Transcript Key Questions What is a better explanation of what happens to people (prisoners and guards) who are incarcerated --- a “situational” model or.

Key Questions
What is a better explanation of what happens to people
(prisoners and guards) who are incarcerated --- a “situational”
model or the role of individual personality?
Why accounts for the increase in the prison population --- an
increase in violent crime or the dynamics of the prison system
(and related laws)?
Comparing Crime Databases
UCR
NCVS
Geographic coverage
National & State
estimates, local agency
reports
National estimates
Collection method
Reports by law
enforcement to the FBI
on a monthly basis
Survey of as many as
77,200 households and
134,000 individuals age
12 or older.
Measures
Index crimes reported by
law enforcement
Reported and unreported
crime; details about the
crimes, victims, and
offender
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, FBI UCR.
Prisoners in 2008, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin (NCJ 228417).
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.
Incarceration By State
Source: http://www.doc.state.ok.us/MAPS/INCRATUS.HTM
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm
Prisoner Labor
The Federal Prison Industries (commonly referred to as FPI or UNICOR) was
established in 1934 by Franklin D. Roosevelt to employ federal inmates for
production of goods needed in the government.
It is the mission of Federal Prison Industries, Inc. to employ and provide skills
training to the greatest practicable number of inmates confined within the Federal
Bureau of Prisons; contribute to the safety and security of our Nation's correctional
facilities by keeping inmates constructively occupied; produce market-price quality
goods for sale to the Federal Government; operate in a self-sustaining manner; and
minimize FPI's impact on private business and labor.
Adapted from the Unicor web site[ http://www.unicor.gov/index.cfm]
Message from the Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Bureau of
Prisons
“At the end of FY 2005, the Federal inmate population was almost 188,000. By
2010, it is expected to reach 215,000. The Bureau is nearing completion of an
aggressive construction schedule during which it will have activated 16 new
institutions in five years.”
• Inmate Workers = 19,720
• Inmate pay rates = 23 cents/hr. to $1.15/hr.
• Percent of revenues for inmate pay = 6%
• Factories - 106
Source: http://www.unicor.gov/information/publications/pdfs/corporate/catar2005.pdf
Stanford Prison Experiment
[http://www.prisonexp.org/]
Overall purpose of the study: To investigate the psychological effects of prison -- for both
prisoners and guards
Participants
Originally 70 volunteers (via newspaper ads)
Screening: Diagnostic interviews and psychological test administered, existence of
medical problems, criminal background, substance abuse
Total of 24 participants
Paid $15/day for
participating
Random
assignment
12 Prisoners
12 Guards
Stanford Prison Experiment (cont.)
Procedure of the Study
“Prisoner recruitment -- Picked up at home by a police car
•Booked, fingerprinted, sprayed, blindfolded and put into holding cell
• Uniforms [dress, or smock worn with no underclothes. Prisoner ID number was
on front and back of the uniform]. Made to wear a heavy chain on their right
ankle’s at all times and a stocking cap over their heads
Stanford Prison Experiment (cont.)
Construction of the Prison Environment (to ensure realism)
• Use of consultant team including a former prisoner
• Input from prisoners and correctional personnel involved
in course entitled “The Psychology of Imprisonment”
• Cells were small; enough room for only three cots with room for little else
Prisoner Treatment -- Some Examples
• Use of "counts" to familiarizing the prisoners with their numbers and
exercise control over the prisoners (counts took place several times each shift
and often at night)
• Punishments (e.g., push-ups) -- sometimes stepping on prisoner’s backs or
having others sit on top of the backs of prisoners while doing push-ups
• After an early prisoner rebellion --• Guards used a fire extinguisher to shot a stream of skin-chilling
carbon dioxide on the prisoners.
• Guards broke into cells, stripped the prisoners naked, took beds out,
forced the ringleaders of the rebellion into solitary confinement
• Going to the toilet became a privilege which a guard could grant or deny at
his discretion
• After the nightly "lock-up," prisoners were often forced to urinate or
defecate in a bucket in their cells. Sometimes the guards did not
allow prisoners to empty the buckets
• Forcing prisoners to perform degrading, repetitive work such as cleaning out
toilet bowls with their bare hands
Behavior of the “Prisoners”
• Negative Affect (e.g., anxiety, depression, rage)
• Learned Helplessness
• Conversation between prisoners
• Use of numbers to refer to themselves (in conversation with a Catholic
priest)
• Loss of group unity
• “Parole Board” -- Most prisoners willing to forfeit the money they had earned up to
that time in order to be paroled
• Several behavioral reactions of prisoners (e.g., emotional breakdowns,
psychosomatic rash, compliant
The “Guards”
• Wore khaki uniforms, carried a whistle around their neck and a billy
club and wore dark sun-glasses
• Worked eight-hour shifts
• Use of arbitrary control by the guards (e.g., Privilege cell)
• Most aggressive “guard” viewed as role models
• Overall, three types of guards emerged (1) tough, fair ones who followed
prison rules, (2) "good guys" who did favors for the prisoners and never
punished them, and (3) guards (about 1/3) who were hostile, arbitrary,
and inventive in humiliating prisoners; they appeared to enjoy the power
they possessed
• No guard ever came late for his shift, called in sick, left early, or
demanded extra pay for overtime work
Premature Ending
Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D., was brought in to conduct interviews
with the guards and prisoners
After viewing prisoners being marched on a toilet run (bags over their heads, legs
chained together, hands on each other's shoulders) she strongly objected in an
outrage by saying, "It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!”
The study was stopped after only 6 days --- the plan was for a 2-week timeframe
Some Quotes
"Every time you build a prison, you close a school.”
- Victor Hugo
"No matter what the question has been in American criminal justice over the last
generation, prison has been the answer.”
-Franklin E. Zimring
We are tracking one group of kids from kindergarten to prison, and we are tracking
one group of kids from kindergarten to college."
-Lani Guinier
“Prisons are failed social-political experiments that continue to be places of evil, and
even to multiply, … because the public is indifferent to what takes place in secret
there and because politicians use them and fill them up as much as they can to
demonstrate only that they are “tougher on crime” that their political opponents.”
- Philip Zimbardo
Abu Ghraib
11:25 p.m., Nov. 12,
2003. The detainee is
covered in what appears
to be mud and human
feces.*
*All caption information is
taken directly from CID
materials
8:59 p.m., Oct. 18, 2003.
Detainees is handcuffed in
the nude to a bed and has a
pair of panties covering his
face. The photograph is
taken from inside the cell
and at a downward angle
11:50 p.m., Nov. 7, 2003.
SPC HARMAN has
camera or video camera in
hand as she stands behind
the detainees nude.
SOLDIER(S): SPC
HARMAN
• 9 Army soldiers (all enlisted) have been court-martialed and convicted of crimes at Abu Ghraib.
Accountability stopped at the rank of staff sergeant -- no commanding officers have been prosecuted
• Commanders are legally responsible for orders given and "if he has actual knowledge, or should have
knowledge ... that troops or other persons subject to his control are about to commit or have committed a
war crime and he fails to take the necessary and reasonable steps to insure compliance with the law of
war or to punish violators thereof.” [Paragraph 501 of Army Field Manual 27-10]