Mistreatment in Prison

Maricela Osorio
IM260
Research Paper

Not many people are aware about the circumstances one has inside the prison
system. Some are victims to abuse, rape and assault and others are the one making sure it
all happens. You would think people are in prison to do time for the crime they
committed, but is it fair to mistreat prisoners on top of the time that the have to serve.
The curiosity about mistreatment in prisons began when I was shown a video
(HeroicImaginationTV, 2011) on YouTube about the Stanford Prison Experiment. The
experiments main point was to see if the brutality of guards in prisons was due to the
personalities guards had or if it was the prison environment. I wanted to find out so much
more about it and thats where I found, Study of prisoners and guards in a simulated
prison (Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G, 1987) where it showed the step-bystep process of what had actually gone down. Even though that was just an experiment
the correctional officers had a complete different mindset than when they started. They
had in their head that they really were the police officers and their job was to do what
they felt they had to do, which was to mistreat the prisoners. As for the victims, their
mindset was completely changed as well. It was as if they thought they deserved all the
cruel things that were happening to them and forgotten it was just an experiment.
After noticing changes like that within an experiment I wondered how it may be
in real life and if things like abuse and mistreatment really happened. The results were
disturbingly correct. I created a survey to see how many people were actually aware of
mistreatment in prison and 27% werent aware of any. The search began by trying to find

out what actually happens inside different types of prisons. According to (Butterfield, F.
2004) guards have men wear womens pink underwear as a form of humility and allow
gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex. In a different prison (Ross,
B, 2014) a woman was raped by a correctional officer and was threatened she would be
killed if she ever said anything. In order to maintain her safety she had to listen. Luckily
for her it was recorded by a security camera and was able to get justice for herself.
Sometimes its difficult to imagine that if something bad ever happens to you, no one will
ever believe you because of the circumstances youre in, but good thing that camera was
there.
When someone commits a crime the usual punishment is to pay for what they did
mainly to have justice for the victim, but when it came to James Johnson it didnt quite
worked as people thought it would. James Johnson was a correctional officer and admits
of sexually assaulting dozens of women and selling drugs (Vibes, J, 2014) but he is only
sentenced to community service. There was another case where a woman was scared for
her life. She had written letters to her family that the correctional officer in the prison
wanted to kill her. She ended up being raped by him multiple times and being
mysteriously killed.
When it comes to having a choice 12% of the people I surveyed think that they
always have a choice, but in No place To Run No place To Hide, (de Almeida, O. L., &
Paes-Machado, E, 2014) Rape and Sexual Misconduct in The Prison System (Bell, C.,
Coven, M., Cronan, J. P., Garza, C. A., Guggemos, J., & Storto, L.,1999) and Prison
Rape and The Government (Kaiser, D., & Stannow, L., 2011) the inmates are scared and
fear for their lives they are being neglected by the staff because no one ever knows if

prisoners are saying the truth about rape, or assaults or if prisoners are just saying what
they have to say to get away with things. In Creating Ghost in The Penal Machine (Scott,
D. 2013) prisoners start having feelings of loneliness, hopelessness, guilt, depression,
anxiety, fear and distress because of not having any hope many prisoners take their lives
and its hard for some correctional officers. In the article some officers actually wonder if
it was because of them that tragedies happen. They are the ones that are supposed to
protect them an all they ever repeat in their heads is what if. Maybe instead of
wondering what can be done they should actually do something about it. The prison
system is not going to become the safest place in the world over night, but creating some
changes to where it will not be as bad is something that the entire prison systems should
take in consideration

References
Bell, C., Coven, M., Cronan, J. P., Garza, C. A., Guggemos, J., & Storto, L. (1999). Rape
and sexual misconduct in the prison system: Analyzing america's most "open" secret.
Yale Law & Policy Review, 18(1), 195-223.
Butterfield, F. (2004). Mistreatment of prisoners is called routine in US. New York Times,
8
de Almeida, O. L., & Paes-Machado, E. (2014). No place to run, no place to hide: Socioorganizational processes and patterns of inmate victimization. Australian & New
Zealand Journal of Criminology, , 0004865814545683.
Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Study of prisoners and guards in a
simulated prison. Naval Research Reviews, 9(1-17)

HeroicImaginationTV. (2011, August 20). The Stanford Prison Experiment. YouTube.

Retrieved October 12, 2014, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0
Kaiser, D., & Stannow, L. (2011, March 24). Prison Rape and the Government by David
Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow. Home. Retrieved October 16, 2014, from
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/24/prison-rape-andgovernment/
Ross, B. (2014, September 30). EXCLUSIVE: Judge rules woman raped by Manhattan
prison guard can collect damages, rips state DOC over crime. NY Daily News.
Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://www.nydailynews.com/newyork/exclusive-judge-rules-woman-raped-prison-guard-damages-article-

1.1957601
Scott, D. (2013). Creating ghosts in the penal machine: Prison officer occupational morality and
the techniques of denial. Understanding Prison Staff, , 168.
Vibes, John. (2014, October 21). "Prison Guard Admits to Sexually Assaulting Dozens of
Inmates, Selling Drugs in Prison. No Jail Time." The Free Thought Project. N.p.