Blog Number 17

As we have come to see life behind the bars is nothing fun. The harsher the crime the more difficult life becomes while behind bars, as well as the aging on your body is a more of a rapid pace. With that, when given a sentence of 10,20,30 years or even life in prison you have to make the best with the situation that has been given to you along with you have to have the ability to satisfy certain desires that come with life. However, what do you do when something like that occurs? Well when put into prison since you are not able to co-mingle with other inmates of the opposite sex, you find inmates exploring with individuals of the same sex to satisfy those desires.
During many of the interviews the inmates were not gay or lesbian they were just merely trying to satisfy a desire that they had a strong urge to satisfy. However, when building relationships with other inmates this can pose a great problem to the guards. Its bad enough that usually these prisoners do not care of getting into additional trouble or causing harm to officers. When two or more of them form relationships they usually will do whatever is necessary to help each other out. Another fact that comes into play is when you have the inmates apart from the individuals that they have a relationship with. This happens often as usually they will go past the boundaries that are allowed by the prison which in turn causes for the inmates to receive some sort of punishment, which can lead to a physical/emotional breakdown.
When the officers were interviewed about the inmates that they were dealing with many of them expressed their assumptions of the prisoners that they deal with. Usually they are projected to be very dangerous, and handled that way. Now what is shown on television to what actually occurs in our prisons is completely different then what usually goes on. With that, officers will always have their guard up and secure themselves before the do the prisoners. Something that you and I probably would never have thought of would have been the use of the officer’s first name. Other officers only call each other by their last names. The officers first name will never be shared with inmates. Something this small they have to watch out for. That personally to me is a great security measure, however, nothing that I would have thought of offhand.
After watching the video’s along with other studies that I have completed involving prisons really gives quite amount of kudos to minority officers. As much as you would like to think that racism no longer exists, its something that they take from inmates all of the time. Inmates will use this sort of name calling as a tactic to try and develop masculinity over the guards. Now on the other side of that many of the officers also have said that it helps them sometimes when dealing with prisoners that come from the same minority. Why? Well, they are able to use the tactic of being from the same group which it turn portrays that they can relate to some of the experiences that the inmate may be dealing with.
Just like in every other profession prison guards are nothing different to when it comes to forming an opinion of someone. During Britton’s interview they had many different opinions of the inmates. Some of them played more of the rehabilitative type. They wanted to help them get out of prison to become a better person. While on the other hand some of the officers though they were the scum of the earth. Feeling that we gave them too many luxuries (including power), those officers felt that they should not have any amenities provided to them. They were a lower class of individuals that would never be able to have any moral good for our society. Usually these opinions were formed by older prison guards that had become immune to inmates trying to intimidate them. They in a way become jaded to only seeing bad individuals come through their prisons.
Overall in the films, texts and from past research its very clear that officers who treat inmates as humans receive greater respect from the inmates. Yes, many of them made mistakes. A lot of times when once the inmates are aware of there mistake they usually are able to rehabilitate themselves in prison because they are taken out of the bad areas that are influencing them. Now, while in there it seems that more of the groups have more interest in making sure things are not kosher, and that causing ruckus is something that everyone enjoys doing. Either way officers that provide more respect to the inmates usually receive it back two fold and have less to deal with on their shift.

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