Understanding Prisoner Experience And Institutional Dynamics

This essay will tackle certain aspect of imprisonment experience by touching on administrative problems and their social aspect in regard to the prisoners. This essay will review the norms in prisons in respect to the lives of the prisoners. It will also refer to experiences in other countries to review how inmates perceive the prison systems and how they physically, mentally and emotionally cope with the prison environment.

Whether California imprisonment experience demonstrates inmates’ social safety perception

(Kruttschnitt & Gartner, 2005) describes the experience of imprisonment as being the way prisoners relate to and think about other prisoners, the keepers and the prison regime as a whole. The experience is shaped by both internal and external environments of the prisons. They cited factors of political, economic and cultural changes in the society having an effect on the relationship of prisons to the society and that of the concerned actors within the prison system. Particularly, the features of the official regimes and structures and the prison practices shape the responses and adaptation of the prisoners (Kruttschnitt & Gartner, 2005, p.67). (Sykes, 2012) states that the study of structural and functional perspective on imprisonment evidently saw prison as the subject of the study as a small scale social system with concerns around the objectives of the prison, social and physical environment and the perception and social roles of the guards and the inmates. Studies also emphasised on the unintended outcomes rather than just intended outcomes (Sykes, 2012, p.360). The important issue is to determine how inmates’ behaviour relates to their present predicament rather than possible influence of their life before confinement. (Sykes, 2012) states that interest in the study of the prison focuses on the social structure of the prison system and also how the beliefs, behaviour, and norms of the inmates and that of the prison guards functioned to maintain continuity of the prison system (Sykes, 2012, p.362). The rationale may be found in how (Armstrong & Maruna, 2016) takes a social justice view of the objective of imprisonment that considers inmates as social beings and prison as a form that could maximise social safety. (Armstrong & Maruna, 2016) argues for seeing prison as a social institution that could give inmates an access to society safely, mutually and they could acquire an equal footing with others in the society (Armstrong & Maruna, 2016). In this respect, the next paragraphs of this essay will determine whether the current prison system of California and the imprisonment experience meet any aspect of this kind of social justice institution.

California, like other states in the US, saw the trends of expanding of prison enterprise. This was seen in the period 1980-91 too. Offenders were imprisoned at higher rate. During that period, California saw the largest prison population in the Western countries (Zimring & Hawkins, 1994). California sees no decline in prisoners’ rights litigation even after the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) was enacted (Schlanger, 2016). (Lin et al., 2010) discusses the effect of punitive political environment. They used the data from the California Parole Study and found that the increase in re-imprisoning parolees by employing parole board revocations has contributed massively to the growth of incarceration in the US. This practice is termed as “back‐end sentencing.” One of the factors they observed is prison crowding that affects the likelihood of re-imprisonment. Other factors such as race and ethnicity and gender or the serious nature of crime, for example registered sex offenders, violent or serious offences, have impact on the likelihood of re-imprisonment. They further observed that in California the risk of being returned to prison was greater in those counties that have more punitive political environments (Lin et al., 2010). How much of these factors affect the social justice objective of prison system is a social scientific question to be determined. Observation of (Cavadino et al., 2020) is relevant in this context that inmates experience various social and psychological reasons and suffer from poorer physical and mental health than that those of the general population. They state that level of safety and security is centred on the level of violence that the inmates experience at the hands of the other inmates. Such kind of mental and emotional state of inmates may stem from policy orientation of maintaining and what (Cavadino et al., 2020) claims over emphasising consistent law and order that arguably provides for excessive punishment. The daily experience of being imprisoned threatening constant violation of human rights demands guidelines that could reduce the general punishment levels and the pursuing of consistency (Cavadino et al., 2020).

Taking the issue of overcrowding and its effect on the experience of imprisonment, (J Wooldredge, 2015) observes that overcrowding issues seem to be related with social characteristics of the prison. One such issue is that inmate violence. Environmental characteristics of a prison, such as the design capacity or overcrowding and compositional characteristics of the prison such as the security levels, proportion of non-white staff or of inmates held in punitive segregation, or staff to inmate ratio are range of factors considered that found that compositional factors are more important than the environmental factors in respect to inmate violence (J Wooldredge, 2015). California prisons follow severe confinement conditions, which directly or indirectly result to racial segregation norms consequently shaping inmates allegiance to a racial line. (Skarbek, 2014) argues that the issue of overcrowding in California prisons arguably facilitated destabilising existing inmate norms. As a result, prisoners approach prison gangs, which assume the position of an extralegal governing body. The existence of this body ensures securing group allegiances as well as constant threats of retaliatory force (Skarbek, 2014). The allegiance seems to follow a racial line. There is a prison racial divide within the Californian correctional system. In the men prison, inmates were highly segregated by race although majority of inmates socializes with friends from other races on a daily basis. The inmates themselves enforced the racial segregation norms (Trammell, 2012). The issues associated with overcrowding and its effect demonstrates the consequential social and physical environment and perception of the inmates. It also reflects the passive role played by the prison system, which contradicts its objective of providing a social safety system for the inmates. The reason for existence of the social and physical environment, which is self enforced by the inmates based on racial segregation may be found in the argument of (Kruttschnitt, 2018) that states that prison policy specifies increased surveillance and constant threat created by such regime actively or passively imposed on inmates of reassignment to a higher security level prison in case of violent incidents (Kruttschnitt, 2018). Rather than the prison regime providing a safety environment, (Skarbek, 2014) argues that inmate gangs based on racial line and taking the form of an extralegal governing body existence act as deterrence of any kind of inmate-on-inmate violence (Skarbek, 2014). He argues that overcrowding has led to reductions in prison violence, and prisoners have adapted to a new inmate social organization (Skarbek, 2014).

