deliberately exaggerated “degradation ceremony” that seeks to depersonalize the inductee. Newcomers are stripped of personal effects and given a uniform, rule book, medical examination, and shower—in part to underscore that they are no longer free citizens. In prison systems, classification consists mainly of sorting people based on age, seriousness of the offense, prior record, and prior institutional behavior. Such approaches serve mainly as a management tool to ensure that people are assigned to housing units appropriate to their custody level (low, medium, high, segregation), separated from those who are likely to victimize them (for example, separating the young, slight, and timid from the tougher men), and grouped with members of their work assignment (for example, kitchen duty). At institutions that emphasize rehabilitation, batteries of tests, psychiatric evaluations, and counseling are administered so that each person can be assessed for treatment as well as custody. Because treatment resources in most prisons are limited, they must be allocated to benefit those who most need them. The diagnostic process serves this purpose. Different facilities make their classification decisions in different ways. Usually, prison staff present information from presentence reports, police records, and the reception process to a classification committee. The committee then makes program assignments and determines custody status based on procedures prescribed by the department of corrections and the institution’s needs. (“Careers in Corrections” offers a closer view of the work of a correctional treatment specialist.) These committees often make their classification decisions primarily on the basis of the institution’s needs. For example, enrollment in some treatment and training programs is limited, but demand is great. Thus, the few places in the electricians’ course are already filled, and there is a long waiting list. On the other hand, large numbers of people are assigned to housekeeping tasks. See “Do the Right Thing” for more on the issues surrounding such institutional decisions. For years, classification decisions have been heavily criticized because they are based on stereotypes rather than diagnostic criteria to make program and classification assignments. Common stereotypes include members of racial or ethnic gangs, predators who demand everything from sex to cigarettes, weak victim types, and informers seeking protection. By fitting people into a stereotype, the staff routinizes classification, thereby serving staff and organizational needs. Classification results often reflect these stereotypes in ways that may, in the end, have little to do with the person’s eventual adjustment to prison. ▲ For this group of new admissions to prison in Nebraska, the first stop is the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center, where a battery of evaluations are used to determine the initial classification and institutional assignment. Mikael Karlsson/Alamy Stock Photo Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 357 Objective Classification Systems Reformers point out that the courts require systems of classification to “be clearly understandable, consistently applied and conceptually complete.” This suggests the need for new methods of classification to be implemented, with a means of redress for irregularity.8 To meet this need, reformers have developed new predictive and equity-based systems that seek to make classification decisions more objective. Predictive models are designed to classify with respect to risk of escape, potential misconduct in the institution, and future criminal behavior. Clinical, socioeconomic, and criminal factors (such as previous prison escapes) are given point values, and the total point score determines the security level. Equitybased models use only a few explicitly defined legal variables reflecting current and previous criminal characteristics. For both types of objective classification systems, a staff member determines an appropriate custody level by entering relevant data, adding up total points for factor scores, and applying numerical criteria to indicate classification. For example, people who score 25 or above might be sent to maximum security, those who score 15 or below to minimum security, and the Nature of the Work Correctional treatment specialists, also known as case managers or correctional counselors, work in both jails and prisons. They may also be found in probation and parole offices, as well as in community correctional centers. In jails and prisons, specialists develop, evaluate, and analyze the program needs as well as individuals’ progress. In addition, they plan education and training programs to improve job skills and provide counseling for coping, anger management, and drug or sexual abuse. As the end of the sentence nears, specialists work with parole agencies to develop release plans. Correctional treatment specialists working in parole and probation agencies perform many of the same duties as their counterparts in institutions. Required Qualifications In the Federal Bureau of Prisons and most state correctional agencies, entry qualifications for correctional treatment specialists require an undergraduate degree that includes 24 semester hours of social science, plus one year of professional casework experience or two years of graduate education in a social science or two years of a combination of graduate education and professional casework experience. Candidates must be 21 years old, have had no felony convictions, and possess strong writing skills. In some states, correctional treatment specialists are required to complete training sponsored by the department of corrections. Earnings and Job Outlook Employment of correctional treatment specialists is projected to grow as fast as the average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Median annual wages of correctional treatment specialists are $48,190. The bottom 10 percent earn less than $31,590, and the top 10 percent earn $83,410. Higher wages tend to be found in urban areas. More Information See the Occupational Outlook Handbook website: Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists. CAREERS in Corrections Correctional Treatment Specialist DO THE RIGHT THING Members of the classification committee examined the case folders of those who would appear before them. This morning, 10 new admissions to prison were to be classified as to housing and program. Each folder contained basic information about the person’s education, prior employment, crime, sentence, and the counselor’s evaluation. In the small talk before the first new admission arrived, Ralph MacKinnon, the chief of the classification unit, warned the other members that the computer-programming class was filled and the waiting list was long. However, there was a great need for workers to make mattresses for state institutions. “But Ralph, some of the guys trying to learn computer programming just can’t hack it,” said counselor Michael Harris. “I’ve got a man coming before us who was a math major in college and has already had some computer experience. He would greatly benefit from the extra training.” “That’s fine, Mike, but we can’t let someone jump ahead, especially when the mattress factory needs workers. I promised Jim Fox we would get him some help.” “But shouldn’t we put people into programs that would help them when they get out?” responded Mike. WRITING ASSIGNMENT: If you were on the classification committee, what would you do? Write a memo to the warden explaining your position. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 358 PART 2 Correctional Practices remainder to medium security. Such variables as race, employment, and education are not used because they are seen as unfair. However, in reality the two models frequently use similar variables for classification, the main difference being that predictive models use statistical techniques to identify the factors that are used and the weights they receive. Objective systems are more efficient and cheaper than other systems because line staff can be trained to administer and score the instrument without help from clinicians and senior administrators. They also lead to more-consistent classification decisions because the same criteria are applied to every new prison admission. A problem with all classification systems is that many states “overclassify,” placing people in higher custody levels than appears necessary, simply because more high-security space is available. As a result, treatment assignments for which people in maximum-security prisons are not eligible (such as work release) are simply unavailable to the vast majority. This classification policy can have further negative consequences because many privileges are linked to classification level. In Colorado, for example, early release from prison is restricted to people classified as minimum security. In many states the amount of good time that can be earned is tied to security classification. Further, release on parole often depends on a record of successful participation in treatment or educational programs. People often have difficulty explaining to the parole board that they really did want to learn a skill but were given no opportunity to do so because of their high-level security classification. Rehabilitative Programs Rehabilitative programs aim at reforming a person’s behavior. Some people argue that imprisonment is so painful that it is itself reformative: People should want to change their ways to avoid repeating the experience. The reformative power of prison itself is often called a “special deterrence effect.” But many scholars contend that imprisonment by itself is not reformative enough, that the person’s prison activities must also be reformative. There is much dispute about which rehabilitative programs should be offered and emphasized, whether psychological, behavioral, social, educational and vocational, substance abuse, sex offender, or religious programs. Psychological Programs In prison, psychological programs seek to treat the underlying emotional or mental problems that led to criminality. Of course, this assumes that such problems are indeed the primary cause of most criminality—or even that the concept of mental illness makes sense. These assumptions underlie the medical model, discussed in Chapter 3. However, critics have challenged this model repeatedly and vigorously. In his famous critique, the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz questioned the applicability of the medical model used for physical ailments to the kinds of “problems in living” commonly called mental illness.9 The notions of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment are irrelevant to these problems, and they mislead people who try to deal with them. Other critics of mental health treatment in prisons take a much less radical stance: They say that mental illness is an inadequate explanation of criminal behavior. Many additional factors enter a decision to behave criminally: opportunity, rational motivation, skill, acquaintances, anger. No one can demonstrate convincingly that some mental problem underlies all or even most of such decisions. Recent studies of prison and jail populations find rates of mental health problems that are much higher than among the general population; however, those affected still represent only a minority of the correctional population. The lack of consensus on diagnoses of mental illness indicates some of the drawbacks in the general concept that mental illness underlies much criminal behavior (see Figure 14.1). For example, trained psychiatrists disagree on the diagnosis of patients’ mental problems as often as half of the time. If the experts cannot agree on the nature of an “illness,” then perhaps the idea of the “illness” itself has no merit. