Ethics and corrections work

Ethics and Corrections Work

The American prison system is in the midst of an ethical crisis. Corporate prison management and ownership has been systematically replacing the state prison systems for more than two decades now; and it has given rise to new concerns about the ethics of prison management. This is an area of human rights and ethics that should be of concern to the people of the United States, but remains largely ignored, because it involves the custody and care of some of the most despicable and dangerous people who have removed from the greater society because of violent and heinous crimes. For the most part, few Americans concern their selves with the rights, and well being of the American prison population.

Especially because few Americans are concerned about the plight or fate of incarcerated criminals, the personal ethics of those people hired by the private prison corporations to work directly as prison guards, and the corporate accounting of prison system management must be closely examined and scrutinized in order that, first, inmates are not put at risk by staff who use their positions and the authority and power their positions afford them to compromise the inmate's debt to society. In other words, that the guards do not act in a way that allows the incarcerated person to continue to commit illegal or felonious acts from within the walls of their confinement. Also, that prisoners receive the level of human rights to which even they as prisoners are entitled to under the Constitution, and that the corporations are not so focused on preserving and increasing their bottom lines as to be willing to violate human rights and the ethical standards in carrying out their prescribed responsibilities and duties in the prison system.

Prison employees must be provided with training and manuals that define the ethical standards that they must meet and maintain in their professional work as prison authorities and guards. The handbook must clearly define the roles of the prison guard, officials, and other staff, and specifically address what would constitute unethical behavior or actions, and the penalties that would be leveled against the guard or official for being found to be in violation of the standards.

Abuse, misuse, or aiding and abetting inmates who have been sentenced to incarceration for committing crimes against society cannot be allowed. Many of the inmates will at some point in time be released back into society, and unless their unlawful conduct is circumvented by their prison stay, and unless they are treated in a way that recognizes that their incarceration is their duty to society for the commission of their crimes against society; then we will be releasing back into society a person who has not used the time during incarceration to redirect his or her thinking to one that is in conformity with the greater law abiding society. Unless those people who have direct contact with and roles in the lives of the prison population they work with, then we risk the possibility of unleashing back into society an even great threat to society than that which was originally incarcerated.

Corporations hired by the public (the states) to take on the responsibilities of administering the prison systems in any state must be above reproach, and the state authorities must carefully examine the corporation for any past or present signs of problems that could become a greater problem to the state should the corporations prove to be incapable of choosing ethics over profits.

Identifying Unethical Practices in Prisons Today

The prison system in the United States is still at a place where, if it finds that private prison systems fail to set, maintain, and achieve standards of ethics that are conducive to managing an ethical, humane, and legal prison environment, then it is not too late to reverse the move towards private prison systems. Brian Gran and William Henry (2007) talk about the need to hold private prison systems accountable for the care and in fulfilling the requirements of sentencing that was handed down with respect to an inmate's time in prison (p. 173). Gran and Henry cite the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), in Ohio, as an example of an American private prison system (p. 173). The government is careful to use language in the contract that does two things: one, it requires that the complex and management of the prison be built and managed in accordance with "nationally recognized codes (p. 173)." The second thing the contract does is to address a hold harmless clause that makes the private system, not the government, liable for any prison uprisings, damages, or losses of a material or other nature, including people (p. 173). Only in accepting the full responsibility for the functioning, design, and population control that would lead to the safety of inmates and others within the walls of the facility could corporate prison systems be a desirable way for states and the federal government to outsource prisons to private enterprise.

It remains the task of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to monitor the construction of prison facilities and the management to ensure that they comply with federal codes (p. 173). CCA must provide the BOP ten parking spaces, and 2500 square feet of "secure" space for BOP operations and "disciplining prisoners (p. 173). The BOP has stringent staffing requirements, and requires that the CCA maintain a certain number of employees (p. 173).

"A required number or percentage of employees is consistent with the government's contractor-based approach. Certain positions must be filled: one project coordinator (who confers with the Contract Officer [CO]), one warden, one associate warden, and 12 further categories of "essential personnel" (p. 25). The CO is a "Government employee, who ... is the only government employee authorized to negotiate, award, administer, cancel or terminate contracts on behalf of the United States Government" (p. 10). CCA must submit a staffing plan to the CO, who then gives approval on behalf of the BOP. Once this plan is approved, "staffing levels shall not fall below a monthly average of 95% of the BOP approved staffing plan." To avoid for-profit gamesmanship (dropping the percentage of employees to only 85% one month, and making up for it with three months of 100% capacity), CCA must submit all requests to change the number of employees -- including those within the 95% guideline -- to the CO (p. 19) (Gran and Henry, p. 173)."

In addition to these stringent staffing regulations, the employees are subject to a background investigation and a credit check, and anyone with a misdemeanor involving domestic violence cannot be considered for employment (p. 173). As of 2003, more than a hundred thousand people incarcerated in the United States are in facilities run by private corporations (Coyle, Andrew, Campbell, Allison, and Neufeld, Rodney, 2003, p. 9). This figure, in comparison to the stringent staffing requirements and the expectations of the BOP on the backgrounds of the employees, and given that corporations are one hundred percent of the time focused on their bottom line, brings into question just how well the private systems are accomplishing their task, and whether there are ethical violations of rules and procedure that might suggest that the bottom line comes before the interest of the prison population, the workers, and the public.

