Corrections Notes

Corrections System Components

Correctional facilities house different offender classes.
Felons: High-security prisons.
Misdemeanants: County jails, reformatories, or houses of correction.
Juvenile Offenders: "Schools," "camps," "ranches," or "homes" (typically nonsecure).
Adult Offenders: Prison farms.
Inmates Re-entering Society: Community correctional centers (e.g., halfway houses).

Differing Philosophies

Some advocate therapeutic communities within correctional facilities.
Others emphasize secure facilities for deterrence and separation from society.
Success metrics: Physical security, incapacitation length, lower crime rate, fear of sanctions.

Effectiveness Debate

The U.S. has a high incarceration rate (25% of world prisoners, 5% of world population).
Uncertainty if secure confinement reduces crime rates.
Police effectiveness and improving social conditions might be more significant.
Prison capacity limitations exist.

Correctional System Issues

The system, despite its vastness, hasn't met stated goals.
High recidivism rates indicate institutions aren't effectively correcting behavior.

Early Legal Punishments:

Banishment or slavery.
Restitution.
Corporal punishment.
Execution.
Incarceration became common in the 19th century.

Early European Penal Institutions:

England had institutions in the 10th century for pretrial detainees.
King Henry II constructed county jails in the 12th century for thieves and vagrants.
1557: Bridewell workhouse built for minor offenders to work off debt.
More serious offenders held pending execution.

Conditions in Early Institutions:

Foul, lacking care, food, and medical treatment.
Jailers sought personal gain, so conditions were deplorable.
Held criminal offenders, vagabonds, debtors, and the mentally ill.
Inmates paid for services under a fee system, leading to starvation for those who couldn't pay.

Hulks

From 1776 to 1785, prisoners were housed on hulks (abandoned ships) due to overcrowding.
Hulks were infamous for degrading conditions and brutal punishments.
Used until 1858.

Origins of Corrections in the United States

Correctional reform began in the U.S.
First American jail: James City, Virginia colony, early 17th century.
Modern system origins: Pennsylvania, under William Penn.

William Penn's Reforms:

Revised criminal code to forbid torture and mutilation.
Ordered houses of correction built in each county (similar to jails).
Reforms lasted until his death in 1718, when the code reverted to public punishment.

Creating a Correctional System

Modern system traced to 18th-century Pennsylvania.
1776: Pennsylvania re-adopted Penn's code.
1787: Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons formed by Quakers (led by Benjamin Rush).
Aimed to bring humane treatment to the penal system.
Limited death penalty to treason, murder, rape, and arson.
Reformed institutions as an alternative to physical punishment.

Walnut Street Jail

1790: Pennsylvania legislature called for prison system renovation.
Result: Separate wing of Philadelphia's Walnut Street Jail for convicted felons (excluding those sentenced to death).
Prisoners in solitary cells without work rights; these solitary quarters were called penitentiary houses.
Similar institutions erected in New York (Newgate in 1791) and New Jersey (Trenton in 1798).

The Pennsylvania System

1818: Pennsylvania established a prison placing each inmate in a single cell for their entire sentence.
Eliminated classifications; each cell was a miniature prison to prevent association.
1827: Western State Penitentiary built in Allegheny County, semicircle design with cells along circumference.
Inmates kept at hard labor in solitary confinement, allowed out for an hour a day for exercise.
The system failed due to inadequate air and light in cells; the building was demolished and rebuilt with larger cells in 1882.

Eastern State Penitentiary

1829: Eastern State Penitentiary built outside Philadelphia.
Abandoned corporal punishment, aimed for spiritual reflection and change.
Quaker-inspired system: isolation with labor.
Inmates hooded outside cells, silence enforced to ponder behavior.
Prisoners had private cells with central heating, running water, a toilet, and a skylight.
Adjacent private outdoor exercise yard.
Inmates given a Bible and honest work (shoemaking, weaving).
Women held until 1923, then moved to a separate facility in Muncy, Pennsylvania.

Goals of the Pennsylvania System

Penitentiary as a place for penance.
Removing sinners and reflecting on crimes.
Solitary confinement with in-cell labor would make work attractive.
Aimed to help inmates resume a productive existence.