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 359 Psychotherapeutic Approaches The unreliability of mental illness diagnosis may be one reason why treatments have been so ineffective. Robert Martinson’s groundbreaking review of treatment programs, discussed in Chapter 3, provides perhaps the starkest conclusion: With few exceptions, rehabilitative efforts had no appreciable effect on recidivism.10 Martinson was referring to a wide variety of programs, but his conclusion applied particularly to programs designed to improve emotional or psychological functioning. The psychological approach is problematic in prison. Most experts would agree that psychotherapy, or “treatment of the mind,” has narrow prospects for success even with motivated, voluntary, free patients. Free patients voluntarily enter a financial contract with the therapist for help; either party is free to terminate the agreement at any time. Because the client is the purchaser, it is easy to see why the therapist keeps the client’s interest foremost during the treatment process. In prison, society purchases the therapist’s services. The interests of the purchaser assume more importance to the therapist than do those of the client—in this case, the person in prison. This turns the accepted practices of most therapy upside down. The centerpiece is not the person in prison; instead, it is society’s desire that that person develop a crime-free lifestyle. (See “Myths in Corrections” and Figure 14.2.) Because of the many problems with prison psychotherapy, programs that address emotional health from this frame of reference have become less common in recent years. Today most prison counselors do not practice psychotherapy. While a few incarcerated people receive some sort of counseling, most of this prison treatment tends to focus on concrete problems that people face in adjusting to the prison environment or in dealing with family crises that occur during psychotherapy In generic terms, all forms of “treatment of the mind”; in the prison setting, this treatment is coercive in nature. 0 Percent 70 State prison Federal prison Local jail Any mental problem 10 20 30 40 50 60 56.2% 44.8% 64.2% No mental health problem 43.8% 55.2% 35.8% Symptoms only 31.6% 30.7% 43.2% History and symptoms 17.5% 8.9% 17.1% History only 6.8% 4.8% 3.5% FIGURE 14.1 Mental Health Problems Among the Confined Not only is mental illness prevalent among those under correctional authority, but inmates also vary widely in their mental health history and exhibition of symptoms, making diagnosis, treatment, and explanation of criminal behavior even more difficult. Source: BJS Special Report, September 2006, p. 3. Prison and Rehabilitation THE MYTH: Judges should send people to prison to be treated in rehabilitation programs. THE REALITY: Rehabilitation programs offered in the community for people on probation or parole are twice as effective at reducing recidivism as are those same programs offered in prison. Source: P. Gendreau, S. A. French, and A. Taylor, What Works (What Doesn’t Work), rev. ed., Monograph Series Project (Ottawa, Ontario: International Community Corrections Association, 2002). MYTHS in Corrections Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 360 PART 2 Correctional Practices incarceration. Another small percentage receive prescription psychotropic medications, but very few receive 24-hour psychiatric care. Group Treatment Approaches Unlike psychotherapy, programs that address emotions and thoughts tend to use group therapy, in which a set of people come together to discuss mutual problems. Group treatment is considered important because humans are social animals. Most of our behavior occurs in groups, and we learn to define ourselves and to interpret our experiences in groups. This fact is particularly appropriate to criminology because a large proportion of crime is committed by groups or in groups, and much criminal behavior is reinforced by group norms, by manipulation, and by elaborate rationalizations. Most groups in prison use structured approaches in which the group undertakes a series of patterned discussion topics or activities that are targeted not at emotions, but at thought processes. Prison treatment groups are often highly confrontational. Group members are asked to “call” the manipulations and rationalizations that others are using to justify their deviant behavior, and they are encouraged to participate wholeheartedly in the process. Four of the most common group approaches are reality therapy, confrontation therapy, transactional analysis, and cognitive skill building. Reality therapy has a simple core tenet: People’s problems decline when they behave more responsibly. Things get difficult when people fail to behave in ways consistent with life’s realities. The therapist’s role is to return the client consistently and firmly to the real consequences of his or her behavior, with particular attention to the troubles that follow inappropriate actions. Reality therapy is popular in corrections for three reasons. First, it assumes that the rules which society sets for its members are inescapable. Second, its techniques are easy for staff to learn. Third, the method is short-term and thus highly adaptable to prison. In confrontation therapy, a professional group leader encourages group members to confront one another’s rationalizations and manipulations, which are common to criminal thoughts and actions. These sessions can become quite vocal, and people trying to defend themselves can get angry in reaction to aggressive accusations by peers. The therapy aims at pressuring participants to give up their manipulative rationalizations and accept responsibility for the harms their crimes have caused. psychotropic medications Drug treatments designed to lessen the severity of symptoms of psychological illness. Percent reduction in recidivism rates 40 0 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 Community based Institutional FIGURE 14.2 Programs in Prison Versus in the Community Rehabilitation programs offered in the community for people on probation and parole are twice as effective at reducing recidivism as are those same programs offered in prison. Source: P. Gendreau, S. A. French, and A. Taylor, What Works (What Doesn’t Work), rev. ed., Monograph Series Project (Ottawa, Ontario: International Community Corrections Association, 2002). reality therapy Treatment that emphasizes personal responsibility for actions and their consequences. confrontation therapy A treatment technique, usually done in a group, that vividly brings people face-to-face with their crime’s consequences for the victim and society. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 361 Transactional analysis focuses on the roles, or ego states, that people use with others. The aim is to help people realize that their problems commonly result from approaching the world as an angry Parent or weak Child rather than as a responsible Adult. The therapist’s role is largely that of teacher; he or she spends much time explaining the concepts of transactional analysis and showing the client how to use them in analyzing his or her own life. Like reality therapy, transactional analysis is considered well suited to corrections because it is simple, straightforward, and short-term. Cognitive skill building focuses on changing the thought patterns that accompany criminal behavior. Advocates argue that antisocial patterns of reasoning are developed which cause someone to believe that criminal behavior makes sense. To replace these thought patterns, people need to learn new skills and techniques for day-to-day living. The group leader uses a variety of procedures to teach these new skills, including role-playing and “psychodramas,” which re-create emotionally stressful past occurrences. The aim of the cognitive approach is to teach people new ways to think about themselves and their actions.11 Studies show that cognitive programs work when they reflect the gender and culture of the people who are receiving treatment, but they fail if they are not culturally appropriate or are otherwise poorly implemented.12 Behavior Therapy Correctional behavior therapy postulates that the differences between people labeled deviant and nondeviant lie not within the individual but in that person’s responses to problems in the environment. According to this idea, what needs reformation is not the thinking or emotions, but behavior. The method seeks to change behavior directly by identifying and altering the environmental conditions that promote problem behavior. The assumption is that behavior is learned and has consequences. It can be unlearned if the consequences are replaced with a more rewarding payoff. The target of behavior therapy in this case is not criminality per se but the variety of problem behaviors that surround a criminal lifestyle: verbal manipulation and rationalization; deficiency in social skills, such as conversation; inability to control anger and frustration; and so on. Obviously, such behavior can make it difficult to keep jobs, avoid conflict, and handle disappointment. The underlying belief is that criminal behavior is typically related to such crucial personal experiences. Social Therapy The broad term social therapy is applied to certain programs (often referred to as milieu therapy or positive peer culture) because they seek to develop a prosocial environment within the prison to help develop noncriminal ways of coping outside. They are based on the idea that people learn lawbreaking values and behaviors in social settings from peers to whom they attach importance. To permanently alter these values and behaviors, the peer relationships and interaction patterns must be changed. This approach assumes that true change occurs when a person begins to take responsibility for the social climate within which he or she lives. All actions are directed toward developing a prison culture that promotes a law-abiding lifestyle with appropriate social attitudes. Such a program requires significant shifts in institutional policy to support a prosocial institutional climate. Thus, (1) institutional practices must be democratic rather than bureaucratic, (2) programs must focus on treatment rather than custody, (3) humanitarian concerns have priority over institutional routines, and (4) flexibility is valued over rigidity. The creation of such a therapeutic community has found some success in evaluation studies, but they are not guaranteed to work, and some studies have shown less than promising results.13 Clearly, it is exceedingly difficult to turn a prison into a therapeutic community. The approach has been criticized as both inherently impractical and ineffective in reducing crime. How can a prison, intentionally established as a degrading, painful, intrusive setting, be transactional analysis Treatment that focuses on patterns of interaction with others, especially patterns that indicate personal problems. cognitive skill building A form of behavior therapy that focuses on changing the thinking and reasoning patterns that accompany criminal behavior. behavior therapy Treatment that induces new behaviors through reinforcements (rewards and punishments), role modeling, and other active forms of teaching. social therapy Treatment that attempts to create an institutional environment that supports prosocial attitudes and behaviors. therapeutic community A prison environment where every aspect of the prison is designed to promote prosocial attitudes and behavior. