Mistreatment of American Prisoners
You shut your eyes to sleep.As you settle, you hear the familiar scuttling of the rats. They unnerve you, but it is your cellmate's howls for medical help that truly unsettle you. It puts you into a state of panicked anxiety that only a human being begging for absolution can cause. This may be all too much of a reality for the prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility. (“Dockery v. Epps.”) There is now a lawsuit on behalf of the prisoners at that facility, but the East Mississippi Correctional Facility is only one example.
America's prisoners are being left without medical care and forced to live in unsanitary conditions. The unethical and inhumane manner in which prisoners are being treated must metamorphose into an environment that is conducive to reflection. There are numerous cases of poor living conditions in prisons all around the country.Yet the problem is an obvious and persistent one; human beings are not being treated as such.
In recent years, there have been several cases where prisoners are not getting the medical care that they need. The Illinois Department of Corrections has been under fire for this reason. The ACLU wrote “The experts found “significant lapses in care” in 60% of the cases of prisoners who died from other than violent causes from January 1, 2013, to June 1, 2014.” (“Experts Find Illinois Inflicting Needless Pain and Suffering on Sick Prisoners.”)
Alack of proper medical care for ongoing and chronic health issues will have a higher chance of leading to the progression of those issues. Being concerned with surviving each day, and trying to ensure that minor cuts do not get infected because of filthy conditions will also prove as a large obstruction for reflection and conscious thought. Furthermore, prisoners are not in a position to take remedial steps against illness if they do not have a clean living environment
in the first place.
Prisoners are being forced to live in unsanitary conditions, and the officials involved in keeping prisoners healthy are showing a blatant disregard for the cleanliness of the prisons. One illustration of this happened at the Baltimore City Detention Center.An article on the ACLU website reads “The jail endangers the health and safety of detainees by failing to provide adequate medical and mental health care and having a crumbling, vermin-infested infrastructure.” (“Detainees Reopen Baltimore Jail Lawsuit Over Dangers to Health and Safety.”) In another case, Duvall v. Hogan, tied again to Baltimore's Correctional Facility, theACLU says “The filthy infrastructure and lack of adherence to previously issued court orders has put many prisoners' health and lives at risk.” (“Duvall v. Hogan.”) The effect of having an unclean environment can vary from allergies to serious infection and illness, and even death. If a place is unclean, an individual is less likely to have an organized place to gather thoughts. To impede one's thought process is the same as impeding reflection, as reflection is one of the many thought processes that happen in a human's mind.
Despite more money being spent onAmerica's prisons thanAmerica's educational system, many prisons are still cutting care for their suffering prisoners.Arecent article on mental health was released. The topic spoke about Oklahoma's Department of Corrections cutbacks, highlighting the fact that many personal therapy sessions were no longer going to take place (“Oklahoma's prisons cut care for many inmates with mental illness”). If prisons are spending more than ever, prison officials should be able to spend money on fixing the plumbing. Similarly, mental and physical wellness should be a high priority as well, and that includes spending the funds needed to get sick prisoners back to health.
If an inmate must worry about whether his or her living conditions are clean enough to be physically safe, then there is no question about the conditions being mentally risky. Emotional trauma can take a large toll on a person's well-being in both short and long-term cases. Being forced to live in a place that many people would not even allow their beloved pets to sleep in is a nightmarish reality for many people acrossAmerica. Many different cases of hindered or dilapidated prison infrastructure have come to light in the past few years, but America's prisons continue to generate new stories showcasing the true extent of the uncleanliness inside of them. The original goal of imprisonment was to punish people for crimes that they have committed, with the intent of rehabilitating those people for society. We are expecting these people to learn how to be better humans, yet many prisons across the country have not shown the same humanity that they expect the inmates to achieve. If prisoners can not hold trust in America's prison system, the meaning that imprisonment tries to convey will be lost in the prisoner's resentment. If a person is concerned about surviving the upcoming months or years of their life in a constant struggle for safety, deep thought is inhibited by the notion that they may not live to see freedom. If a person dies before they reach freedom, there is no need to begin the rehabilitation process. Fear for survival turns human beings into people they would not normally be. Prolonged stress causes people to emotionally break. When stress and fear for life mix daily, an individual will tend to focus less on the long-term and more on daily needs. When a person feels that they are struggling to remain safe and alive, arbitrary things such as guilt will not be what they are preoccupied with.
America's prison system should show more humanity and compassion than ever before. Dehumanizing inmates for acts that they have committed in the past is not justified. Prison
officials should be attempting to show exemplary behavior for inmates, so that the inmates may have a better chance at reaching a complete understanding of the situation that they are in.
Treating someone with kindness even after they have done something wrong shows a sense of forgiveness, decency, and maturity. These are the kind of behaviors we should be encouraging prisoners to adopt. Instead, we are showing that our country is based on needless suffering, violence, and filth.
Prison guards need to be trained in effective communication. They are working with people who do not have the freedom to talk to different groups of people each day, and as such, need to be able to effectively communicate and listen to another person's needs. Kory Floyd states that the stages of effective listening are hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding (Floyd 223). When our prison guards can listen and interpret what inmates claim that they want, they will be able to respond and fulfill the needs of prisoners accordingly.
The issues of prisoner mistreatment may stem from work-related stress in prison guards. Though human emotion is a powerful force, it is no excuse to lose your humanity. Many prisoners commit crimes while angry, passionate, or desperate. Those prisoners did not get a pardon because they could not control the emotions that they felt at that moment. It is unjust to allow a prison guard to practice loss of emotional control in the workplace. In addition to communication training, guards should also be obligated by law to attend anger and stress management classes if they lash out at a prisoner. After the second offense, a guard should lose his employment with the prison system.
The paramount concern of prison officials should be making sure to allow prisoners to
reflect on the misdeeds that they have committed. It would be vastly more effective to create an environment that is not pleasant, but calm, stern, and conducive to deep thought. If we create this sort of prison, an inmate may truly reflect on the reason they are in that environment in the first place.
It is time to stop this injustice once and for all. Not only for our fellow man but also for our own loved ones, who may be in the same position as current prisoners one day. Unwarranted abuse towards any conscious and sentient being, especially another human, is grotesque. Prisons acrossAmerica need a drastic reform into a more reflective environment.
Works Cited
"Detainees Reopen Baltimore Jail Lawsuit Over Dangers to Health and Safety." The American Civil Liberties Union. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation, 2 June 2015. Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
"Dockery v. Epps." The American Civil Liberties Union.American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation, 30 Sept. 2015. Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
"Duvall v. Hogan." The American Civil Liberties Union. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation, 2 June 2015. Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
"Experts Find Illinois Inflicting Needless Pain and Suffering on Sick Prisoners." The American Civil Liberties Union. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation., 20 May 2015. Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
Floyd, Kory. Interpersonal Communication. Second ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
Print. "Oklahoma's Prison Cut Care for Many Inmates with Mental Illness."Mental Health Weekly 25.14 (2015): n. pag. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.