The Auburn System

1816: New York built a new prison at Auburn to alleviate Newgate overcrowding.
Auburn Prison design: Tier system (cells built vertically on five floors).
Congregate system: Prisoners ate and worked in groups.

Philosophy:

Crime prevention via fear of punishment and silent confinement.
The worst felons were cut off from all contact and had no hope of pardon.
Hard work and silence were key to prison discipline to prevent escape plans and riots, allowing prisoners to contemplate infractions.

Success of the Auburn System

The Auburn system eventually prevailed and spread throughout the U.S. (Eastern State Penitentiary remained in use until 1971).
Innovations included congregate working conditions, solitary confinement for unruly inmates, military regimentation, and discipline.
Prisoners marched from place to place; time regulated by bells.
Early administrators often recruited from the armed services.

Prison Industry

Developed and became the predominant theme around which institutions were organized.
Contract System: Officials sold inmate labor to private businesses; contractors supervised inmates.
Convict-Lease System: The state leased prisoners to a business for a fixed annual fee, relinquishing supervision.
Public Account System: Prisoners produced goods for the prison's own use.
Led to inmate abuse and profiteering. Prisons became major manufacturers during the Civil War.
Trade unions opposed, leading to restrictions on interstate commerce in prison goods.
The Public account system was introduced after the Civil War, where the state directed employment, and products were sold for the state's benefit.

Prison Reform Efforts

1870: The National Congress of Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline in Cincinnati called for better treatment, education, and the training of inmates.

Zebulon Brockway

Individualized treatment, indeterminate sentencing, parole.
Elmira Reformatory program: elementary education, library hours, lectures, vocational training shops.
Military-like training for discipline from 1888 to 1920.
Cost to the state was to be held to a minimum.
Significance: Injection of humanitarianism into industrial prisons.

Prisons in The Twentieth Century

Advocated reform, such as the Mutual Welfare League, led by Thomas Mott Osborne.
Proposed better treatment, an end to harsh corporal punishment, meaningful prison industries, and educational programs.
Osborne spent a week in Sing Sing Prison to learn firsthand about its conditions.

Reforms

The code of silence ended, as did the lockstep shuffle.
Prisoners were allowed "the freedom of the yard."
Movies and radio appeared in the 1930s.
Visiting policies and mail privileges were liberalized.

Development of Specialized Prisons

Clinton and Auburn were industrial facilities.
Great Meadow was an agricultural center.
Dannemora was a facility for the criminally insane.
San Quentin housed inmates considered salvageable.
Folsom was reserved for hard-core offenders.
The convict-lease system ended due to opposition by organized labor.

Sumners-Ashurst Act (1940)

Made it a federal offense to transport interstate commerce goods made in prison for private use.
Severely curtailed prison industry.
Inmate idleness and make-work jobs resulted.

Parole Origins

Developed overseas.
Term from the French for "promise."
Captured enemy soldiers released if they promised not to fight again.
English judges banished offenders to overseas colonies in the early 17th century.
1617: British Parliament granted reprieves to convicts willing to be transported.
1665: Transportation orders included conditions of employment and reconsideration of punishment if conditions weren't met.
1717: The British Parliament created the concept of property in service which transferred control of prisoners to a contractor or shipmaster.

Parole to Australia:

Transportation became the most common sentence for theft offenders.
After the American Revolution, Australia became the destination for transported felons.
From 1815 to 1850, inmates were shipped to Australia as indentured servants.

Alexander Maconochie

Condemned transportation and helped end the practice.
Instituted classification and rehabilitation programs on Norfolk Island.
The English Penal Servitude Act of 1853 ended transportation and substituted imprisonment.
Granted a ticket-of-leave to those who had served a sufficient portion of their prison sentence.

Walter Crofton

Instituted a mark system in which inmates could earn their ticket-of-leave for good conduct and hard work in prison.
Instituted a system in which private volunteers or police agents could monitor ticket-of-leave offenders in the community. This is considered an early form of parole.