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 362 PART 2 Correctional Practices transformed into a caring, supportive environment? How can the keepers, trained to control the kept but vulnerable to their threats, ever give up meaningful institutional authority to people confined in prison without risking their own security and that of the institution? Educational and Vocational Programs One of the oldest ideas in prison programming is to teach a skill that can help incarcerated people get a job upon release. Educational and vocational programs provide much to recommend their importance in prison. People in prison constitute one of the most undereducated and underemployed groups in the U.S. population. The formerly incarcerated have limited capability to succeed as wage earners in modern society. Many people believe that criminal behavior stems from this kind of economic incapacity, and they urge the wide use of educational and vocational programs to counter it (see “For Critical Thinking”). Educational Programs Nearly two-thirds of people in prison have failed to graduate from high school; two-fifths do not even have a general equivalency diploma (GED).14 Thus, it is not surprising that programs offering academic courses are among the most popular in today’s corrections system. Waiting lists for classes are increasing. In many systems, everyone who has not completed eighth grade—one person in seven, nationally—is assigned full time to the prison school. Many programs provide remedial help with basic reading, English, and math skills. They also permit people in prison to earn a GED. As we have seen, some institutions offer courses in cooperation with a college or university, although funding for such programs has come under attack. Recall that the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1994 bans federal funding in prison for postsecondary education. Some state legislatures have passed similar laws under pressure from people who argue that tax dollars should not be spent on the college tuition of people in prison when law-abiding students must pay for their own education. Prison educational programs face several practical problems. The ability of many people in prison to learn is often hampered by a lack of basic reading and computational skills. Moreover, research has increasingly shown a link between learning disabilities and delinquency; many have experienced disciplinary as well as academic failure in school. Thus, FOR CRITICAL THINKING “Education in Prison” (see p. 355) tells Walter Fortson’s story. He is certainly a prison education success story, but he is far from typical; prison education does not send many of its students to places like Rutgers. Moreover, prison educational programs are not easy to mount and not always successful. 1. Identify characteristics of the prison and its environment that make educational programs more difficult to provide than is the case in the free world. What can be done to overcome these problems? Are there any advantages to the prison setting for providing education? Explain your answer. 2. Some people say the problem with prison educational programs is that the prison is a difficult place to try to educate people. Others say the main problem is the deficits of those who attend the classes. What do you think, and why? 3. A typical person behind bars who needs educational programs also needs vocational training and other forms of treatment, such as drug abuse treatment, to reduce the risk of new criminality. What should the priority be: education, vocational training, or some other riskreducing treatment? Why? ▲ College courses in prison are a proven way to increase postrelease success. This class, offered by Hudson Links and Columbia University, covers the works of classic authors Homer, Euripides, and Virgil. Students at Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, near New York City, relish the topic and the opportunity. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 363 prison education sometimes must cope with limited academic skills and attitudes poorly suited to learning. Other factors exacerbate the problems of prison education. The people in the classes are usually well beyond the age associated with their current educational attainment, such as a 29-year-old performing at a sixth-grade level. Few available texts are appropriate for such adults. Imagine a 32-year-old two-time robber with self-inflicted tattoos struggling through a passage in a second-grade reader about Johnnie and Susie learning to bake cookies. The sheer inappropriateness of the material to the age and interests drives many away from remedial schooling. How successful is prison education as a rehabilitative program? Studies show that some who obtain GEDs while incarcerated see an increase in wages upon release but that this improvement dissipates after three years. Even so, the recidivism rate for these GED recipients is lower than for those who do not obtain the GED in prison.15 Critics point out that the higher success rate may result not from the GED itself but from the better-risk people being the ones who take the courses and obtain it. In 2013 the RAND Institute conducted a meta-analysis of correctional education studies, looking at more than 100 published reports. The study found that those “who participate in correctional education programs had 43 percent lower odds of recidivating than those who did not.”16 The effects are even greater for participation in college-level programs. The report illustrates some of the largest effects ever found using the meta-analysis method. Vocational Programs Vocational rehabilitation programs attempt to teach a marketable job skill. However, these programs also suffer from the principle of least eligibility: Training often centers on less-desirable jobs in industries that already have large labor pools— barbering, printing, welding, and the like. Other problems also plague prison vocational programs. Often, participants are trained on obsolete or inadequate equipment because prisons generally lack the resources to upgrade. A story is told about a popular print shop apprenticeship program at one large state reformatory that provided training on presses donated by the local newspaper. People who went through the training learned, upon parole, that their “new” skill was unmarketable because the machinery they had learned to operate was so inefficient that the newspaper had junked it (which was why it had been donated). People in prison also sometimes lack the attitudes necessary to obtain and keep a job—punctuality, accountability, deference to supervisors, cordiality to coworkers. Further, they may lack the ability to locate a job opening and successfully interview. Therefore, most need to learn not only a skill but also how to act in the formal work world. The prison regimen, which tells people what to do and where to be each moment from morning to night, can do little to develop attitudes needed outside the walls. Yet another problem is perhaps the most resistant of all. The civil disabilities that attach to the formerly incarcerated, discussed in more detail in Chapter 16, severely limit job mobility and flexibility. Occupational restrictions force people into low-paying, menial jobs, which may lead them back to crime. In one state or another, barred occupations include nurse, beautician, barber, real estate salesperson, chauffeur, worker where alcoholic beverages are sold, cashier, stenographer, and insurance salesperson. Unfortunately, some prison vocational programs actually train people for jobs they can never have. Further, the stigma of being formerly incarcerated is either difficult or impossible to overcome. Despite their detractors, prison vocational programs receive considerable support from many experts because poor job skills seem so closely tied to the problems faced upon release into the community. The additional income and taxes produced by people who have received vocational training in prison may actually offset the cost of the programs and may also reduce recidivism. Even with all these advantages, prison educational and vocational programs are underused. A recent survey of correctional programs in 43 states, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that only 6 percent of the people who were incarcerated in those states participated in postsecondary educational or vocational training.17 Substance Abuse Programs The link between crime and substance abuse is strong.18 About half of all people facing charges test positive for drugs at the time of arrest, and most of these arrestees need some form of drug treatment. To serve this large clientele, substance abuse treatment programs have grown rapidly in all parts of the criminal justice system, working with millions of correctional clients on any given day. vocational rehabilitation Prison programming designed to teach cognitive and vocational skills to help people find employment upon release. civil disabilities Legal restrictions that prevent many former prison residents from voting and holding elective office, engaging in certain professions and occupations, and associating with others who are under correctional authority. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 364 PART 2 Correctional Practices For years, people have questioned the effectiveness of drug treatment programs for habituated people in the justice system. Follow-up studies routinely found high rates of rearrest for those leaving these programs, and most participants had instances of relapse as well. The failure of these programs to eradicate drug use among participants led many to believe that drug treatment did not work. However, more-recent research has demonstrated that even though failure rates are high, drug treatment can be a valuable, cost-effective crime-reduction strategy. One reason for this reinterpretation of drug treatment programs is that different researchers frame the question differently. Instead of asking simply whether there is a relapse, some researchers ask a more complex evaluation question: Do program participants return to drugs and crime at lower rates than do those who were not in the program? The usual answer is yes. This more complex question stems from recognition of how difficult it is to overcome drug addiction. A small rate of abstinence among program participants may represent a big difference in drug use and crime compared with nonparticipants. Even participants who eventually fail often spend more time drug-free on the streets before relapse, and their new crimes are less serious. These effects can result in significant savings in criminal justice costs and the losses of victims, and long-term reductions in recidivism. Today, the most effective substance abuse treatment programs share several components: 1. The program occurs in phases, with a residential treatment phase lasting between 6 and 12 months. 2. During residential treatment, participants gradually earn privileges in a therapeutic treatment setting. 3. Multiple treatment modalities are used, including individual psychotherapy, group therapy, and vocational rehabilitation. 4. Residential staff and community officials closely coordinate plans for release. 5. Treatment continues after release in the form of therapy groups augmented by drug testing.19 Sex Offender Programs Many correctional officials believe that people convicted of sex crimes represent the most difficult group for correctional treatment. There are several reasons for this. First, there are different types of people convicted of sex crimes: Crimes vary from exhibitionism to rape to child molesting to incest. The treatment needs of one group may not correspond to the needs of another. Yet treatment programs often group all of those who have been convicted of sex crimes together, perhaps because the public and prison officials tend to do so as well. Second, some people with sex crime histories are far more committed than others, emotionally and personally, to the kind of sexual deviance they practice. Those who are deeply devoted to a version of sexual abnormalcy may find it harder to turn away from their desires and thus may resist treatment more. This may also be why some of these types have high recidivism rates. Third, providing treatment for this group in prison settings is sometimes problematic. Often, they are targets of harassment, so they are inclined to maintain a low profile. Attending treatment programs can call attention to one’s status, leading to trouble with others. The incentives to deny problems with sexual deviance while incarcerated are quite substantial. This is one of the reasons that community-based treatments often do better with this group than prison-based programs.20 Various kinds of treatments have been tried in prison settings, with varying degrees of success.21 Relapse-prevention approaches attempt to teach ways to foresee inappropriate arousal before it occurs and how to prevent acting on those feelings. Interpersonal strategies work on social skills, victim awareness, and sexual identity. Other approaches try to break through patterns of denial and rationalization or to build skills in anger control and impulse control. Many treatment programs employ all of these strategies in the hopes that they will reinforce one another and one will eventually work. Treatment programs focus on helping the person to overcome the following: ■ Deviant sexual arousal, interests, or preferences ■ Sexual preoccupation ■ Pervasive anger or hostility ■ Emotion management difficulties ■ Self-regulation difficulties, or impulsivity ■ An antisocial orientation ■ Pro-offending attitudes, or cognitive distortions ■ Intimacy deficits and conflicts in intimate relationships22 A growing body of literature suggests that some treatments for this group reduce recidivism rates. One comprehensive review of treatment programs for people convicted of sex-related crimes concluded that they had a recidivism rate as low as one-half that of people convicted of other types of crimes and that treatment programs can reduce the recidivism rate by about onefourth, boding well for rehabilitation.23 Because of the important stake the public has in effective treatment for people convicted of sex crimes, experimentation with new strategies for this group will almost certainly continue. Religious Programs Religious programs seem substantially different from the categories discussed thus far. For most of prison history, such programs were a mainstay of prison services but were thought to be an offshoot of prison life rather than a mainstream treatment program. Recently, interest in religious strategies for social problems has grown. People who study crime have noted an emerging literature suggesting that people who are more oriented toward religion are less likely to engage in crime. For some scholars and many activists, religion is seen as an exciting new way to help people change their lives. At least five states—Texas, Kansas, Minnesota, Florida, and Iowa— have opened new prison treatment facilities with a central philosophy of religious teaching. These initiatives have received a lot of attention: Advocates hope that religious programs will reduce recidivism, whereas critics worry about using tax dollars to promote religion. While the courts have ruled that compulsory involvement in religious programs violates the First Amendment,24 voluntary religious programming stands on solid constitutional ground.25 Because the First Amendment guarantees the right to belief and practice, religious programs are available to everyone in prison. The two main religions in prison are Christianity and Islam, but U.S. prisons host the same array of faiths that free society does. Religious programs in prisons also demonstrate regional differences that are similar to those found in free-society religious practices. For instance, in the West and Southwest, Native Americans may fast and sit in sweat lodges, spending up to a day in quiet contemplation. In the Northeast and Southwest, daily Catholic masses are common. In prisons in the southern “Bible Belt,” religious programs tend to be evangelical Christian. Interviews with those who practice religion while incarcerated indicate several reasons why it is helpful in prison. For example, religion often provides a psychological and physical “safe haven” from harsh realities and enables people to maintain ties with their families and with religious volunteers from the outside. Many administrators believe that strong religious groups—even those following nontraditional religions—make a prison easier to run because of a more stabilized prison culture. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 366 PART 2 Correctional Practices Only a few studies of religion in prison have been conducted. The results of these studies are mixed. It appears that religious activity improves adjustment to prison psychologically, helping participants avoid infractions. But there seems to be a pattern that the initial positive impact of religion programs disappears over time.26 Why religious programs in prison have limiting staying power remains an open question. On the other hand, when religion-based programs operate under proven correctional treatment principles, they can reduce recidivism.27 However, it is not clear whether the impact comes from the religious aspects of the program or the reliance on proven correctional treatment principles. The Rediscovery of Correctional Rehabilitation After Martinson’s 1974 study indicated that prison rehabilitation programs were ineffective, the number of treatment programs began to decrease. According to the new vision, prison was a place that should provide safe and secure custody during punishment. Yet even though some correctional officials willingly abandoned the rehabilitation ideal, many others believed that eradicating rehabilitation from prisons was unwise. In recent years these penologists have become a strong minority voice calling for a renewed emphasis on rehabilitative programs in corrections (see “How to Make Prisons Better”). A team of the most respected scholars in corrections has recently suggested seven key reforms for the prison system: 1. Make prisons less crowded. Prison crowding makes everything else difficult. It deteriorates the effectiveness of prison programming. It makes security more challenging, creating stress for both staff and people who are incarcerated. The best way to reduce prison crowding is to put fewer people in prison and to have shorter stays for those who are in prison. 2. Make it possible for people in prison to earn rewards. There is ample evidence that punishment-oriented systems for managing prisons do not work at maintaining safer prison environments. This is true because threats and sanctions inside the prison do not change the problems that lead to trouble. Offering “carrots, not just sticks” is a much more promising way to make prisons run better. 3. Use science to improve the conditions of confinement. Too many prisons are brutal, agonizing places. These conditions are not only inhumane, but they cannot be conducive to achieving the goals of the prison system. Wretched conditions in prisons are not inevitable. Prison lighting, color, and architecture—ideas that are consistent with well-developed theories of situational crime prevention—can be essential to overcoming the stifling prison environment. 4. Give the public what it wants. Every recent survey of public opinion confirms that people want the prison system to rehabilitate, not just punish. Programs that enable prisons to accomplish this aim should be central to prison management, not peripheral. 5. Make wardens accountable for correcting people who go to prison. Specific prisons should be evaluated on how well the people who go there succeed when they are released. After all, when a person returns to prison for a new crime, it is not only an individual failure—it is also an institutional failure to rehabilitate. These results should be measured. Leaders who are better at getting these results should be rewarded and promoted. Those who cannot should find ways to improve—or find another profession. 6. Use principles of effective corrections for rehabilitation. There are now well-established principles of effective correctional programs: focusing on high-risk clients, dealing with criminogenic needs, and employing effective interpersonal strategies. All correctional programs in prisons should be consistent with these principles. 