Are prison guards worse than inmates?

Stanford prison experiment. Unethical and could not do it today. Had to be stopped because people got into their roles.

I worked at a correctional facility for 8 years teaching English, OP. Some people get off on power.

From my observations, they act in to many pornos.

TOO

No idea. I do all I can to avoid jail/prison and anyone who works there or frequents the establishment.

It's a shit job that doesn't attract great people. And it leads to a lot of the prison corruption cause many are always looking to make more money than their low pay.

A childhood classmate, who was always in trouble, got a job as a guard on Riker's Island. I remember hearing that it had made him very hard, and he was fired when his boss saw him spitting at the inmates.

Isn't the whole idea of prison to make you not want to come back?

The only prison guard I know is like a younger Archie Bunker. Couldn't get a job as a real cop anywhere and has been a guard for 20 years now.

It definitely attracts sociopaths and sadists; that said, the majority of inmates (especially male inmates) have strong antisocial tendencies.

It's bad all around.

If so we are failing terribly at that r7. Recidivism is high.

It turns out creating an environment that hardens people into being monsters just leads to more criminal behavior.

Many inmates are not raped by other inmates, but by prison guards. A true power trip.

Depends on where you live. Between European countries and sometimes even federal states, there are massive differences in what kind of training they receive.

In my state, correctional officers have to go through a 3 year vocational training and I think most of them are pretty competent and fair. After all, they are also part of the system that, by law, has to contribute to the resocialization and reintegration of convicts. Abuse of power is relatively rare in our state. (I worked in prisons myself in another function and now am working for our state DOJ.)

Based on what I've heard, US prisons have a much higher occurrence of violence than ours and therefore have a stronger focus on security. So I can imagine that the system might be more prone to abuse.

What R5 said.

Years ago I read a book called Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, by Ted Conover. Conover was a journalist who took a job as a prison guard when his plan to shadow a prison guard at work for a story didn't work out. Anyway, one of the things he discussed in the book is that most of the prison guards had first applied to be police officers and highway patrol officers, but had either been turned down or were waiting for a position to open up and needed a job in the meantime. So many of them were already pissed off because the prison guard job was nowhere near their first choice. That was back in the 90s. These days I'm sure that like the police and the border patrol, the ranks of prison guards are flooded with ex-soldiers who got home from the wars and found they weren't qualified for much beyond being a security guard or getting into law enforcement. Also a recipe for trouble.

There was a website/blog that an ex-inmate wrote and answered prison questions on. In his opinion--not mine, his--the black prison guards tended to be more "normal." Something like, "Guys in a shitty job just trying to survive." The white prison guards, he said, were nearly all sociopaths.

This was at a maximum security prison somewhere (I think) in Illinois or Michigan. The ex-inmate was a white guy in prison for some kind of theft.

I worked a town where the main women’s prison in the state was located. I interacted with many prison guards there. 95% were good people: mowing neighbor’s lawn when the home owner had had a heart attack, being the valedictorian of their community college class, just good honest people who did not put on any airs. I wouldn’t hesitate to have any of them as my next door neighbors.

Power tripping sociopaths, just like cops, border patrol/customs officers and people in the military.

It's a worst situation because prison guards are people who couldn't become cops and had to settle for a job that pays way less r16.

The way we treat prisoners in the US is inhumane. But no one cares unless they get caught up in the system. “Justice” is rarely served - just violence and cruelty.

[quote] The way we treat prisoners in the US is inhumane.

I've binge watched too many seasons of Locked Up Abroad to believe this 100%.

This is how our system works; the report shows pretty well how it's done here.

So, again, correctional officers are very different depending on the country. Germany is pretty close to the Scandinavian countries with regard to the prison system. If you go to the Western Balkan region, however, things will be much worse, for instance. In total, I guess the US are probably somewhere in the middle of the 'inhumaneness' scale...

Real prisons in US - like Rikers,Chino - are only slightly less dangerous than South American hellholes. We have learned to ignore the problem because criminals are not “us” - unless we have the misfortune to fall into the “justice” system. Like extreme poverty, Americans just tune it out and blame it on the person.

[quote]I interacted with many prison guards there. 95% were good people

Were you ever a prisoner under their guard, especially one of color?

I'm sure many of them were decent people, but many could just have easily been animals under the circumstances if their jobs. YOU were never shown that side because you were their neighbor. You had a completely different relationship with them.

Six of one half dozen of another.

My current supervisor used to be a corrections officer. He's a big mouth dumb hillbilly, 2-faced, manipulative, racist and bigoted. And has a foul mouth.

He was in a car accident last week; someone (he says) ran a stop sign and t-boned him. I think Hell is trying to call him down.

Correction Officers are not the same everywhere you go. I am very familiar with the NYDOC and they are some of the best officers in the city. Please get the Law and Order scenes and Shawshank characters out of your head. The CO is always the bad guy on tv while the cop and the firefighter are the heroic angels. GTFOH. Firefighters are crybabies and attention whores. They won’t even live in the boroughs bc they’re so racist. Cops hate firefighters bc they get all the praise. Correction officers do a lot of the same stuff cops do and are trained as firefighters on Rikers Island bc if there’s a fire the FDNY cant put it out. It’s a prison. Correction officers are more down to earth and less obsessed with attention.

I can't imagine a worse job

How about cleaning out Porta potties R26? You get to smell shit all day long!

Some troll in this thread keeps inserting race in an unnecessary and inflammatory manner into their posts.

FF

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Yeah a guard, who is on a power trip, is far wore than the inmates, who have robbed, murdered, raped and maimed others.

Fuckin' get real.

Authoritarian personalities are usually to be avoided in real life, IMO.

They're not all bad, but when they are, they usually get spanked. Naughty little piggys, trying to blow the wolf’s holes down.

R27 I'm sure prison smells about as bad

a good friend of mine was a prison guard, indeed a former marine who couldn’t get on as a cop. he was in the “just trying to get by” category and maddeningly unmotivated to find a better job, but could tell some incredible stories about inmate behavior. lots of urine stored in make-shift containers and thrown at the guards. he called the prison an adult daycare.