Welcome to Introduction to Corrections. This class should help you develop a broad understanding of the field of corrections.

The first thing I want you to do is read and fill in the interactive syllabus. Please submit it immediately if you haven’t done so.

Assignment One

Read Chapters 1 and 2

Now that the syllabus is out of the way, I want to make some observations about those of you that have limited educational goals. I have students who have taken this course and ADJU 16, Control and Supervision in Corrections, get a job in one of the systems and drop out of completing their formal education. This is a choice that a person can make. Being a career prison worker, I think this decision to drop out is a mistake. After five years in the system, most employees want to have the opportunity to promote to the position of sergeant, counselor or higher. Completing all the courses: ADJU 14 Introduction to Corrections, ADJU 15 Legal Aspects of Corrections; ADJU 16 Control and Supervision in Corrections, and obtaining an Administration of Justice Associates of Arts Degree can put a person in a position to do just about anything that they want in corrections systems. This person is very competitive with this academic background for further advancement. I encourage you to stick it out and go further than just taking a couple of classes to obtain an entry position. The life time rewards will be much greater. Society’s belief is that you are not educated unless you are formally educated. I encourage you to get formally educated.

I shall now offer some thoughts regarding the historical perspectives of corrections in American. Having an understanding of the history of corrections has value because how we treat offenders today in corrections has evolved from this history. Those of us who have worked in the field for many years have coined a phrase “what come around, goes around.” One of the strongest meanings for this saying that correctional programs tend to fade away and then reappear after being dusted off. Politicians will make a pronouncement that they have found the cure all for the never ending problem of crime and the answer to the question of what to do with the criminal offender. Many times, this new solution has been tried in the past with various interpretations regarding its success. It sounds good at the time, everyone applauds and it disappears from the scene. I do not think the student, professional in the field, or me as a teacher should become negative regarding this phenomenon. It is entirely possible that under the right conditions, in the right time period, with the right staff, with adequate funding, an old new method may bring positive lasting results. To give up trying to improve on our efforts is saying that we should give up on people. For those of us that chose to work in this field, it is important to have a positive attitude and not give up on people.

Certain behaviors are considered so terrible in our society that we exercise a criminal penalty. Misbehavior that achieves this high level of society sanction has been defined over a lengthy period of time from when human society consisted of tribes to the present. In early civilization, personal retaliation and blood feuds were accepted and encouraged. A custom of atonement was the rule where payment was expected to the victim’s family. The laws were developed over years with definitions of criminal wrong doings being expressed in codes and religious laws.

Along with the development of laws, punishments also developed. Death penalty, torture, mutilation, public humiliation, forced labor were all used to punish and reform the criminal. Deterrence was a concern. A Los Angeles Times article on January 6, 2008 page A6 discloses that China executed 1,051 people in 2006, accounting for two-thirds of the 1,591 put to death worldwide that year according to Amnesty International based on media reports. In China, there are no juries, police have unchecked powers. Sixty-eight offenses, including such nonviolent crimes as tax evasion and pornography distribution, carry the death penalty.

Over time, the individual who was wronged was displaced by the state. Punishment became less of a personal revenge and the state became the hurt party who was responsible for punishment. In recent times, the practice of imprisonment was developed. Humanist writers and their enlightened theories became popular. People began looking at humane forms of punishment which lead to transporting criminals to other countries as their punishment. A part time genealogist researcher, friend of mine, discovered that one of his ancestors had been transported to America as convicted criminal for punishment on a ship and knew the exact bunk he was assigned on the ship. Many of us may have criminal ancestors that were sent to America and Australia as a more humane solution to handling convicted criminals. Actually, this was a return to the ancient punishment of banishment from the tribe. Various efforts took place by certain individuals and groups to try to improve on the way criminals were handled.

The second chapter introduces prisons. Prisons are an American invention. One deficiency with teaching an online course is that I find it to be very educational to show tapes by the history channel on the development of prisons. I suggest that you view the historical presentations called “The Big House” through your local public library or the History Channel. They make this part of corrections come alive for the viewer.

Prison architecture is introduced in this chapter. Note page 24 where the Eastern Penitentiary is described. I worked in the gothic-style prison when I worked at San Quentin for two and half years starting in 1973. At that time in history, it was not easy to control the inmates at this prison because of the open faced cells, other design features of the prison and the management prone inmates that were then being assigned there. The staff and many of the inmates worked hard to make it work. Architecture significantly influences the success of an institution in preventing violence and accomplishing its goals.

