Why prisons don't work

Examples

• "This state so tough that last year, when prison authorities here wanted to punish an inmate in solitary confinement for an infraction, the most they could inflict on him was to deprive him of his underwear." (Par. 2)

• "Historically, for example, the domestic staff at Louisiana's Governor's mansion has been made up of murderers, hand-picked to work among the chief-of-state and his family." (Par. 5)

First Prison

• The first prison was located at Pennsylvania.

• Named Eastern State Penitentiary.

• Opened in 1829.

• Equipped with 250 private cells.

• The Prison had abysmal conditions with guards frequently abusing prisoners and cells not having adequate maintenance.

Jail vs. Prison

Jail

Prison

•Run by local law enforcement

•Low level felonies

•Most used by people awaiting trial

•Run by state or federal government

•Includes different levels of security

•Designed for long term sentences

Prison, like the Police and the courts, has a minimal impact on crime because it is a response after the fact, a mop-up operation.

Jail

Prison

Top 3 Notorious Prisons in the US

#1

#2

#3

ADX Florence Facility

• Location: Florence, Colorado

• Size: 37 acres

• Famous Inmates: Ted Kaczynski, Larry Hoover, Timothy McVeigh

• The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility is a supermax prison for men that is located in unincorporated Fremont County, Colorado, United States, south of Florence. It is unofficially known as ADX Florence, Florence ADMAX, or The Alcatraz of the Rockies. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. ADX, a part of the Florence Federal Correctional Complex (FCC), houses the prisoners who are deemed the most dangerous and in need of the tightest control of all the prisoners within the United States Federal Prison System.

San Quentin State Prison

• Location: Marin County, California

• Size: 432 acres

• Famous Inmates: Stanley “Tookie” Williams

• California’s only death row for male inmates, the largest in the United States, is located at the prison. It has a gas chamber, but since 1996, executions at the prison have been carried out by lethal injection. It opened in July 1852 and is the oldest prison in the state.

Sing, Sing

• Location: Ossining, New York

• Size: 476

• Famous Inmates: Charles “Lucky” Luciano

• Ossining’s original name, “Sing Sing”, came from the Native American Sinck Sinck (Sint Sinck) tribe from whom the land was purchased in 1685.

• Sing Sing houses approximately 1,700 prisoners. There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block into a museum.

• Sing Sing was the third prison built by New York State.

Top 3 Prisons in Puerto Rico

#2

#3

#1

Metropolitan Detention Center Guaynabo

• Inmate Gender: Male and Female Offenders

• Population: 1,238 Total Inmates

• Judicial District: Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands

• County: GUAYNABO

Correctional Institution Guerrero

• Location: Aguadilla, P.R.

• Capacity: 944

• Custody: Alberga Sentenciados Mínima, Mediana y Máxima

Institución Correccional Máxima Seguridad Guayama 1,000

• Location: Guayama, P.R. 00785

• Capacity: 529

Incarceration in the US

Incarceration in Puerto Rico 2017

Life in prison

• In prison, the day started at around 7:45am when doors would be unlocked. Work started at 8:30am. You worked around six hours a day for around £10 pay per week. That includes cleaning, painting, cooking, laundry and prison industry, which brings in a little income for the prison. Prison industry could be anything from making clothing, items for charities or even CD scratching – destroying unsold copies of albums.

• Inmates were punished if they chose not to work; forced labour is supposed to be something from the past but it’s alive today in our prisons.

• The morning work session lasted until about midday, then we would be sent back to the wings to collect lunch.

Life in prison

• We were then locked up for about two hours so the staff can have their own lunch. Around 2pm, we’d be unlocked and sent back to work until around 5pm After the second shift, we’d be served dinner – or tea as prisons call it.

• Dinner had to be eaten in your cell. It’s not so bad if you had the bottom bunk – you could sit there and eat – but if you were top bunk, it was much easier to eat with your dinner on your knee, sat on the toilet.

• Usually, five or six main course options were available for dinner and there was always a vegetarian option. Menu sheets were issued a week in advance so you could choose your meal.