7. Teach prison officers to be change agents. Correctional staff should not be merely custodians. If a prison is to be focused on rehabilitation, then every correctional staff member must become a change agent. This requires training about principles of human motivation, what is known about effective correctional strategies, and, most of all, change as the core philosophy of the prison system. Source: Francis T. Cullen, Daniel P. Mears, Cheryl Leno Jonson, and Angela J. Thielo, “Seven Ways to Make Prisons Work,” in What Is to Be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a Public Criminology, edited by Roger Mathews (London: Palgrave, 2016), 159–96. FOCUS ON CORRECTIONAL PRACTICE: How to Make Prisons Better Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 367 In their book Reaffirming Rehabilitation, Francis Cullen and Karen Gilbert argue that correctional treatment is more humane than mere custody and punishment and that these programs can be effective when appropriately designed and implemented.28 Following their lead, a team of Canadian researchers analyzed a large number of recent evaluations of correctional treatment and identified six proven principles under which treatment programs will be effective: 1. The programs are directed toward high-risk clients. 2. The programs respond to problems that caused the criminal behavior. 3. The treatments take into account clients’ psychological maturity. 4. The treatment providers are allowed professional discretion in how to manage progress in treatment. 5. The programs are fully implemented as intended. 6. There is follow-up support after the treatment programs are completed. Recent research that looks at a wide array of treatment programs continues to support these ideas. One of the most important elements of this research on effective treatment programs is the distinction made between criminogenic needs and other kinds of needs. Criminogenic needs are those that, when successfully addressed by treatment programs, result in lower rates of recidivism. The identification of criminogenic needs is an important advance in correctional treatment because it enables program managers to focus their efforts on objectives that are likely to pay off in lower recidivism rates. Although interest in rehabilitation waned when the philosophy of corrections swung toward crime control, advocates of correctional rehabilitation now point to an increase in consistent evidence that programs meeting the six criteria of success can result in considerable reductions of new criminal activity. Perhaps the time has come for a reformulation of the ethics of correctional rehabilitation: from “nothing works” to “what works, for whom, and why.”29 To bolster this point of view, several researchers have undertaken systematic reviews of correctional rehabilitation studies in which a broad and careful search for all the studies ever conducted is made, and then the results of those studies are statistically assessed to find patterns of results. Systematic studies are thought to be superior in giving policy makers an understanding of correctional rehabilitation because the use of a large number of studies with a single yardstick for “success” leads to a more reliable conclusion than do other methods.30 The most powerful new studies of correctional rehabilitation programs try to express their effectiveness in cost–benefit ratios. A cost–benefit study begins with the recognition that crime costs money—victims suffer losses, and the criminal justice system has to use its resources to combat crime. Correctional programs also cost money. Any program that can reduce crime can thus be seen as a potential money saver, at least in the long term, if the savings incurred through the crimes that have been averted outweigh the costs of the program itself. Cost benefits are expressed as ratios: When they are larger than 1, the program saves money; when they are less than 1, the program loses money. Thus, a program with a cost–benefit ratio of 2.25 saves $2.25 for every dollar it costs, while a program with a cost–benefit ratio of 0.50 loses 50 cents per dollar spent on the program. criminogenic needs Needs that when successfully addressed by treatment programs result in lower rates of recidivism. ▲ The dental offices of Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington State look like dental offices anywhere. But they are located in a maximum-security prison, and as a result the services they offer are more expensive than the same services provided outside the prison. AP Images/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin/Joe Tierney cost–benefit ratio A summary measure of the value of a correctional program in saving money through preventing new crime. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from Recent systematic cost–benefit studies have encouraged advocates for more rehabilitation programs in corrections. Correctional interventions have cost–benefit ratios as high as $7 benefit per $1 cost. This kind of impact has sparked a new interest in rehabilitation. Texas policy advocates estimated that a cut in rehabilitation programs in the state’s prison system would be enormously expensive, requiring an additional 12,000 beds at the cost of $600 million, to handle the increased number of people who fail after being released from prison.31 After Californians passed Proposition 36, mandating treatment programs instead of prison for people convicted of drug crimes, many political leaders took note. Advocates believe that the proposition, despite problems, has been an overall success.32 This issue has ceased to be seen as primarily liberal, as conservatives have also championed rehabilitation programs for people who have gone to prison. Prison Medical Services People who are incarcerated have a well-established right to medical treatment, most effectively defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Estelle v. Gamble.33 The argument for a right to medical treatment is straightforward and persuasive: Citizens who are confined do not have the capacity to obtain health insurance or sufficient funds to pay for their own health care costs, and to deny necessary treatments would be cruel. Thus, it is only fair to provide basic health care for those who are incarcerated. This is potentially a very expensive right because of the significant health problems that people bring with them to prison. Some of these problems stem from the high-risk behavior engaged in prior to their incarceration. For example, needle use during drug abuse is the single most frequent cause of HIV transmission and is also the leading cause of hepatitis C, a liver disease that kills 5 percent of those infected. Unprotected sex also accounts for high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Treatment for most forms of these “lifestyle” diseases (so called because they are typically acquired as a consequence of a high-risk lifestyle) can be complicated and expensive. The number of people who require help for these diseases is not small. Much attention has been given to those who are HIV-positive, who number just over 20,000 (see Chapter 6). In 1995 the mortality rate in prison from AIDS was two-thirds the rate of all other causes; by 2010 the medical care for HIV and AIDS was so successful that the rates in prison were similar to those in free society. The number of AIDS-related prison deaths continued to decline, to 57 deaths in 2011 (see Figure 14.3).34 Less attention has been given to those suffering from hepatitis C, hepatitis C A sometimes fatal disease of the liver that reduces the effectiveness of the body’s system of removing toxins. Illness, not AIDS related* 87.0% Suicide AIDs 5.5% 1.7% Accident 1.1% Drug/alcohol intoxication 1.7% Homicide 2.1% Other 0.8% FIGURE 14.3 Leading Causes of State Prison Deaths, 2011 Despite the concern about AIDS in prisons, other health factors are a more common cause of death among people who are incarcerated. *Primarily cancer and heart, liver, and respiratory diseases. Source: Margaret E. Noonan, Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000–2011—Statistical Tables (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013). Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 369 whose numbers may exceed 360,000, a stunning 18 percent of the national prison population. However, hepatitis C rates can vary considerably among different regions and are as high as 40 percent in some correctional systems.35 The medical treatment regimen for these diseases involves drugs that reduce the negative effects of the diseases and slow bodily deterioration from the infection. But the most important treatment is prevention through a change in lifestyle. Prison programs that seek to halt the spread of disease within the population are educational, showing how the diseases are spread and stressing the value of abstinence from drugs and unsafe sexual contact. To date, needleexchange programs, which have successfully reduced transmission rates on the streets, have not been tried in U.S. prisons because critics say they indirectly support illicit drug use inside the walls. In addition to lifestyle diseases, people in prison suffer other maladies found in the general population. A recent study found that almost one-third of the state prison population and nearly one-fourth of the federal prison population reported some debility requiring health care (see Figure 14.4). One in five reported suffering a new medical problem subsequent to arriving at the prison, and half of those serving five years or longer reported the onset of a medical problem during incarceration.36 For these people, the need for availability of “sick call” and regular medical help is no different than that of the population at large, but a person’s choice is restricted to whatever options the prison provides. Most prisons offer medical services through a full-time staff of nurses, augmented by parttime physicians under contract. Nurses can take care of routine health care needs and dispense medicines from a secure, in-prison pharmacy; regularly scheduled visits to the prison by doctors can enable people in prison to obtain checkups and diagnoses. For cases needing a specialist, Number of states 0 Inpatient mental health 1 Outpatient mental health Inpatient medical health Outpatient medical health Type of care Dental Emergency Don’t know 50 35 45 40 30 25 20 15 10 5 Both on-site and off-site Off-site only On-site only 14 3 27 1 44 1 38 4 2 1 25 19 1 37 7 1 29 15 Note: FIGURE 14.4 Counts are based on responses from 45 participating states only. Health Care Needs of People in Prison Many types of health care are provided for people in prison; some services are on-site, and others require transfer to receive the service. Note: Counts are based on responses from 45 participating states only. Source: Karishma A. Chari, Alan E. Simon, Carol J. DeFrances, and Laura Maruschak, National Survey of Prison Health Care: Selected Findings (Washington, DC: National Health Statistics Reports no. 96, 2016). Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 370 PART 2 Correctional Practices surgery, or emergency medical care, people must be transported to local hospitals under close security by correctional staff. The aim is for the prison system to provide a range of medical assistance to meet the various needs of the population as a whole. However, because medical care is so expensive, many prison administrators resist providing help until it is absolutely necessary. Complaints among people in prison and observers that prison medical care is “second class” are common, and one study has accused the prison authorities of purposefully abusive health care practices. Although the needs for health care in prison echo those of the general population, people in prison pose two special needs because of poverty and aging. As a group, people in prison are very poor, so they often bring to the prison years of neglect of their general health. For example, many have neglected their teeth so severely that the resulting unsightly smile makes it hard to get any job requiring contact with business customers. A round of dental repairs can do wonders to alleviate this practical and personal problem, but outsiders might look at such free dental care as a luxury. Other consequences of being poor, such as an inadequate diet and poor hygiene, also affect the general health of the prison population. By far, the most extraordinary health problem in contemporary corrections is the burgeoning number of elderly people. Penal policies of the 1980s and 1990s have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of people serving long sentences, and many of them are now beginning to grow old in prison. The number ages 50 and older doubled in the mid-1990s, and this group will likely approach 20 percent of the prison population in coming years. The growing number of geriatric people poses multiple problems for prison authorities. The elderly have morecomplicated and more-numerous health problems, overall, and they eventually reach an age where they cannot work productively in prison assignments. As the length of time away from free society increases, the ability to adjust to release diminishes to the point that setting some of the elderly free, without family or friends, seems an undesirable outcome. But staying inside has its costs, too. Prisons are difficult places in which to grow old and, finally, die. Mortality rates for those age 55 or older are 50 times higher than the rates for people in prison between the ages of 25 and 44.37 The large number of people who are geriatric and on the path to dying has led some prison systems to form hospice facilities where those who are younger can care for the elderly as they spend their last days behind bars. (See Chapter 10 for more about elderly prison residents.) The rapidly expanding cost of prison health care has led prison officials to look for ways to provide adequate health care less expensively. The managed-care strategies that are used to contain health care costs in the free world are now being used in prisons, as corrections systems seek to purchase health care on the open market rather than provide it themselves. Many prison officials are beginning to impose restrictions on health care procedures and to find ways of reducing demand for health services. Today, the imprisoned are the only people living in the United States who enjoy a constitutional right to adequate health care. Nevertheless, numerous state and local facilities have been found to violate this right, especially in terms of mental health care. In fact, California’s entire state prison system has been declared unconstitutional because of its poor health care. Some believe that the principle of least eligibility may come into play here, making the right to medical treatment precarious, as free citizens go without the same health care services provided by right to those in prison. Prison Industry Historically, hard labor has served as a central part of punishment. It was even a popular belief at one time that a person’s labor was legally forfeited as a result of criminality and that the state could expect to profit from the person’s incarceration. Labor was also a way to manage the restlessness and idleness of prison time. Meaningful and productive work came to be seen more recently as one of the best ways to make the long days of prison go faster, and paying for labor could help imprisoned people make hard lives less harsh through the ability to buy daily amenities and goods. Most important, labor was also viewed as part of the reformative process, a belief that continues today. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 371 Some scholars have declared that historians have focused too heavily on the humanitarian and reformist basis for the rise of the penitentiary and reformatory. They argue that this view does not adequately reflect economic motives for the emergence of the prison. In fact, prisons provide a captive labor pool, and restrictions on wages earned by people in prison labor make possible the production of goods at very low cost. In 2012 the U.S. government made roughly $750 million providing prison labor.38 The theme of labor for profit is accompanied by a concern about idleness. Much of the history of prison industry revolves around the search for suitable ways to occupy time while also serving the financial interests of forces outside the walls. Four approaches have resulted: (1) the contract labor, piece price, and lease systems; (2) the public account system; (3) the state-use system; and (4) the public works and ways system. The Contract Labor, Piece Price, and Lease Systems In the early days of U.S. prisons, people who were incarcerated had their labor contracted out to private employers, who provided the machinery and raw materials for the work. The products made by this contract labor system were then sold on the open market. Alternatively, in the piece price system the contractor established a purchase price for goods that were produced with raw materials provided by the contractor. Both arrangements were extremely exploitative. The conditions were like sweatshops, and the fees for labor were paid to the prisons; “free” during the day, the laborers were returned to the prison at night. In the lease system, a variation of the piece price system, the contractor maintained the laborers, working them for 12–16 hours at a stretch. These systems enabled many prisons in the later 1800s—even the vaunted Auburn—to operate in the black. The low wages increased the contractors’ profit margins. The people in prison, of course, worked for nothing and gained nothing. Not surprisingly, these arrangements led to extreme corruption as well as exploitation. With sizable contracts at stake, kickbacks and bribes became common practices. Further, wardens took advantage of easy opportunities to line their pockets—and caused predictable public scandals when they were caught. Soon, organized labor began to attack the prison labor arrangements. Late in the nineteenth century a coalition of humanitarian reformers and labor leaders lobbied successfully for laws prohibiting contract prison labor. States then began to experiment with alternative forms of free-market prison labor. The Public Account System When contract labor was outlawed, Oklahoma led the way in instituting the public account system. Instead of selling prison labor to private entrepreneurs, in 1909 the state prison itself began to make twine, buying raw materials and using prison labor. Similar twinemaking factories existed in Minnesota and Wisconsin prisons. At first, the reform was enormously successful, reducing the costs of twine for Oklahoma farmers and generating profits that defrayed two-thirds of the costs of prison operations, but ultimately the experiment failed. The financial pressure that wardens had felt earlier did not die with the contract labor system, and they often succumbed to it by padding budgets and altering records. In any case, an industry that had such a narrow market could not sustain full prison employment. And when prisons began to turn a profit on goods that the private sector also produced, private industry and labor stopped cooperating. The State-Use System In response to the problems associated with using prison labor to produce goods for the competitive market, many states turned to a state-use system, in which people in prison are employed to produce goods and services used only in state institutions and agencies. Many experts consider this arrangement reasonable and beneficial, and many states mandate that their agencies piece price system A labor system under which a contractor provided raw materials and agreed to a set price to purchase goods made by people in prison. public account system A labor system under which a prison bought machinery and raw materials with which people inside manufactured a salable product. state-use system A labor system under which goods produced by prison industries are purchased exclusively by state institutions and agencies and never enter the free market. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 372 PART 2 Correctional Practices must purchase goods produced by prison labor when they are available. This requirement creates something of a state monopoly on certain products. Today, the state-use system is the most common form of prison industry. The state-use system has several advantages. Prison labor, which by many accounts is cheaper than outside labor, is not allowed to compete with other labor pools in the open market. At the same time, the state can purchase some goods more cheaply. Under this system, state agencies often buy a great variety of prison-produced items—school chairs and desks, soap and paper towels, milk and eggs, and so on. This system also has drawbacks. Even when prison products are used only by the government, the system preempts the free-labor market. Moreover, many of the goods produced within the system—license plates, for example—have no close equivalents outside, so skills acquired in prison often do not transfer to outside industries. Even when an analogous outside industry exists, prison industry is so inefficient and its methods so outmoded that people must often shed what they learned there before they can succeed in private industry. For example, farming is a common prison industry, but the enterprise typically teaches few advanced agricultural methods; people usually do manual chores, even though farmhand positions are drying up across the country. The prison farm may be good economics, but it is poor schooling. The Public Works and Ways System In a version of the state-use system called the public works and ways system, people in prison work on public construction and maintenance projects: filling potholes, constructing or repairing buildings and bridges, and so on. This approach was introduced in the 1920s, when surfaced roads were needed. There has been renewed interest in this approach to prison labor because some state officials believe that the costs of some state goods and services can be vastly reduced if they are provided by people who are incarcerated.39 Advocates praise the tremendous economic benefits of this system and point out that people learn new skills while producing goods and services useful to society. However, people in prison do the more arduous jobs on a project, and then outside