Embedded Files
“We can say — unequivocally — that the facility is safe, secure, clean, and well run,” - Issa Arnita, a spokesman for the company”
----
“Four out of five inmates in the prison receive psychiatric medication, but the facility has not had a psychiatrist since November.”
“An inmate testified in tears that a female guard had mocked him when he tried to report being raped in a cell in January. The guard never informed her superiors about the rape.”
“An inmate described another attack that occurred this year. He said a prisoner armed with a knife and a 4-foot section of pipe charged at him while he was being escorted to his cell by two guards. Instead of helping him, he said, the two guards ran away.”
“It was not until three days later, the inmate said, when there was blood covering much of the floor of his cell, that he was taken to a hospital. He was treated for four stab wounds and a broken leg.”
“When he went back to prison from the hospital, he said on the stand, he was placed in a cell next to that of his attacker.”
----
All of these issues exist while the warden is not penalized if an inmate dies
“If you come here and you breathing and you got a valid driver's license and you willing to work, then we’re willing to hire you."
Through his experience serving as a private prison guard at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, Shane Bauer was exposed to the harsh realities of private prisons. After four intense months, he was able to conclude that one of the reasons that private prisons often promote more violence than public prisons do is because of the tireless and continuous attempts of these prisons to cut costs and maximize profits. One way that the effects of cutting costs can be exhibited is in both the quantity and quality of the staff employed there, namely the guards. Primarily, the ratio of guards on duty to prisoners incarcerated raises a concern. Bauer sheds light on how the guards being outnumbered created an interesting dynamic between the prisoners and the guards. In some ways, the prisoners were in control of the situation, disabling the guards’s ability to effectively carry out their responsibilities and promote safety. It can be interpreted that the more frequent occurrences of stabbings in private prisons than in public prisons is a consequence of those prisons’s efforts to cut costs. The low number of guards on duty makes it difficult for proper security checks to be carried out.
Another result of these private prisons' attempts to cut costs is the demoralization of the guards working there. Bauer reports that as a guard, he was paid only $9 an hour as a private prison guard, a low rate in comparison to the $12.50 an hour that his counterparts employed in public prisons were making. He claims that this discrepancy in pay discourages guards from exerting their utmost effort and depresses their motivation to enforce the rules.
Not only do private prisons’s attempts to cut costs create unsafe conditions for inmates, they also disable rehabilitation efforts and depress the wellbeing of those incarcerated there. Classes and work programs, that could give prisoners the opportunity to develop useful skills, are often not held due to staffing shortages. This lack of structure contributes to more chaos and less potential for success in securing employment after release. More frequent escapes have been reported at private prisons as well. This can be considered a direct result of removing guards in an attempt to cut costs.
"To me, the point of the story is not to say that private prisons are worse than public prisons. I think there’s a unique set of issues particular to private prisons" - Shane Bauer
Lopez sheds light on how those unique issues have roots in the profit driven incentive of private prisons.
Vera: Reimagining Prison Web Report
Vera: Reimagining Prison Web Report
In June 2016, Vera Institute started the Reimagining Prison Project at the Eastern State Penitentiary Historical site in Philadelphia. Vera invited the many types of people that were directly or indirectly involved with America’s criminal justice system. These people included former and current prisoners, scholars, government staff, and even members of the public. They all engaged in guided discussions about topics that later became the goals of the Reimagining Prison Project. The discussions focused on the importance of rehabilitating prisoners to prepare them for reintegration into society. During this event, Vera also asked the participants questions about “what prison could be, what it should achieve, how it should achieve that, and what it would take to make a system dedicated to those goals real.” Lastly, Vera also introduced the participants to its “proposed foundational values for a new system.” These proposed values also included a redesign of “the physical layout of prison facilities” which Vera achieved by working with the “architectural firm MASS Design Group.”
Following the event, Vera officially began the Reimagining Prison Project intending to create a report that summarized and supported the “thoughts and practices that led to the development of [Vera’s] foundational principles for a re-imagined prison.” To do this, Vera “conducted policy, academic, and practical research” on “American history, current prison practices, and legal principles” to support its vision with facts. It also “organized a national prison visiting week” with over 400 participants. During this week, the “tours of 30 [prison] facilities in 17 states” encourage the formation of relationships between communities and prisons for two reasons. This event and its success showed the possible success of Vera’s proposed principle of community-connected prisons.
The Reimagining Prison Project has now culminated in the report. Some of the stories in the report are available below.
Stories from the Reimagining Prison Project
Stories from the Reimagining Prison Project
In 1870, just as the United States’ prison system was forming, the Supreme Court of Virginia declared that a prisoner, “for the period of time he was in custody, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights.” Prisoners were not just charged criminals, they were “slave[s] of the state.” The Supreme Court’s declaration manifested itself in prison practices such as convict leasing during which the Reconstruction South incentivized the government to arrest and convict newly freed black people and sell their labor to private industries. Convict leasing led further to the creation of chain gangs consisting primarily of incarcerated black men shackled together and publicly humiliated while being forced to perform public works such as building roads and clearing land.
Although these practices largely ended by the middle of the 20th century, the “slave of the state” vision of the United State’s prison system persists. It now manifests as the inhumane working and living conditions that prisoners and officials face in prisons as well as the daily degradation of inmate lives. Such conditions have resulted in prison unrest and many protests over the last 50 years.
Below are three different stories of the prison unrest and protests.
1971
1971
One such protest occurred in 1971, when prisoners at Attica Correctional Facility in New York took the prison for 2 weeks. According to one participant, Elliot Barkely, their actions were a protest against “the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners.” Barkely said, in reference to himself and other prisoners, “we are men! We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such.” Another protest in 2013, involved almost 30 thousand prisoners around California who went on a hunger strike as a protest against California's long-term use of solitary confinement. Some even continued the strike for close to two months.
2016
2016
Prisoners have almost always used strikes to protest prison conditions. And the largest nationwide prison strike occurred in September 2016, when 24,000 prisoners from 24 states staged work stoppages and hunger strikes. The strikes were conducted as protests against many issues such as but not limited to unfair use of prison labor, poor wages, abusive guards, overcrowding, and poor health care. One of the participants, David Bonner, received only $2 a day as pay for his prison labor which was only sufficient to buy a bar of soap at the commissary or make a short phone call. Commenting on his pay, Bonner unknowingly referred to the nation’s slave of the state prison system when he said, “this is slavery. We're forced to work these jobs and we get barely anything.”
2018
2018
More recently, in April 2018, violence at a South Carolina prison left 7 dead and 17 injured. All 24 casualties were incarcerated people: the guards had evacuated the unit when the violence began instead of doing their job to quell the violence. The prisoners erupted in violence because of anger at the conditions they were forced to live in: two meals of “barely nutritional,” sometimes moldy, food; “putrid water;” metal plates placed over windows; sweltering and filthy rooms; and no-hope idleness. Following this incident, in August 2018, prisoners staged a 21 day strike commemorating the casualties and the U.S. prison conditions that led to such an event in the first place.
Page updated
Report abuse