• The menu was different each week, but was the same every four weeks, so after a few months, the options became very mundane.

Life in prison

• Breakfast was collected the night before, while you collected tea. This was a small, single portion of cereal, a small carton of UHT milk, four tea bags, a couple of sachets of jam and a couple of pats of butter.

• Lunch was a sandwich, usually cheese, and a packet of crisps.

• A pair of flip-flops is an essential part of the prison kit. They have to be purchased but well worth the investment.

• Once a week, there was a ‘kit change’ where clothing and bedding could be exchanged for clean items. At this time, other items such as toiletries – shower gel, shaving gel, toothpaste and toilet rolls etc could be obtained.

Prisoners Rights

• Federal and state laws govern the establishment and administration of prisons as well as the rights of the inmates. Although prisoners do not have full constitutional rights, they are protected by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. This protection also requires that prisoners be afforded a minimum standard of living. For example, in Brown v. Plata, the Supreme Court upheld a court-mandated population limit to curb overpopulation which violated the Eighth Amendment in California prisons.

• Regardless, prisoners retain some constitutional rights, such as due process in their right to administrative appeals and a right of access to the parole process. Additionally, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to prison inmates, protecting them against unequal treatment on the basis of race, sex, and creed, and the Model Sentencing and Corrections Act, created by the Uniform Law Commission in 1978, provides that a confined person has a protected interest in freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex. Prisoners also have rights to speech and religion, to the extent these rights do not interfere with their status as inmates.

Discussion Question #2

If you could change anything about the system of the prison, what would it be?

Negative Outcome Cases

Kirk Bloodsworth

• Death row is reserved for the worst offenders. In 1985, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in Baltimore. Although he looked nothing like the sketch of the suspect, multiple witnesses identified him. He spent almost nine years behind bars and two of them, on death row. Upon release, he wanted to be exonerated. In 2004, Bloodworth was the first death row inmate to be exonerated using DNA evidence. Since then, several death row convictions have been similarly overturned

Negative Outcome Cases

Darryl Hunt

• In 1994, Hunt was actually cleared of the rape when DNA testing proved he had never committed that crime. Despite the rape being central to the overall crime, he spent an additional nine years in prison until a man named Willard Brown confessed to both acts. So after nineteen years of life in prison, Hunt was finally exonerated in 2004. Since being released from prison, he has worked with The Innocence Project and founded the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, as well as the Darryl Hunt Freedom Fighters, in order to help other wrongfully convicted men and women.

Positive Outcome Cases

Darius Clark Monroe

• Darius Clark Monroe served three years of a 5-year sentence at the Jim Ferguson Unit prison in Midway, Texas, for bank robbery. Last year, he completed Evolution of a Criminal, a feature-length autobiographical documentary executive produced by Spike Lee. The film, which the New Yorker called a "terrific movie," explores the various influences that pushed Monroe to rob a bank at age 16, like the fact that he grew up in a home with parents who struggled financially and whom he wanted to help. His decision would shape the rest of his life, and the film aims to help young people gain a sense of the ways their choices can affect the lives of many others. Monroe is currently using the film as a teaching tool, touring in high schools, juvenile detention centers and prisons across the country. In a few weeks, 14 years after his release, Monroe will return to the Ferguson Unit to screen the film and discuss the ongoing ripple effects of mass incarceration.

Positive Outcome Cases

Khalil A. Cumberbatch

• Khalil A. Cumberbatch spent six and a half years incarcerated before being released in 2010. Today, he is a policy associate focusing on criminal justice reform at the Legal Action Center in New York. He is also the communications and development manager for the radio program On the Count. Cumberbatch's LAC work will provide more opportunities and services for people with criminal justice involvement to be diverted from jail and prison, and also away from a lifetime of perpetual punishment that stems from having a criminal conviction. His work with On the Count gives him the opportunity to be critical of the criminal justice system from a perspective reflective of those who are directly impacted by the socioeconomic and political issues that lead to mass incarceration.