craftspeople are hired for the skilled work. Some detractors say this is exploitation; the state receives a benefit but does not fairly compensate the workers (see “Thinking Outside the Box”). THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX PAY PEOPLE IN PRISON MINIMUM WAGE Prison industry has struggled to succeed for several reasons. The worker has limited incentive to work; the skills involved are often of a low level. The cost of security makes products made in prison more expensive than those same products made outside, even though prison wages are often mere pennies an hour. In that environment, it is not easy to get outside companies to bring production into the prison. On the other hand, outside manufacturers complain that prison labor is so cheap that it gives prison industry a competitive advantage. What if businesses paid prison labor the federal minimum wage? People working in prison would be able to pay restitution to their victims and provide support for their families. They could be required to reimburse the state for some of the cost of their incarceration and then perhaps leave prison with a little money in a savings account. Advocates say that this would likely reduce recidivism by encouraging prison businesses to be efficient and thus provide better real-life job training for those who are behind bars. Of course, there are plenty of political problems. With high unemployment rates, seeing people in prison get jobs that others cannot get would be galling for the general public. (It is worth noting, though, that there is nothing to stop an employer from hiring people from the outside to work alongside people who are incarcerated.) While it seems just not quite right that people who have lost their freedom can still earn a living wage, the potential advantages to the state and to industry could make it worth getting used to. Source: Prison Policy Initiative, www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex /prisonlabor.html. public works and ways system A labor system under which people in prison work on public construction and maintenance projects. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 373 Prison Industry Historically and Today Until very recently, the trend in prison industry was shifting away from free-market use of prison labor and toward state monopolies. After 1940, the private use of prison labor, once the most popular form of prison industry, vanished. One reason was that the public had become increasingly aware of the exploitative character of prison industry. Southern prison systems expanded dramatically after the Civil War, and former slaves accounted for much of this growth. The labor of most of them was contracted out in one way or another, leading some critics to argue that industrial capitalists had replaced plantation owners as exploiters of the former slaves. With the rise of the labor movement, state legislatures passed laws restricting the sale of prison-made goods in order not to compete with free workers. As early as 1819, New York required boots and shoes produced at Auburn to be labeled “State Prison.” In another application of the principle of least eligibility, whenever unemployment began to soar, political pressures mounted to prevent prisons from engaging in enterprises that might otherwise be conducted by private business and free labor. In 1900 the U.S. Industrial Commission endorsed the state-use plan, and in 1929 Congress passed the Hawes–Cooper Act, followed by additional legislation in 1935 and 1940 that banned prison-made goods from interstate commerce. In an excess of zeal, by 1940 every state had passed laws banning imports of prison-made goods from other states. These restrictions crippled production and ended the open-market system of employment. With the outbreak of World War II, however, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the government to procure goods for the military effort from state and federal prisons. Later, under pressure from organized labor, President Harry Truman revoked the wartime order, and prisons returned to idleness. By 1973, President Nixon’s National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals found that few people confined in the prison system had productive work. In 1979 Congress lifted restrictions on the interstate sale of products made in state prisons and urged correctional administrators to explore private-sector ways to improve prison industry (for a successful example in Oregon, see “Prison Blues”). In the same year, the free venture program of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration made funds available to seven states to develop industries. These programs would operate according to six principles: (1) a full workweek, (2) wages based on productivity, (3) private-sector productivity standards, (4) responsibility for hiring or firing workers given to industry staff, (5) self-sufficient or profitable shop operations, and (6) postrelease job placement. Once again, prison labor would compete with free labor. By 1994, 16 states were engaged in free venture prison industry, and 5 states—Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington—allowed people to earn wages approaching the federal minimum wage. Since 2000, there has been a renewed interest in channeling prison labor into industrial programs that would relieve idleness, allow wages to be earned and saved for release, and reduce the costs of incarceration. The change in attitude toward prison industries may be related to the fact that many large U.S. firms, in search of cheap labor, have moved operations to the developing countries. The outsourcing of U.S. jobs overseas has become a hot political issue (see “Correctional Industry Competes with the Private Sector”). Because of increased shipping costs and problems of administering plants overseas, some manufacturers may view prison labor as an attractive alternative. Union opposition may weaken if it can be shown that people in prison are not taking jobs away from taxpaying free workers. Indeed, when analysts investigate prison industry, they typically find that goods made in ▲ Prison industry has had a long and checkered career in the United States. One of the more successful programs is in Oregon, where this garment factory has produced a retail line of sportswear. AP Images/East Oregonian/E. J. Harris Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 374 PART 2 Correctional Practices prison are a minuscule portion of the gross domestic product, a small fraction of 1 percent of the total. At this early date, the supposed efficiencies of private industry in corrections are less dramatic than expected. Prison labor is cheaper than free labor, but recent reforms include higher wages for people in prison than those formerly paid by private contractors, and security requirements drive up costs. However, even if a renewed prison industry is neither efficient nor damaging to free-market labor, it makes sense to have people in prison work. A Federal Bureau of Prisons study shows that those who are employed in prison have fewer disciplinary infractions, get better jobs when released, and stay out of trouble with the law longer than do those who are unemployed while serving their sentences.40 Prison Maintenance Programs Running a prison is like running a town. The typical prison must provide every major service available in a community and more: fire department, electrical and plumbing services, janitorial maintenance, mail delivery, restaurant, drugstore, administrative record keeping, and so on. These operations must be coordinated. If only to keep the costs of these services manageable, The website for one of Oregon’s most competitive new retail businesses is www.prisonbluesjeans.com. If you place an order, you will be buying from a government-run business operating out of Oregon’s maximum-security prison, Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, employing prison labor to manufacture stylish denim jeans, shirts, and jackets. You will also be participating in one of the most innovative semiprivate-sector programs in prison industry today: Unigroup Correctional Industries of Oregon. Made possible by Oregon Senate Bill 780 in 1984, the Prison Blues® brand was established by Inside Oregon Enterprises, a division of the Oregon Department of Corrections. It was started with a federal government grant funded by drug money seizures and was intended to defray incarceration costs in the state of Oregon. Those who make the products are paid minimum wage plus incentives. Eighty-five percent of the wage goes to victim restitution, prison maintenance, family support, and taxes. The rest is used personally—most of it going into a savings account available upon release. And, yes, these workers in Oregon’s prison industries pay taxes. Prison Blues is managed by a private-sector staff of professionals working in conjunction with correctional officers and employing an average of 50 workers. The factory is run as closely as possible to one on the outside, though with higher security issues. The environment is bright and energetic, designed to maximize productivity, and most of the workers appreciate the time they can spend at work. Prison Blues is certainly a winner from a business standpoint. But is it good correctional practice? Oregon Department of Corrections officials point out that the recidivism rate of people released from Oregon prisons is about two-thirds the national average, and they attribute some of this difference to the way their programs help instill important work skills and a strong work ethic. In 1996 the factory experienced a brief shutdown because of a conflict between state and federal wage laws. Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 49 in 1997 to resolve it, requiring prison businesses to develop partnerships with the private sector. In October 1997 the Array Corporation was awarded the exclusive contract to sell, market, and operate the Prison Blues brand. It now manufactures more than 200,000 garments per year, with the capacity to produce 500,000 for both institutions and the private sector. To be eligible for hire, the applicant must have demonstrated good conduct and go through an interview hiring process. To keep his Prison Blues job, he has to be just as productive on the inside as people are required to be on the outside, as well as maintain good behavior within the institution. Those who stay in the program throughout their incarceration reenter the outside world with newfound job skills and a work ethic. Source: Adapted from Brad Haga, “Prison Blues: Jeans Change Public Perceptions, Offer Innovative Solutions,” Corrections Compendium 19 (October 1994): 1–4. Used with permission. Updates are from the Prison Blues website: www.prisonbluesjeans.com. FOCUS ON CORRECTIONAL PRACTICE: Prison Blues Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 CHAPTER 14 Institutional Programs 375 people in prison do the bulk of the work. The one thing abundant in a prison is human resources, and perhaps the most common types of jobs in any given prison have to do with its day-to-day maintenance. In most prisons, maintenance jobs constitute an elaborate pecking order of assignments and reveal something about prestige and influence within the facility. The choice jobs involve access to power. For example, a clerical job in the records room (which contains the prison’s files) offers a corner on one of the most sought-after commodities in prison: information. Someone in the records room can learn who is doing time for what, who is eligible for privileges (such as reclassification, reassignment, and parole), and what decisions are being made about whom. The contents of prison files are confidential, but it is hard to prevent the records-room clerk from sneaking a look—or from trading the information for goods or favors. Clerical support jobs are similarly prestigious. Desk assignments permit access to authority figures (and very likely to such favors as flexibility in scheduling, better food, and sometimes information) and make the ones who get them the first contributors to the institutional rumor mill. Often, a person must be trusted and classified as low risk before getting a clerical assignment. Among the most desirable jobs are those that allow access to goods or services that can be sold within the prison economy. For example, someone who works in the laundry can charge “a fee” as insurance that clothing will be returned neatly folded and without rips or tears. Also desirable are jobs that provide access to contraband goods. For example, a person on kitchen detail can filch extra food to trade or sell. Library assignments let people make liberal Tennier Industries makes military clothing, and the company’s bread and butter is the U.S. military. So in December 2013, losing its $45 million contract with the Defense Department was a tough pill to swallow. It was even tougher when the company had to lay off about 100 workers. Tennier is a major employer in Huntsville, Tennessee, and the economic losses will continue to ripple through the area. The Defense Department contract went to Unicor, the federal prison industry. This raises a question: How can a prison system take jobs away from the private sector? Undoubtedly, one of the reasons Unicor was able to submit a winning bid was that its expenses are low. With labor provided by people at a wage of about $1 per hour, Unicor is able to keep its labor costs low. Even so, prison industry operating costs are greater than we might think. If the full costs of the industry are calculated, prison overhead is quite high because of security costs. But cost is not the only factor. Federal law requires federal agencies to give preferences to Unicor contracts—even when Unicor is not the cheapest proposal—as long as its products are comparable to the private-sector competition. As it turns out, Unicor is usually the cheapest option anyway. Why would the law create advantages for prison labor? Proponents of this arrangement point out that keeping people who are incarcerated productively employed is good correctional practice. It also means that prison labor is paying some of the costs of running the prison, saving government money. When prison products are state-of-the-art, it is also possible that the prison workers are learning valuable skills that they can put to use when they are released. Even so, it does not seem fair. Steven Eisen, Tennier’s CFO, complained, “Our government screams, howls and yells how the rest of the world is using people in prison or slave labor to manufacture items, and here we take the items right out of the mouths of people who need it.” Some elected officials agree. “This is a threat to not just established industries; it’s a threat to emerging industries,” said Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who is the lead sponsor of the proposed overhaul legislation. “If China did this—having their prisoners work at subpar wages in prisons—we would be screaming bloody murder.” But the critics are bumping up against good correctional policy. People who work for Unicor do better on parole than those who do not. And the picture is not as simple as it seems. Unicor itself contracts with the private sector to carry out its projects, thereby creating private-sector jobs. And in the end, the fraction of products purchased by the government that are made in prison is miniscule. What would happen if Unicor were shut down entirely? Source: Adapted from Diane Cardwell, “Competing with Prison Labor: Companies Say Job Program for Inmates Threatens Jobs on Outside,” New York Times, March 15, 2012, B1, B4. FOCUS ON CORRECTIONAL PRACTICE: Correctional Industry Competes with the Private Sector Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 376 PART 2 Correctional Practices use of law books and other popular reading materials. Assignments to the stockroom or to the dispensary, even with tight security on drugs and other medical items, can pay off in various ways. Other assignments offer different kinds of benefits. For instance, the electrician’s aide and the message runner usually have flexible schedules and relatively varied tasks that make the time go more quickly. The least desirable jobs are the most plentiful: janitorial services. The newly admitted must often prove themselves for later reassignment by facing mop detail and the like; such assignments are also given as disciplinary measures. Mopping halls and cleaning latrines are not particularly interesting tasks; repeated three or more times a day in the same areas, the work becomes painfully monotonous. Even so, prison maintenance jobs are essential to managing the prison in two ways. First, they lower the cost of operations by eliminating the need to hire outside labor. Second, the job hierarchy provides rewards and punishments to enforce prison discipline. People who cooperate receive choice assignments; others get the dirty work. Recreational Programs When people in prison are not at work, in treatment, or in their cells, they are probably engaged in recreation. Organized recreation is a favorite pastime—and often central to the prison experience. Most men’s prisons have sports teams—baseball, basketball, even football—and some regularly compete with outside teams. Many prisons also provide such activities as table tennis, weight training, music, drama, and journalism clubs. Recreational programs have two primary functions in addition to filling time. First, they are integral to prison social life. People in prison vary in intellect and physical capacities; variety in programs enables a community to form, with positive social contacts with others who share their interests and abilities. Second, prison recreational and leisure pursuits can be rehabilitative in several ways. They teach such social skills as cooperation and teamwork, they provide a means for people to grow in experience and enhance their self-image, and they serve as a productive counterpoint to the general alienation of prison. Recreational programs also present security risks. In a prison, whenever people congregate, they can plan disruptions. Tempers can especially flare in recreation, where there is competition. Although prisons without leisure activities would be torture, recreation requires careful management. Recently the public has reacted against recreational programming, feeling that free-time programs make prison too easy and even enjoyable. Politicians have thus pressed to shut down recreational programs, especially weight lifting. Administrators point out that people in these programs are often the best behaved; they also argue that trying to run a prison without such activities will cause unrest. Still, the popular sentiment that prison should be unbearable tends to eradicate any programming not directly related to rehabilitation. Prison Programming Reconsidered Our discussion of prison programs has focused on the types of activities used to occupy time. Underlying this discussion is the question “Is this use of prison time truly useful?” The answer is equivocal (see “The Evidence Base for Prison Programs”). People are often sent to prison under the assumption that educational and rehabilitative programs will prepare them to adjust to society when they are released. But most rehabilitative programs have serious shortcomings and limited effectiveness. Further, a large number of people in prison are not even considered to need education, vocational training, or drug/alcohol rehabilitation. Of those who need help in these areas, often less than half actually participate in available programs. Study after study shows that even for programs that are effective, services provided in prison settings are substantially less effective than those same programs offered in the community

1 Stuart Miller, “The Banning of Books in Prisons: ‘It’s Like Living in the Dark Ages,’” Guardian, September 25, 2016. 2 Federal Justice Statistics 2012—Statistical Tables (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2015). 3 Adam Gopnik, “The Caging of America,” New Yorker, January 30, 2012. 4 New York Times, July 16, 1995, p. 3. 5 Thomas Harris, I’m OK, You’re OK (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). 6 Oregon Department of Corrections, Oregon Accountability Model (Salem: Author, 2013). 7 Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “12,000 Inmates to Receive Pell Grants to Take College Classes,” Washington Post, June 24, 2016. 8 Ramos v. Lamm, 458 F.Supp. 128 (1979). 9 Thomas S. Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 30. 10 Robert Martinson, “What Works? Questions and Answers About Prison Reform,” Public Interest, Spring 1974, p. 25. 11 Jamie Vaske, Kevan Galyean, and Francis Cullen, “Toward a Biosocial Theory of Offender Rehabilitation: Why Does Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy Work?” Journal of Criminal Justice 39 (2011): 90–102. 12 Grant Duwe and Valerie Clark, “Importance of Program Integrity: Outcome Evaluation of a Gender-Responsive, Cognitive–Behavioral Program for Female Offenders,” Criminology & Public Policy 14 (no. 2, 2015): 301–28. 13 Wayne N. Welsh and Gary Zajac, “A Multisite Evaluation of Prison-Based Drug Treatment: 4-Year Follow-up Results,” Prison Journal 93 (2013): 251–71. 14 BJS Special Report, January 2003. 15 John Tyler and Jeffrey Kling, “Prison Education and Re-entry into the Mainstream Labor Market,” in Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-industrial America, edited by Shawn Bushway, Michael A. Stoll, and David Wieman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), 227–56; John Tyler and Jeffrey Kling, “What Is the Value of a ‘Prison GED?’ ” (paper presented to the Russell Sage Working Group on Incarceration and Labor, New York, March 5, 2004). 16 Lois M. Davis, Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, et al., Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-analysis of Programs That Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2013). 17 Kevin Helliker, “In Prison, College Courses Are Few,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2011.