Treatment of Prison Inmates

[s_stabeler]

Um, Kara said, and I quote:

ME: Because I said no. I'm tired of basketball, that's all you guys watch.

aka, Kara actually does watch the TV too. second, the inmate she was tlaking to at the time said:

IM: Where does it say that you get to decide what we watch?

i.e. was being somewhat belligerent, considering that he should have known it was the guard who made the decision what to watch.

in short, Kara wanted to watch something other than basketball, and had been given the authority to decide. I fail to see how it is unprofessional, especially when inmates were apparently beginning to usurp a right given to the guards ( the guard decided what was on TV, the inmates tried to insist the guard had no right to dictate what was watched)

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

I noticed no one brought this up on that forum either but I'll just drop it here instead.

Disregard what a prisoner "deserves" for second. How are her actions atypical? Studies like the famous (but not without bias) Stanford Prison Experiment tends to suggest what she does is normal. Her position justifies her behavior. And yes, this is a SMALL thing, but is every guard entitled to their own small thing? If they are, as a whole would we not consider that abuse? Here's the thing... the prisoners are not customers. The guard's customer is the Warden or more loosely "the public" and the prisoner is the product. That's not to say Kara deserves no place on CS, rather I just think we're conflating things. The point is the guard has no accountability to the prisoner.

[Gravekeeper]

Um, Kara said, and I quote:

That would fly if this was not her workplace. But this is her workplace. She is not there to watch TV. The TV is there for the prisoners. It was in the common room. It was not her personal TV for her enjoyment. She is there to monitor the prisoners, not the television.

They are not entitled to the TV of course, it is a privilege to reward good behaviour. But revoking that privilege because she's tired of basketball and justifying it by pointing at her badge is unprofessional and callous. If the TV is a privilege, it should be revoked when the prisoners misbehave. Kara revoked it for personal reasons, which lead to prisoner misbehaviour.

I notice you also cut out the beginning of the conversation where the inmate merely asked if they could watch ESPN.

[Hyena Dandy]

Disregard what a prisoner "deserves" for second. How are her actions atypical? Studies like the famous (but not without bias) Stanford Prison Experiment tends to suggest what she does is normal. Her position justifies her behavior.

The whole point is about whether or not prisoners deserve that. Disregarding what the other side's point is, you can usually come to the conclusion you're correct. So, you win I guess.

or there are a lot of innocent people behind bars.

And that we sentence people to prison a lot more and a lot longer. And our prison system is so dehumanizing, and our culture so stigmatizes people who've done time, that when you get out, the only place left to go is back in. Because you're totally mentally broken down in there, so the only thing you have to hold onto is your other prisoners. So you end up forming these violent prison gangs purely out of the fact that those are the only people who won't treat you like shit. And even if you manage to avoid falling in too deep to get out... You get out of prison, and no-one wants you. Frequently, whatever job set you had before, if you had one, is now useless because no-one wants to employ a criminal. But, in prison, you sure learned how to act around criminals, you befriended criminals, and they, being criminals, don't CARE if you had a criminal record.

So, you go on, do more criminal stuff with criminals, end up back in prison.

Shocking, huh?

[Duelist925]

I noticed no one brought this up on that forum either but I'll just drop it here instead.

Disregard what a prisoner "deserves" for second. How are her actions atypical? Studies like the famous (but not without bias) Stanford Prison Experiment tends to suggest what she does is normal. Her position justifies her behavior. And yes, this is a SMALL thing, but is every guard entitled to their own small thing? If they are, as a whole would we not consider that abuse? Here's the thing... the prisoners are not customers. The guard's customer is the Warden or more loosely "the public" and the prisoner is the product. That's not to say Kara deserves no place on CS, rather I just think we're conflating things. The point is the guard has no accountability to the prisoner.

The...the Stanford experiment doesn't justify her actions at all. The Stanford experiment, and what it showed about human psychology regarding the prisoner/guard dynamic, is part of why I find this behavior so worrying.

The experiment mentioned was, in fact, discontinued because of how psychologically damaging it was becoming, and, frankly, because of how utterly disturbing it was becoming. I highly recomend anyone who hasn't read about it at least scan the wikipedia page. Its fascinating, it somewhat horrible, in large part because minor things (like what Kara did, a petty denial of a minor pleasure) quickly snowballed into worse. While such snowballing isn't as likely in a more controlled environment, like an actual prison situation, it can still happen to a point.

Her behavior was petty. She says so herself. It's not excused by her position--it was a dick move done for a petty reason, and justified, weakly, after the fact. Her position, in fact, is similar to a police officers in that it holds her to a higher standard than most, in large part because of what the Stanford experiment showed about human nature when one has power over another, or over many.

And...has anyone actually said she had accountability to the prisoners? I think most of the points so far have fallen on the "this was a dick move" category of things.

[Ginger Tea]

I would be worried if prison guards were watching TV in the common room, it should be zoned out as background noise like musak in a shop.

[Nekojin]

I would be worried if prison guards were watching TV in the common room, it should be zoned out as background noise like musak in a shop.

