prison reform cont.

Women account for 9.2 percent of the U.S. prison system. Since 1981 women have out numbered men in growth rate of incarceration by 11 percent (men 27%, women 38%). Today there are over 97,000 women incarcerated in our prison system. Before 1873 when the first female run prison was opened in Indiana, women if incarcerated at all, were simply housed with male inmates. Women were not seen by male dominated law courts as equals to males, women who were considered “habitual offenders”, “abandoned representatives of their sex”, were placed under incarceration. These women were judged by a “moral order” or “crimes against the public order”, which were “prostitution, alcoholism and vagrancy”; these kinds of women were viewed as going again “nature” itself. Fortunately in any society, there are people who are more open minded and express change within the regular viewed “norm”. Elizabeth Gurney Fry was one of these people who in 1813 viewed a prison in London and though her shock and dismay of the conditions there, wrote a book in 1827 called Observations in Visiting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisons, this Quaker based philosophical book gave “movement to reform American prisons for women”. The main three principles that “guided female prison reform” were; separation of women prisoners from men, provision of differential care, and lastly management of women’s prisons by female staff. During this reforming movement, it spread though the United States, but was strongest in the East and Midwest. With everything, ideals and change are never constant, so the “original ideals of the reformers faltered, overcome by societal change, administrative orthodoxy, and legislative objectives”. It was not till 1927 when the first federal prison was operational in Alderson, West Virginia. The warden Mary Belle Harris believed that “criminality among women resulted from dependency on men” and she instilled her inmates to “acquire skills to break the (male) bondage, and give them self-respect”. Her ideals and programs became the “national model”. Unfortunately, “no distinctive correctional model” has reached the forefront since the 1940’s. In today’s prison system, “custody has become a more important goal then reformation”. Men and women are becoming seen as the same (treated the same) in the prison system. Some agree, some do not, if educating and reforming females continues I hope administrative staff will break the “traditionally feminine occupation” teachings, and reach out for a more gender-neutral approach to programs. This I believe will give women a more worldly view of themselves and our society, and perhaps women can view themselves out of the traditional jobs they are brought up to think they can only do.

In the last twenty-five years, population numbers have just exploded. Today there are over “6.7 million adults under correctional supervision in the United States”, 2 million of these people are in our jails and prisons. The majority in the past and present are males. Today males make up “93 percent of the prison population”. In the 40’s and 50’s inmates were mostly from “urban and rural areas, poor, and if outside the South they were white”. Over the periods of time our population was changed, so with this, so has our prison population. Today the majority of inmates are black. Also Hispanic numbers has increased as well. The majority of inmates now come from urban areas. These inmates are also being incarcerated on drug-related charges; this trend started in the Regan era, with the government “get tough on drug” policy. Also violent offenses are more prevalent. Some say the prison system is a social control of the poor, and with data that shows that our jails are “disproportionately inhabited by men, minorities, the poorly educated, and those with low incomes”, it seems this theory just might be true. In state prison current offenses are violent 49.3%, drug 20.4%, property 19.3% and finally public order 10.8%. The “average age of incarceration is twenty-seven”, which seems young, but in state prison 25-34 aged males make up the majority at 38.1%. The major shift in incarceration has been the drug focuses of lawmakers and politicians, with this policy change in our laws; a very large number of urban blacks are now populating our prison system.

I believe the fundamental significant shift in policy for correctional professionals is liability. With more people, that balloon the system, control standardization, and policy norms take center stage in all aspects of their work. The government, which normally took care of certain sectors if now third-partying this out to non-government organizations. “These organizations contract with probation and parole agencies to provide services to clients in the community”. The government has shifted the accountable and liability to the third party, it also loosens up the professional to focus on other things, or perhaps micro-mange certain things. The second shift is in accountably which is now more increased, this “has reduced individual discretion”, and the professional has to “work within boundaries”. Unfortunately with such accountably, again standards become the norm. The professional I feel is confined within these norms and does not even have the freedom of liability to act outside of the standardized norm. Even if the case file or inmate would best be guided by it, now instead of a case-by-case understanding, it has become a fast food approach. Get them in get them out. The downside to this approach is the inmates might will feel the generalization of the “professional”, and then begin to feel like “one in many”. The upside for the professional, less work, less thought process, and total guidance from upper management. The third shift is relationships, that being between the professional and the client. It is now “less important then the principles of criminal justice that underlie that relationship”. This is negative for both parties in the relationships. The professional who before was trained in psychology and counseling is now training in law and criminal justice decision making”. This is a debased human trend in a lot of other sectors of society. Nameless people in a bureaucratic red-tapped system with multiple tiered policies to uphold. Relationships are a fundamental link between human beings. If a professional “case-studies” instead of “getting to know” there only view of the client will tend to be very clinical. Relationships help these inmates to feel some sort of positive empowerment to their lives. If society is all against them (the inmate), shouldn’t they feel someone cares? This is a very touchy subject, the accountability of liability. Sometimes policy and administrative management tend to forget, we are all just people.

footnote: black not majority whites are now. i am wrong.