Discussion Question #3

Do you think that racism and stereotypes are seen in prisons?

Post-Release Programs for Prisoners

After prison, offenders have access to the support services and programs available to the general community. Services and programs can include:

• housing services
• legal services
• employment services
• support groups
• telephone counseling
• face-to-face counseling
• drug and alcohol programs
• childcare assistance
• parenting skills training and information
• mentoring programs
• domestic violence safety plans
• emergency relief.

How to find Services and Programs

• Support is available through government departments and agencies, at community centers, churches, neighborhood houses as well as emergency relief agencies such as the Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul Society.

• To find available services in your area search the Infoxchange Service Seeker website or telephone a national helpline (listed below) and ask for a referral to local services.

Interviews

Guide Questions

• Present yourself and tell us about your story on prision as an officer/ ex-prisoner.
• Do you think prisons work? Yes or no? Why?
• If you could change something about the prisons system, what it would be?

Interdisciplinary Themes

• A visionary book in the repertoire of prison literature. When Normal Mailer was writing The Executioner’s Song, he received a letter from Jack Henry Abbott, a convict, in which Abbott offered to educate him in the realities of life in a maximum security prison. This book organizes Abbott’s by now classic letters to Mailer, which evoke his infernal vision of the prison nightmare.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Born in Michigan in 1944, Jack Henry Abbott spent most of his childhood in foster care and his teen years in various detention centers. While serving a long sentence for killing a fellow inmate, he wrote to Norman Mailer and offered to write a truthful depiction of life in prison. Mailer agreed, and with his help Abbott published In the Belly of the Beast. Abbott died in prison in 2002.

Interdisciplinary Themes

Folsom Prison Blues

Johnny Cash

I bet there's rich folks eatin'

In a fancy dining car

They're probably drinkin' coffee

And smokin' big cigars

But I know I had it comin'

I know I can't be free

But those people keep a-movin'

And that's what tortures me

Well, if they freed me from this prison

If that railroad train was mine

I bet I'd move out over a little

Farther down the line

Far from Folsom Prison

That's where I want to stay

And I'd let that lonesome whistle

Blow my blues away

Lyrics

I hear the train a comin'

It's rollin' 'round the bend,

And I ain't seen the sunshine

Since, I don't know when

I'm stuck in Folsom Prison

And time keeps draggin' on

But that train keeps a-rollin'

On down to San Antone

When I was just a baby

My Mama told me, "Son

Always be a good boy

Don't ever play with guns, "

But I shot a man in Reno

Just to watch him die

When I hear that whistle blowin'

I hang my head and cry

Interdisciplinary Themes

Prison Grove

Warren Zevon

Lyrics

An icy wind burns and scars

Rushes in like a fallen star

Through the narrow space

Between these bars

Looking down on Prison Grove

Dug in, hunkered down

Hours race without a sound

Gonna carry me to where I'm bound

Looking down on Prison Grove

Iron will hard as rock

Hold me up for the fateful knock

When they walk me down in a mortal lock

Out on Prison Grove

Shine on all these broken lives

Shine on

Shine the light on me

Knick Knack Paddy Wack

They say you'll hear your own bones crack

When they bend you back to bible black

Then you'll find your love

Some folks have to die too hard

Some folks have to cry too hard

Take one last look at the prison yard

Goodbye Prison Grove

Shine on all these broken lives

Shine on

Shine the light on me

Interdisciplinary Themes

Prison Break

• Due to a political conspiracy, an innocent man is sent to death row and his only hope is his brother, who makes it his mission to deliberately get himself sent to the same prison in order to break the both of them out, from the inside.

Interdisciplinary Themes

Making a Murderer

• Filmed over a 10-year period, Steven Avery, a DNA exonerate who, while in the midst of exposing corruption in local law enforcement, finds himself the prime suspect in a grisly new crime.

Interdisciplinary Themes

Influence on Style

Interdisciplinary Themes

Movies

• A story about a young Jeffrey Dahmer (a future serial killer, based on true events) presenting his childhood and high school life until his first murder. This movie is a recreation of a book written by one of his real high school friends. It is an insight of the upcoming events of this serial killer, talking about how and why he became a cold blooded murderer.

