Term Paper on "High-Risk Inmates"

Term Paper 4 pages (1460 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

High Risk Inmates

In a culture with a growing prison population, and an unequal ability of prison infrastructure to add more beds to facilities, there must be a greater emphasis on high-risk prisoners and high-risk prison behaviors. There are several types of high-risk inmates, the two being dealt with in this work are those who are violent toward others, such as other inmates and/or prison guards and those who are likely to do harm to themselves, the most extreme case being suicide. The identified causes of prison violence, have been established for more than 30 years but the ways to deal with such issues are ever evolving, and often facility specific. One issue that has been difficult to overcome, is that a general feeling of concern for prisoners and their safety is not a popular research topic and for this reason a great deal of research deals with protecting the public and more importantly in correctional facilities, protecting prison employees.

Park 278) the major surmountable obstacle being that the institutions must live by guidelines that are more humane than those held by some of the prisoners themselves. To get a general idea of the four "causes" or reasons for the occurrence of prison violence one must look back to the inception of the ideas.

Foundational work on the reasons for prison violence was conducted in the early seventies, and for the most part the ideas are similar to those today in that the reasons violence, and sometimes murder and/or suicide occur in prisons have similar if not the same social functions as they did then. The four groupings are more or less important, depending on the institution, its environment, type of inmates, and of coarse, regional issues:

1. Violence as a function of a closed prison society, or that which occurs as a result of adjustment to the system and all its rules and restrictions;

Gambling, homosexual interactions, crowded living conditions, poor institutional design, inadequate training and supervision of staff, inmate incompatibilities in life style and cultural or racial identifications, treatment by courts and parole boards, and the inability of a cumbersome bureaucracy to meet human needs -- all contribute to an underlying tension present in most institutions. This violence is usually between individuals, although racial violence is apt to involve larger groups. Predators will sometimes form small, relatively temporary alliances for the exploitation of other inmates.

Park 279-280)

2. Violence as a function of individual emotional disturbance, the violence that stems from the adjustment to having little if any external stimulation, allowing the individual to reflect on past deeds and possibly face regrets, addressing internal angers.

This continues to be a significant source of assaults on staff at institutions where large numbers of psychiatrically disturbed inmates are managed....The right of inmates to refuse medication must be balanced against the safe and orderly operation of institutions, a task that has not yet been completed in the courts or the legislatures.

3. Violence as a function of revolutionary-retaliatory ideology. This type of violence has largely been ignored based on the changes within the social structure of the nation, having been closely linked to civil rights issues and arrests. The new face of this type of prison violence will be linked to terrorism.

Several murders of prison employees were attributed to such groups in the early 1970s.Prison staff were particularly resentful of the encouragement being given to aggressive inmates by revolutionary activists in the outside community who furnished moral support, legal aid, free literature, and attractive visitors for cooperative prisoners. Curiously, this sort of violent activism has largely disappeared from the prison scene as it has from college campuses, although terroristic acts continue to occur in the community and may even be increasing worldwide. Outbreaks of violence in 1979 directed toward former participants in the prison reform movement of the early 1970s and continuing threats against others suggest that revolutionary-retaliatory violence has not vanished but is waiting for a suitable set of conditions for its reactivation.

4. Violence as a function of organized gangs. Prison gangs have been around for many years and can be based on ideology and/or internal perceptions of protective networks, but violence in these cases is often associate with extreme secrecy as well as planned and directed acts of violence against targeted inmates of rival gangs or those who wish to join or leave the institutions. These types… READ MORE

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