Before the birth of the modern penitentiary at Walnut Street (Philadelphia) in 1790, prisoners endured unimaginable squalor” (Roth, 2011, p. 86). With the implementation of the new correctional system many changes took place including the way the prisoners were housed, treated, and the way they spent their days. As we have learned the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia is considered the birthplace of the American penitentiary. As the article Walnut Street Prison states most prisons were typically built in a U shape with large rooms. The original role for prisons was just to hold criminals and no regard was given for an inmate’s well-being.
“How People Turn Monstrous” reveals the incident of eight soldiers and Staff [Sgt.] Ivan Frederick II mistreating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison with humiliating sexual behavior and physical abuse such as stripping them naked with bags over their heads and stomping on their hands and feet. Mark Buchanan believes they “only did what many of us would have done if placed in the same situation”(384). Buchanan provides us with a great resource such as the experiment at Stanford University by Philip Zimbardo. Few college students were put in a real life situation similar to Abu Ghraib.
In a state prison in downstate Menard, Illinois, an inmate by the name of Gino Colon takes a walk around his prison wearing sunglasses, a new sweat suit, nice sneakers and even a gold chain with a diamond studded medallion hanging from his neck. Almost all 2,600 of the other inmates of the prison are locked up in their cells. At this time, a lock down was being enforced because of a serious incident at another state prison. But Colon is within the rules to be just walking around. He even has a key to his room.
In the United States, there are million of women and men being convicted of crimes and sent to prison. The prison system is thought to be a place for rehabilitation, for convicted felons to change their life from being a menace to society to begin a positive contributor. However, for many years prisons have not been able to meet their goal due to unlawful treatment of prisoners and corrupt authoritative figures in the prison system. Many prisoner do not get the protection the law provides. In the Rita Hayworth and Shaw shank Redemption written by Stephen King, the prison system and it’s corruption is presented in support of these accusations.
Psychologically speaking depression can be a ramification because again the inmates are in their cells 22 hours a day. The cells are small and they are deprived of social communication. Going outside is a privilege to most. The time given to the inmates can be viewed as living under barbaric conditions even though we are speaking about criminals. Agnew posits that “deprived” communities are more likely to be populated by “strained” individuals and that these communities will suffer from more blocked opportunity structures, (Hoffman, 2003).
Inmates in SHU spend 22.5 hours in isolation they are segregated from other prisoners and they get 1 hour to walk or workout in indoor yard. Some extremely dangerous inmates have turned this safe place into one of most horrifying place to be in. One of the officers called
He therefore made provisions for their replacement with tool-proof steel bars which, unlike the iron bars, would prevent against erosion and make it nearly impossible for the inmates to saw their way through them. The windows of the prison were also reinforced by the addition of tool-proof steel bars. alcatraz penitentiary More then ten buildings were scattered around Alcatraz island during its ten years as a prison. Independently operated “double doors” were in place in the buildings to allow only those who were authorized to pass either in or out of the high security environment that each structure maintained. Perhaps the most important building to the actual prison operation was the cellhouse.
That forced a few changes in Brett’s behavior and lifestyle but in the end nothing prevailed. This next text I am about to speak about is also a very good example of institutions, where as the “prison farm” I spoke of earlier this text which is named “One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest” Directed by Milos Forman in 1975 is about a mental hospital but the man sent there ( Jack Nicholson ) finds the head nurse a lot more dangerous than the inmates themselves. Randle Patrick McMurphy ( Jack Nicholson ) thinks he can get out of doing work while in prison by pretending to be mad. His plans are rapidly backfired when he is sent a “mental asylum”. He tries to liven the place up on his arrival by playing card games and playing basketball with his fellow inmates, but the head nurse is after him at every turn.
They would lock children in small solitary confinement cells where they would through tear gas canisters into them. The air activated gas canister used in a closed eight-by-ten room can cause severe chemical burns by the dust landing on the skin. This gas dust can cause chemical burns but also cause the skin to peel off. Theses solitary cells were small, and dark with stained mattresses along with a bucket for body waste. Children were thrown in these cells for a wide variety of reasons from writing illegal letters to masturbating.
The influx of prisoners poses issues such as gang rivalries, and violent confrontations, not only among the prisoners themselves but also between them and the prison guards. At Corcoran State Prison, on “gladiator days” officers forced rival gang members to fight, and shot them both for entertainment(Schlosser). In private Juvenile detention centers such as YSI facilities, staff often choose to not report most assaults and major fights to avoid scrutiny for violating their contracts and the rules of the Department of Juvenile Justice. Overcrowding also leads to inconveniences such as double-bunking, which urges aggression, violence, and stress-induced mental disorders. The incarceration system in the United States has inflicted much damage on societal well-being, caused by privatization of prisons, war on drugs, and overcrowding of prison cells.