Parole in the United States

1822: Volunteers from the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons helped offenders after release.
1851: The society appointed two agents to work with inmates discharged from Pennsylvania penal institutions.
Massachusetts appointed an agent in 1845 to help released inmates obtain jobs, clothing, and transportation.

Zebulon Brockway's Selection Process

Selected rehabilitated offenders from Elmira Reformatory for early release
under
Early release was under the supervision of citizen volunteers known as guardians.
The concept spread rapidly.
Ohio created the first parole agency in 1884.
By 1927, parole had become institutionalized as the primary method of release for prison inmates.

Contemporary Correctional Institutions:

1960-1980: Prisoners' rights movement.
Courts ruled inmates had rights to freedom of religion and speech, medical care, procedural due process, and proper living conditions.
Since 1980: An increasingly conservative judiciary has curtailed the growth of inmate rights.

Violence Within the Correctional System

Potential for death and destruction.
Prison rapes and killings.
The locus of control in many prisons has shifted from correctional staff to violent inmate gangs.
- Administrators have tried to improve conditions such as: innovative programs that give inmates a voice in running the institution as well as discipline and build new super-maximum-security prisons to control the most dangerous offenders.

Purpose of Incarcerating Criminals

1960-1980: Medical model, treatment could cure inmates and enable them to live productive lives.
Since the 1980s: Prisons are now control, incapacitation, and punishment.
Dual correctional policy:
keep
Many nonviolent offenders out of the correctional system.
Incarcerate dangerous, violent offenders for long periods.

Jails

3,200 jails nationwide.

Five Primary Purposes of Detention

Detain accused offenders who cannot make or are not eligible for bail prior to trial.
Hold convicted offenders awaiting sentence.
Serve as the principal institution of secure confinement for offenders convicted of misdemeanors.
Hold probationers and parolees picked up for violations and waiting for a hearing.
House felons when state prisons are overcrowded.
About 15,000 local jurisdictions maintain short-term police or municipal lockups.

Jail Populations and Trends

738,000 jail inmates are behind bars at any one time which is an incarceration rate of 226 jail inmates per 100,000 U.S residents.
9 out of 10 jail inmates are adult males, minority over-representation is still a significant problem: African Americans represent over 32 percent and Hispanics an additional 15 percent of all inmates.

Reduction of Minors Held in Adult Jails. However, about 3,400 minors are still being held in adult jails each day.

Female Jail Inmates

Face many challenges, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Many have experienced abuse and severe economic disadvantage, have high
Those who have worked recently before their incarceration are most likely to have other survival skills and assets.

Jail Conditions

Prison overcrowding has made attempts to improve conditions extremely difficult.
Low-priority item with services not sufficiently regulated.
Deteriorated conditions, holding dangerous and troubled people with emotional problems.
Many inmates have been victims of prior physical and sexual abuse which show to be more than 10 percent of male inmates and nearly 50 percent of female inmates
About two-thirds of all jail inmates report having a mental health problem.
Inmate suicides are a biggest concern.
Warehousing in local jails does little to alleviate problems.

Inmate-on-Inmate Victimization

Approximately twice as common for females than males (3.6 percent compared to 1.4 percent).
This is a serious issue with an issue of being a revolving door of the justice system.

New-Generation Jails:

Modern designs to improve effectiveness.
Traditional jails linear/intermittent surveillance model.
New-generation jails allow for continuous observation: direct-supervision and indirect-supervision model.

Direct-Supervision Jails

Contains a cluster of cells surrounding a living area or "pod,"
The officer is stationed within the pod as they have visual observation of
They also have the ability to relate to inmates on a personal level.
This results in a safer environment for both staff and inmates as their awareness of the behaviors and needs of the inmates gets closely monitored and dissension can be quickly detected.
- The officer controls door locks to cells from the remote location at central control.

Indirect-Supervision Jails

The correctional officer's station is located inside a secure room.
Construction is similar however, microphones and speakers inside the living unit permit the officer to hear and communicate with inmates.
Show there kind of institutions may help reduce post-release offending in some situations.

Prisons

About 1,800 secure public and private adult correctional facilities.
Housing more than 1.5 million state and federal prisoners classified on three levels-maximum, medium, and minimum security.

