Hear, hear!

mark stuiger,
Much of what you say in your mis-aimed remarks at Ms. Burrows are innately true. However, I believe you are mixing the ideal of what prisons are to be, with the reality of what they are. I am not now, nor have I ever worked for the prison system and I come to damn it, not extol it. The problem, however, is not the fault of individual guards, no matter how much they may be derelict in their duty.

The problem is a country that per capita imprisons more people than any major industrialized nation in the world. The problem is scummy politicians who see acting “tough on crime” as a mandate for higher office. The problem is a “War on Drugs” that has been less effective than the County’s Prohibition experiment, which itself was a dismal failure. The problem is a majority of the public, so frightened by demagogues and so entranced by a constant diet of police shows, that they are willing to desire the most draconian treatment of offenders. The problem is……….oh so many social ills that plague our country. The problem in the end is in all of us who participate in the sham we call the “American Dream” which breeeds and underclass without hope, lost in despair.

Yes there are sociopathic individuals who are born criminals and yes we do have to contain them to protect society. Yet had we a society that was just and took care of its’ citizens, we would see plummeting crime rates and prisons that were administered humanely. The prison employees are just as much victims of the system as are the inmates. We get what we pay for and the secret truth is that many people feel the harsher prison is, the better it is. This is the revenge theory of jurisprudence. That they breed lifelong criminals, who might be redeemed is ignored in the pleasure of the sadistic cruelty of the system and the unspoken pleasure many get from that sadism.

Referencing the federal prisons and the NYS prisons mostly, but it is cross board.
I can see where ‘Administration’ might, in rare cases, believe an inmate over a guard. But am talking about the quasi-judicial administrative hearings before a disiplinary hearing officer to determine whether a prisoner committed a facility violation.
Always, always, a guard’s testimony is regarded as more credible than a prisoner’s.
As to the recording devices, there is no rule preventing individual facilities from permitting their guards from carrying recording devices. Your prison, like most, chose not to. But there are state-wide regulations (if not laws straightup) preventing that discretion to permit prisoners doing the same.

I don’t know what state you’re from or anything about you. But I will tell you that when I was a guard in California we were not allowed to have recording devices and sometimes administration believed inmates over officers.

So long as the guards had the same rights to those devices and their evidence was admissible, I would not object.

Assaults and rapes normally considered high felonies in normal society, are treated as administrative infractions, like horseplay amongst rowdy teenagers.

Stopping these activities would child’s play for any prison adminstration, putting such assailants away in supermax prisons would both take them out of commission and teach a deterrent to other aspiring inmates.

Prison rules are internally hypocritical, and inconsistent. There are absolute rules against fighting in prison, and that includes protecting oneself against assault or rape. The rules actually say protecting oneself against assault is an adminstrative violation.

Tape recording devices, or video devices are denied to prisoners for no good articulable reason, and yet as a prisoner “who said what” and when becomes a very crucial and even life saving necessity almost daily.
If prisoners were empowered to have such devices they could protect themselves both from assailing prisoners and capricious guards.

The Score:

Statistical Accuracy – 0
Avoided Paperwork – 1