That's a dangerous position to take. Prison guards can't afford to tune anything out, because carelessness can lead to some pretty dire consequences. This is one of the lesser-acknowledged reasons for why the job is so stressful.

[Ginger Tea]

I was more on the lines of eyes and ears on the inmates was a good thing, but I guess events on screen could catalyst an altercation, but would seeing the inmate fave team win/lose be enough of a prior warning that shits going to go down?

[s_stabeler]

That would fly if this was not her workplace. But this is her workplace. She is not there to watch TV. The TV is there for the prisoners. It was in the common room. It was not her personal TV for her enjoyment. She is there to monitor the prisoners, not the television.

They are not entitled to the TV of course, it is a privilege to reward good behaviour. But revoking that privilege because she's tired of basketball and justifying it by pointing at her badge is unprofessional and callous. If the TV is a privilege, it should be revoked when the prisoners misbehave. Kara revoked it for personal reasons, which lead to prisoner misbehaviour.

I notice you also cut out the beginning of the conversation where the inmate merely asked if they could watch ESPN.

Kara did not revoke any privledge, though. the privledge is to be able to watch something on TV, exactly what to be decided by the guard. Kara decided she wanted to put somethig other than basketball on. How is it unprofessional to make the decision that she is supposed to make?

[Rageaholic]

Disregard what a prisoner "deserves" for second. How are her actions atypical? Studies like the famous (but not without bias) Stanford Prison Experiment tends to suggest what she does is normal. Her position justifies her behavior. And yes, this is a SMALL thing, but is every guard entitled to their own small thing? If they are, as a whole would we not consider that abuse? Here's the thing... the prisoners are not customers. The guard's customer is the Warden or more loosely "the public" and the prisoner is the product. That's not to say Kara deserves no place on CS, rather I just think we're conflating things. The point is the guard has no accountability to the prisoner.

The Stanford Prison Experiment may explain the behavior, but it does not justify it. So no.

That would fly if this was not her workplace. But this is her workplace. She is not there to watch TV. The TV is there for the prisoners. It was in the common room. It was not her personal TV for her enjoyment. She is there to monitor the prisoners, not the television.

They are not entitled to the TV of course, it is a privilege to reward good behaviour. But revoking that privilege because she's tired of basketball and justifying it by pointing at her badge is unprofessional and callous. If the TV is a privilege, it should be revoked when the prisoners misbehave. Kara revoked it for personal reasons, which lead to prisoner misbehaviour.

I notice you also cut out the beginning of the conversation where the inmate merely asked if they could watch ESPN.

I haven't even thought of that from that angle. I didn't even think she cared what channel was on, but just wanted to spite the prisoners. And some of the comments are disturbing. As if the prisoners deserve to be treated like garbage and should be shunned for even thinking that they are human. That mentality really disturbs me.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Quick clarification: "Her position justifies her behavior" was more inelegant typing than anything else. The point I was saying is, people in that scenario use their position as justification, that said justification is more the average than the exception, and that it easily explains what we're observing in this case.

It was not me stamping a seal of approval on the action. Had I been typing more slowly, I'd have probably just gone with "explained" because it was not the word I was actually looking for and it doesn't require everyone on the site to know what I was thinking.

@Duelist - Regarding the customer tangent, it was only because of the site source has it filed under Sucky Customers and I lacked the time to exhaustively read every response. I'm simply saying, make no mistake the guards are not accountable to any prisoner so any action they take is governed only be institutional rules and their own conscience.

[Rageaholic]

Kara did not revoke any privledge, though. the privledge is to be able to watch something on TV, exactly what to be decided by the guard. Kara decided she wanted to put somethig other than basketball on. How is it unprofessional to make the decision that she is supposed to make?

That's semantics.

The point is, she was denying them what they wanted. What they wanted was of no cost to her, so she could have just let them be without foul. Seems to me that there was no other reason to change the channel other than out of spite.

[Kheldarson]

I haven't even thought of that from that angle. I didn't even think she cared what channel was on, but just wanted to spite the prisoners. And some of the comments are disturbing. As if the prisoners deserve to be treated like garbage and should be shunned for even thinking that they are human. That mentality really disturbs me.

No, the original post stated she cared that it was something other than basketball. That it had been nothing but basketball for a while and she wanted to watch something else.

That was her prerogative as being the controller of the TV.

The fact that the inmates then continued to ask after being told no repeatedly is when she admitted that she was getting a petty enjoyment out of it.

Again, who hasn't been in a similar kind of situation? One where you have someone asking you to do something for them that you're not inclined to do for whatever reason but they just keep asking? You could leave the conversation, but in this case, you can't. So you could get mad at the repeat questions, or you could get amused. Even if it's petty to be so.

[Ladeeda]

I don't see why everyone's making such a big deal over such a "petty" thing.

They wanted to watch something.

She wanted to watch anything but that something.

Guard trumps. End of. Life goes on.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Isn't the question here whether or not the intent of the rule of the guard being the arbiter of the TV exists to make the guard happy or to head off and resolve inmate disputes about what to watch?

If I were administering something, I'd be more concerned that my employee can facilitate a resolution to a dispute than whether or not they can watch something else. I think this is probably a case of following the rules while ignoring the intent of them.