Maximum-Security Prisons

Fortress-like.
Surrounded by stone walls with guard towers.
Barbed wire or electrified fences.
High security, armed guards, and stone walls.
Inmates live in interior, metal-barred cells.
The cells are organized in sections called blocks which make up a wing.

The security of the maximum-security prison relies on Correctional workers that maintain utmost security as each inmate may be a dangerous criminal or violent

Super-Maximum-Security Prisons

House the most predatory criminals, either independent correctional centers or locked wings of existing prisons
The supermax model is based on the assumption that prison disorder is primarily the result of a handful of disruptive, violent inmates
$22 to 24 hours in lockdown

Security Measures

The 484-bed facility in Florence, Colorado, has the most sophisticated security measures in the United States, including many video cameras and gated entry points.
Furniture is immovable and made out of cell blocks. The cells are angled so that inmates can see neither each other nor the outside.

Supermax Prisons Reviews Indicate

Can achieve correctional benefits by enhancing security and quality of life through the deprivations of basic human rights and eliminate any opportunity for rehabilitation.
Cause psychological damage

Medium-Security Prisons

Similar in appearance to maximum-security prisons
Promote greater treatment efforts by use of those who make exemplary rehabilitation efforts in their living situations.

Minimum-Security Prisons

Operate without armed guards or perimeter walls, houses trustworthy and least violent offenders.
Work furloughs and educational releases are encouraged, and vocational training is of the highest level enabling personal traits and habits.
Minimum-security prisons have been criticized for being like "country clubs."

Prison Farms and Camps (alternative correctional institution)

Farm, forest, road camps, and similar facilities.
Inmates produce dairy products, grain, and vegetable crops for the state.
Forestry camp inmates maintain state parks, fight forest fires, and do reforestation work.
Ranches, primarily a Western phenomenon, employ inmates in cattle raising and horse breeding, among other activities.
Road gangs repair roads and state highways.

Shock Incarceration in Boot Camps

Involves youthful, first-time offenders in military discipline and physical training.
Short periods (90 to 180 days) of high-intensity exercise and work.
Tough physical training is designed to promote responsibility and improve decision-making skills, build self-confidence, and teach socialization skills.
Some programs also include educational and training components, counseling sessions, and treatment for special-needs populations.
Some viewed
Shock incarceration facilities use extensive state use shock incorporation facilities (Georgia, South Carolina, and New-York)

Empirically however Doris Layton Mackenzie contributed most of this majority research with this approach yielding only disappointing results.

Community Correctional Facilities:

Goal: Help reintegrate the offender into society (Alternative to closed institutions).
Community-based correctional models.
Many are halfway houses to which inmates are transferred just before they are released into the community.
Community center can be an intermediate sanction/treatment.
Community treatment center treatment for Drug abusers

Private Prisons

On January 6, 1986, the U.S. Corrections Corporation opened the first
private state prison in Marion, Kentucky—a 300-bed minimum-security facility
for inmates who are within 3 years of parole.
Today, around 400 correctional facilities are being run by private firms as business enterprises housing over 121,000 inmates.

Inmate Populations

Reflect arrest data and are similar to those of the jail population: isproportionately young, male, minority, and poor.
Black and Hispanic males disproportionately held in custody.
White Women still make up less than 10 percent of the total prison population.
Many inmates suffer from multiple social problems. Only about one-third of current inmates have a high school diploma, compared with more than 80 percent of the general population

Surveys and tests show this to relate to emotional behaviors

Population Trends

Decreasing trends show that over the recent years, criminals have been facing shorter sentences
Cost effective shifts need to be made in policing so that incarceration is not effective as police effectiveness makes crime more clear and the consequences of criminal activity more certain.
Virtually every state facing huge deficits, many have
begun cutting prison budgets and closing institutions, especially prison camps and
minimum-security prisons, to help balance the budget.

As long as policy makers believe that incarcerating predatory criminals can bring down crime rates, the likelihood of a significant decrease in the institutional population seems remote. If there is little evidence that this costly system does lower crime rates, then less costly and equally effective alternatives will need to be sought.