The conditions found in California prison seems to be different from the prison regime in France. France’s prison regime has retained the penitentiary system of confinement followed by Pennsylvania. This system emphasises on isolation in order to promote introspection, repentance, reflection and rehabilitation. Following this system, each inmate is assigned individual cell (Kazemian, 2020). This is in sharp contrast to the conditions in prison regime of California. There are apparent issues in the internal operations of the prisons that arguably affect imprisonment experience. (Nicholson, 2011) observed that in the California Institution for Men state prison in Chino, prisoners were kept in small cages while they wait for their medical care, counseling appointments, or even for permanent housing. The bunk beds were barely sufficient vertical space between them (Nicholson, 2011). The plight of the inmates does not seem to be recognised when on the other hand the prison regulation requires the inmate follow stipulated code of conduct and behaviour. There seems to be a disconnection of the prison systems and its social objectives. This could be reflected in the observation that staff-inmate interactions are the worst that impact the inmates’ well-being (Kruttschnitt et al., 2013).Considering the manner of the treatment of the inmates, will it not be justifiable to view prison practices and regulations, such as Title 15 of the California Code of Regulations, which governs behaviours of the prisoners, their activities and appearance, and rights and privileges, as being used more or less to control inmates rather that providing them safety environment with potential of rehabilitation? Although this may be a standard practice, the experience in two women prisons of California Institution for Women and the Valley State Prison for Women as found by (Kruttschnitt, 2011) includes daily lives activities such as wearing the prison uniforms, multiple counts of prisoners throughout the day, queue for meals at the cafeteria, which are at specified time, mail and telephone under monitor (Kruttschnitt, 2011). This may present an excessive monitoring and surveillance, as what (Kruttschnitt, 2018) also observed earlier, which may decline to achieve the overall objective of a prison system to rehabilitate prisoners. There may also be the reason when (Nicholson, 2011) observed that there was no rehabilitation in the California Institution for Men state prison in Chino (Nicholson, 2011). Even unthinkable is how the current prison system and the regulations and prison practices, discussed earlier, would affect inmates who are not mentally stable. The US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S. 493 (2011) clearly demonstrates the state of imprisonment experience of such inmates. It held that prison conditions, particularly for mentally ill people, allegedly violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against unusual and cruel punishment. This is gathered from the backlogs of up to 700 prisoners pending their physical care (Sacramento Bee and ProPublica, 2019).

Prison regimes, if they incorporate social aspects of punishment theories, may produce the desired objective. This is supported by the observation made by (Hipp et al., 2010) that in the area where there are a higher number of social service organizations, there was lower risk of recidivism (Hipp et al., 2010). Their finding suggests that social context to which parolees return and geographic accessibility to social service organizations play important roles in parolees’ social reintegration (Hipp et al., 2010). It suggests that the prison system and regulations should have appropriate rehabilitation programmes. However, the absence of such programmes is reflected in the observation that california prisoners did not have much expectation from the prison regime in respect of rehabilitation (Kruttschnitt, 2011). This is different from the perspective hold by prisoners in the UK who view the prison service system for solutions to problems (Kruttschnitt, 2011). The lack of social security and safety, including lesser chances of rehabilitation, and the prevailing prison practices present high level of vulnerability found amongst the inmates. This was found in the California Institution for Men state prison in Chino, in the year 2011. The life in the prison saw gang members undergo physical fitness regime with the belief they need to be ready to fight at any time, with prison officers and other prisoners upon their eventual release (Nicholson, 2011). (Maier & Ricciardelli, 2019) observe that prisoners seem to be constant vulnerability to fear or physical threat while being in the prison environment. The same kind of vulnerability is observed in Canada too where prisoners are under constant variety of and competing threats. They argue that such vulnerability stems from the threat of prisoners’ interactions involving physical violence and the administrative threat arising out of institutional powers and procedures, such as delayed release. Thus, it could be stated that this feeling of the prisoners is perpetual vulnerability and insecurity (Maier & Ricciardelli, 2019). Similar nature of vulnerability is found in prisoners in Belgium Flemish prisons are exposed to vulnerability factors and prison-specific stressors. Suicidal ideation in prisoners is common and is significantly associated with imported vulnerabilities, such as psychiatric diagnoses, history of attempted suicide, lack of work activities, exposure to peers’ suicidal behaviour, and possible low levels of perceived autonomy, social support and safety (Favri et al., 2017). Most important, the lack of social support and safety would affect the prisoners, such as observed in France where the poorest prisoners face lack of preparation and radical uncertainty with no access to accommodation (Chantraine & Delcourt, 2019).

This essay found that prisoners do not relate to the entire prison system and practices and the environment as a form of rehabilitation or safety mean. The lack of a support care system both inside and out the prison exposes the prisoners to constant vulnerability. The inability to link the system with its social objectives has pushed the inmates to seek safety environment in the prison on their own, as seen with events of racial segregation. Welfare of the prison is enforced by inmates themselves. The lack of humanitarian approach in prison practices that focus on excessive monitoring seems to have created the environment instead of a safe and secure means of social integration of the inmates.