Campbell, Allison, et al. report that one of the problems with private prison management is inmate healthcare (p. 39). The system is such that the less that is spent on inmate healthcare, the bigger the corporation's own bottom line, because savings go directly to the corporations' bottom line if the budgeted amounts are not spent on prisoner care (p. 39). Most Americans would probably ignore the complaint of the prison population that they were not receiving proper medical care, unless those same Americans realized, too, that it did increase or decrease the taxpayer contribution to the system, and that any money not spent on prisoner care was in fact increasing a corporate management company's bottom line.

"In fact, a 1998 independent prison health care audit found that "more than twenty inmates died as a result of negligence, indifference, under-staffing, inadequate training or overzealous cost-cutting (Coyle, Campbell, et al., p. 39)."

Healthcare is not the only issue that inmates complain about, and some of their complaints are more far reaching than healthcare, because it impacts their lives in terms of the amount of time they spend incarcerated. The inmates must abide by rules of conduct, and, in some institutions, there are two sets of rules: the prison systems', the prisoners', and the guards'. When the authority invested in the guards is abused by guards who set no moral or ethical standards for their selves, then it vastly alter the length of time that an inmate spends in the system. Michael Santos (2003), himself once a prison inmate, writes about his experience and those experiences of people whom he came to know well during his own incarceration. To exemplify the power of the prison guards, whom work with the prisoners daily, Santos tells the story of a fellow inmate who was the victim an attempted extortion by the prison's guards (pp. 149-150). When the inmate failed to deliver on the guards' demands, the guards then planted drugs in the inmate's bunk (p. 150). The inmate was subsequently prosecuted, and received an extended sentence (p. 150).

Often people will doubt these kinds of stories, because, after all, the inmates are already imprisoned for offenses like drugs, and often much worse kinds of crimes. This puts the inmates at risk of guards and other prison employees who might not embrace a high set of ethics or personal morals. Everyone wants to see crime punished, but when the crimes are being committed within the prison environment, people seem to be less concerned about them, even if they are crimes being committed by the guards or prison officials. People should, in fact, be very concerned about these kinds of crimes, because it is the prison officials and those employees, including guards, who are willing to commit crimes against people who are vulnerable, and then those same employees, guards or others are free, unlike the prisoners, to leave the institutions and move about society at the end of the day.

Staffing problems at the private prison is probably the greatest ethical concern, because the BOP has set high standards of personal integrity and in the number of employees who must be on duty at any given time.

Analysis and Personal Ideas

One of the problems with managing a prison is that there are not a lot of people who find the work compelling enough to want to take on the job. However, given the task, I would work to eliminate corporate private enterprise in the prison system, because inevitably the bottom line is profit. Writing for Duke Law Journal, Sharon Dolovich (2005) looked at the question of the feasibility of a private corporate system that would contain the rising cost of prison system management (in the late 1980s and 1990s) (Dolovich, p. 437). The greatest problem that Dolovich cited was the for-profit approach underlying the choice of management to replace the state system. This makes sense, because in order for a corporation to demonstrate profitability, it must demonstrate growth and an increase in revenues; this would ostensibly mitigate the sense in choosing private prison management to combat the cost of prisons for the states.

In terms of managing the system efficiently so as to recognize a potential profit for incarcerating criminals is less problematic in Dolovich's eyes than is the surrendering of that power and authority over the criminal's mandated state sentence to private enterprise (p. 437).

"Such a focus may be appropriate in many contexts in which privatization is contemplated, but it is not so in the prison context. Incarceration is among the most severe and intrusive manifestations of power the state exercises against its own citizens. When the state incarcerates, it strips offenders of their liberty and dignity and consigns them for extended periods to conditions of severe regimentation and physical vulnerability. Before seeking to ensure efficient incarceration, therefore, it must first be determined if the particular penal practice at issue is even legitimate (Dolovich, p. 437)."

Writing on the subject for the American Criminal Law Review, Ahmed A. White (2001) supports the argument made by Dolovich (p. 111). This question of legitimacy should override the others, because until someone challenges and the courts respond to whether or not handing over the state's authority is indeed legitimate; there are no subsequent issues. So Dolovich makes an important and valid point. Unfortunately there are no challenges, and the public is seemingly completely uninterested in the subject of criminals once they are off the streets and no longer pose a threat to society.

Therefore, as we have and will have, with certainly an increase in the number of them, private prison institutions are the trend and the bottom line of cost supersedes the power and the authority that the state has in being directly responsible for managing the prison systems. Therefore, it would be imperative to ensure that the management is of a high integrity, and that the inmates are not abused, or that their well being does not become lost in corporate profit. For that reason, we might require that monies set aside for healthcare of prisoners must be returned to the state if not utilized for inmate care, rather than allowing the corporation to redirect the funds to their bottom lines as appears to be happening now. The state would then always be aware of how much was budgeted, and how much was spent, versus the lack of knowledge because the funds go to the corporate profit line. This keeps the BOP in that loop, and maintains the state's responsibility in that regard.

Dolovich cites a second problem as the measurement of performance of then private system, and how that is accomplished (p. 437). This is an important component in understanding how effective and cost efficient the private systems are over the state systems. Even though private corporations are private, they are the administrators of public entities, and for that reason they must be prepared to the answer to the public. A separate and distinct non-governmental agency should be established that performs routine checks of the privatized prison systems, much in the same way that the Joint Commission on Accreditation Hospital Organization (JCAHO) that oversees hospitals and provides accreditation. A list of criteria could be established that would accredit and deduct potential points based on inspection and observation, and the prison systems would be subject to one announced inspection, and one unannounced inspection per year. Facilities found deficient would have to pay fines, and correct deficiencies within a prescribed period of time.