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)?

Key Questions

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

Comparing Crime Databases

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.

Source: http://www.doc.state.ok.us/MAPS/INCRATUS.HTM

Incarceration By State

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm

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]

Prisoner Labor

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.”

Source: http://www.unicor.gov/information/publications/pdfs/corporate/catar2005.pdf

• Inmate Workers = 19,720

• Inmate pay rates = 23 cents/hr. to $1.15/hr.

• Percent of revenues for inmate pay = 6%

• Factories - 106

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

12 Prisoners 12 Guards

Stanford Prison Experiment[http://www.prisonexp.org/]

Random assignment

Overall purpose of the study: To investigate the psychological effects of prison -- for both prisoners and guards

Paid $15/day for participating

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.)

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

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

Premature Ending

"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

Some Quotes

11:25 p.m., Nov. 12, 2003. The detainee is covered in what appears to be mud and human feces.*

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

*All caption information is taken directly from CID materials

Abu Ghraib

• 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]