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MaximsNews
Columnist
Marc
Morial
by
Marc Morial,
President of the National
Urban League,
former two-term
Mayor of New
Orleans, former
President of the
U.S. Conference of
Mayors and author of
To Be EQUAL.
Marc
Morial is a
Columnist for MaximsNews
Network.
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AMERICAN
PRISON CULTURE:
PRODUCING HARDENED
CRIMINALS? (MaximsNews.com,
UN)
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UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com,
UN/ -
27 June 2006 - What
happens behind bars in
the jails and prisons of
this nation doesn’t
stay there. It trickles
out into the
community.
Every
year, 13.5 million
people -- a
disproportionate number
of them African American
-- pass through our
nation’s prisons and
jails, with a vast
majority – 95 percent
– eventually
re-entering society.
Some
leave their periods of
incarceration as
hardened criminals
anxious to return to a
life of crime. Others do
not.
In
the 1990s, harsher
punishments for drug
crimes fueled the
current prison
population boom. And in
light of the FBI’s
recent announcement that
violent crime was up 2.5
percent in 2005, the
problem isn’t likely
to go away anytime soon.
In
our nation’s efforts
to “get tough on
crime,” we’ve lost
some of our compassion
for our fellow man.
We’ve let cynicism
undermine our hope that
rehabilitation is
possible for all people
– no matter how
dastardly their deeds.
All
human beings deserve a
modicum of respect and
dignity. But in our
nation’s prisons, you
really have to wonder if
that standard is being
upheld.
Inhumane
conditions – driven by
overcrowding, financial
woes and understaffing
-- have pushed some
prisons to the boiling
point. They’re not
places where prisoners
have a decent chance at
rehabilitation. They are
places where criminals
become better and more
violent criminals.
Mind
you, corrections is a
tough profession, and a
poorly understood one.
Corrections officers
often work long shifts
in tense, overcrowded
facilities without
enough backup, support
or training.
Many
wardens run aging and
understaffed facilities
and deal with a
workforce in which
experienced officers are
likely to leave the
profession for
better-paying,
less-stressful jobs just
when they’re ready to
become good mentors for
new recruits.
These
pressures cause stress,
injury, and illness
among the prison
workforce, and
contribute to a
dangerous culture
inside. The tension is
further exacerbated by
racial and cultural
differences.
Because
the exercise of power is
an important part of a
corrections officer’s
job, it’s natural that
in situations where
staff who are under
stress, inexperienced,
and lack training are
more likely to abuse
their power.
In
prisons where the
culture has devolved,
rules aren’t enforced,
prisoner-on-prisoner
violence is tolerated,
and antagonistic
relationships can erupt
into overt hostility and
physical violence.
In
the 1960s in my home
state of Louisiana, the
maximum security state
penitentiary in Angola
had a reputation for
being “America’s
bloodiest prison.”
I
don’t know what prison
carries that distinction
today, but I can say
with some confidence
that it is no longer
Angola.
While
reforms began decades
ago, the most dramatic
changes occurred over
the past 10 years as the
prison’s fundamental
institutional culture
was profoundly
transformed.
Prisoners
at Angola are treated
with dignity and respect
by everyone who works
there, and prisoners are
expected to reciprocate
that treatment.
Prisoners
have been given hope
through education and
morally based
programming, and
responsibility through
meaningful employment.
The fair and reliable
enforcement of the rules
by staff and prisoners
means less violence.
For
the past 15 months, I
have served as part of
the 20-member bipartisan
Commission on Safety and
Abuse in America’s
Prisons. We have visited
prisons all over the
nation and listened to
experts – in search of
ways to make prisons
safer not only for staff
but also inmates – and
in turn – our society
at large.
We
recently released a
report, called Confronting
Confinement,
that highlights
a
wide array of dangerous
conditions surrounding
incarceration – the
violence, poor health
care, inappropriate
segregation, lack of
political support for
labor and management,
weak oversight of
correctional facilities
and lack of reliable
data on violence and
abuse rates.
Of
30 practical reforms
recommended, we called
for expanding the
capacity of the National
Institute of Corrections
to effect positive
institutional culture
change.
The
NIC already has a very
promising program in
place – the
Institutional Culture
Initiative that provides
tools and training to
prison staff change the
culture of their
institutions.
The
program helps them learn
to resolve conflict
through communication
– particularly across
cultural and racial
differences – rather
than violence.
In
an era when everyone and
their uncle seems to
want to “get tough on
crime,” I realize that
institutional “culture
change” sounds like a
soft approach.
But
our commission heard
overwhelmingly that when
one changes the culture
one changes the entire
institution.
Prisons
that add punishment on
top of the sentence will
be violent places.
Prisons that treat
prisoners with basic
human dignity and
respect are more likely
to be places where
violence and abuse are
the rare exception and
not the rule.
Let
Angola serve as a
positive role model for
prison reform. If
profound culture change
is possible in Angola,
it is possible anywhere.
MarcMorial@MaximsNews.com
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