Prisons reflect the current correctional philosophy being embraced at the time of their construction. Inmate discipline had to be at a high level to allow the architecture of San Quentin and the other fortress type institutions that were constructed during this time period to succeed. Strict disciplinarians such as Warden Elam Lynds of Auburn and later Sing Sing Prisons were the norm for the period of time. The rules supported the philosophy such as the rule of silence, lock step inmate movement, prison stripes, and the imposition of solitary confinement for management prone inmates. Interesting enough, recently, stripe uniforms for inmates have made a reappearance in some parts of the United States in the trend to be tough on criminals. While in the system, I must admit that in periods of high inmate unrest, I would have welcomed the return of lock step movement at San Quentin and Soledad in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The reformers Maconochie (Australia) and Crofton (Ireland) with their system of rewarding inmates who behaved in prison and worked with improved confinement conditions set a positive example for corrections systems that followed. From these early experiments, large systems have been designed. Many states and the federal government use point systems where inmates who exhibit good behavior can receive more amenities and fewer restrictions in their confinement environment.

Prison labor has been a focus for much discussion regarding what inmates should do in prison. As a manager in the prison system, I was very much in favor of it because it kept the inmates busy and they are less inclined as a result to hurt each other and the staff. In a speech in 1985, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Burger promoted prisons that would move toward factories with vocational programs in support of them inside the walls. Unfortunately, because of the laws passed during the Great Depression, this vision has not been realized.

The modern era and age of reform is phenomenon that I personally witnessed, from the 1960s on. Changes involved basic conditions and basic rights. Rioting and violence spilled over from the streets into the prisons of American. In the 1970s while I worked at San Quentin, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) instituted a new program of allowing inmates to file appeals. Part of my duties as a counselor was to assist the inmates in filling out these forms. The appeal system in California prisons has grown where there are a large number of appeals filed and staff are frequently forced into a heightened level of sensitivity with inmates that did not previously exist. The modern era of corrections was ushered mainly in by the U.S. Supreme Court by the enforced recognition of the basic rights for offenders. This swept the whole criminal justice system including corrections. The courts continue to play a very active role with current issues of mental health treatment and prevention of abusive treatment by staff.

From 1980 on we have seen radical increases in the prison population. For ten years of my 27 years in CDC, our inmate population was at 24 thousand in state prison. We are now at approximately 166 thousand. This increased population taxed the system and the States resources not only in California; but, across the United States. Overcrowding is the rule. Correctional Managers were concerned with surviving with these large numbers and did not make time to think about rehabilitation. A March 13, 2005 Los Angeles Times article page A1, A28-9 discloses that California Department of Corrections managers have scrambled to cope with the increases in inmates by wedging them into gyms, TV lounges, hallways–even a chapel. Already California prisons report nearly twice as many assaults behind bars as those in Texas, which has about the same inmate population. Staff have described it “It’s like living in a phone booth.” The noise–from televisions, radios, yelling and laughter–is constant, and the smell is about what you’d expect from 225 men living cheek by jowl who must use overworked toilets and wait in line for the few showers is the description of one overcrowded gym being used as a housing unit. Throughout the system about 10,000 prisoners are now in what officials call “ugly beds”–those jammed into recreation rooms, hallways and other places not designed as living quarters. Inmates have little to do. Per a Daily Press article of February 29, 2008 page A6, it is reported that for the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison. America ranks as the world’s number one incarcerator.

The text introduces information on the “The Punishment Ideology,” retribution, deterrence, incapacitation. Each philosophy has merit. After years being involved in punishing adults and seeing the same faces return to prison year after year, I am concerned about the results of our corrections philosophies that are being practiced. The latest Federal Government research places the repeater rate at over 60 percent nationally. I do not think adults react well to being “punished.” We need something more which is related to preparing the offender for release from incarceration. Less than six percent of inmates will die in prison. Sooner or later these inmates will be released and will be near us in free society. It is important how we treat them because how they have been treated will probably effect how they will treat us when they are released. It has been said that a society can be judged by how they treat their inmates in prison. Unfortunately, most of the corrections systems in the United States are probably operating under the philosophy that I was taught while studying corrections in the early 1970s. This is the theory of “Less Eligibility.” People in prison deserve less than the lowest member of society.

Discussion Question

I have been personally involved in major disturbances in the late 1970s at the Correctional Training Facility (Soledad) as a Correctional Lieutenant. They were trying, disturbing times in my life. Considering the information in the text from page 36, why do you think there have been so many riots in prisons? Could the riots have been prevented? How?