Interdisciplinary Themes

Movies

• A former neo-nazi skinhead tries to prevent his younger brother from going down the same wrong path that he did.

Discussion Question #4

Do you think that all prisoners should have opportunity to rehabilitate?

Activity

• Divide the class in 4 groups of 4.
• You will receive a criminal case.
• Each group will pick a student to act like the accused and the remaining people will be the jury.

References

Rideau, Wilbert. In the Place of Justice. Capital Defense Consultant. 2005. www.wilbertrideau.com. Accessed October 28, 2018

Rideau, Wilbert. Why Prisons Don't Work. CNN. March 21, 1994. www.heal-online.org/wilbert.pdf. Accessed October 4, 2018.

Wilbert RIDEAU, Petitioner, v. STATE OF LUISIANA. Corner Law School. www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/373/723. Accessed October 28, 2018

What is the Difference Between Jail and Prison. HG.org. www.hg.org/legal-articles/what-is-the-difference-btween-jail-and-prison-31513. Accessed October 28, 2018

Definition of Prison. Oxford Dictionary. en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/prison. Accessed October 28, 2018

Sterbernz, Christina. The modern prison system was created by Benjamin Franklin's living room. Business Insider. April 19, 2015. www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-first-prison-was-created-in-benjamin-franklins-living-roon-2015-3. Accessed October 28, 2018

NewsOne Staff. Top 10 Most Notorious Prisons in the U.S. NEWSONE. October 4, 2011. www.newsone.com/1565605/most-notorious-prisons-in-the-us/. Accessed October 28, 2018

MDC Guaynabo. BOP. www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/gua/. Accessed October 29, 2018

Localizaciones. Departamento de Corrección y Rehabilitación. ac.gobierno.pr/correccion/localizaciones/. Accessed October 29, 2018

Wagner, Peter and Rabuy, Bernadette. Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie. Prison Policy Initiative. March 14, 2017. www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html. Accessed October 29, 2018

References

Income and Expenditure Report in Correctional Institutions. May 2017. estadisticas.pr/Documentos/EAB886AF-519D-47F4-8385-F9A1E9D75C75/DCR _IngresoEgreso _201705.pdf. Accessed October 29, 2018

Foster, Ryan. A former prisoner reveals what everyday life was like in prisons. METRO UK. May 29, 2017. etro.co.uk/2017/05/29/a-former-prisoner-reveals-what-everyday-life-was-like-in-prisons-6661489/. Accessed October 29, 2018

Prisoners' Rights. Cornell Law School. www.law.cornell.edu/wex/prisoners%27_rights. Accessed October 29, 2018

Wagner, Adam. 5 of the Worst Wrongful Convictions. Criminal Element. October 6, 2016. www.criminalelement.com/-of-the-worst-wrongful-convictions/. Accessed October 29, 2018

Moore, Darnell L. 11 People Who Used to Be in Jail But are Now Changing the World. Mic. April 2, 2015. mic.com/articles/114276/11-formerly-incarcerated-people-who-are-now-changing-the-world#.muzOJzRrL. Accessed October 29, 2018

Making a Murderer. IMDb. 2015. www.imdb.com/title/tt5189670/. Accessed October 29, 2018

Prison Break. IMDb. www.imdb.com/title/tt0455275/. Accessed October 29, 2018

After-prison support. Victoria State Government. www.corrections.vic.gov.au/home/release/after-prison+support/. Accessed October 29, 2018

Abbot, Jack Henry. In the Belly of the Beast. Vintage. January 2, 1991. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/128/in-the-belly-of-the-beast-by-jack-henry-abbot/9780679732372/

Conclusion

Thank you all for giving us your attention and for being part of this discussion of prisons efficiency. We hope that this investigation can clarify your opinion about this matter at hand and that it was good for your understanding. Now that we analyze the topic we can help better society life. It is up to each of us...