(250-300 words) Correctional Officers have a very difficult job. For all practical purposes, they are living in the same environment as the prisoners with only the psychological advantage that they can leave. Your text speaks in some detail about the abuse perpetrated upon inmates by some correctional officers.
Why does this happen?
How can it be avoided?
What does Hebrews 13:3 declare?
What are your thoughts on that Scripture in light of what you have read?
wk7Pollock_Ethics_10e_Ch13_PPT.pdf
3/23/2021
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Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in
Criminal Justice Tenth Edition
Chapter 13 Correctional
Professionals:
Misconduct and
Responses
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
1. Explain the Zimbardo experiment and what it might
imply for correctional professionals.
2. Describe types of misconduct by correctional officers,
including the typologies of misconduct by Souryal and
McCarthy.
3. Describe types of misconduct by community
corrections professionals.
4. Provide explanations for misconduct.
5. Present some suggestions to decrease misconduct by
correctional professionals.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
The Zimbardo Experiment
• In the 1970s, a mock prison was set up in the basement of
a building on the grounds of Stanford University.
• College men were arbitrarily assigned to be guards or
inmates.
• Many of the “guard” subjects became brutal toward the
“inmate” subjects.
• Many of the “inmate” subjects became docile and
submissive.
• Behavioral changes in both groups were so profound that
the experiment was canceled after six weeks.
• The study illustrates the profound effect of a prison
experience.
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Misconduct and Corruption (1 of 3)
• McCarthy details the following:
– Accepting gratuities for special consideration for
legitimate purposes
– Accepting gratuities for protection of illicit activities
– Mistreatment/harassment or extortion of inmates
– Mismanagement (e.g., prison industries)
– Miscellaneous abuses
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Misconduct and Corruption (2 of 3)
• Typology of corruption as falling into the following
categories:
– Misfeasance: abusing authority for personal gain
(extortion, smuggling, theft)
– Malfeasance: acts that violate authority
– Nonfeasance: acts of omission such as ignoring rule
violations
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Misconduct and Corruption (3 of 3)
• Malicious or purposeful abuse: excessive use of force;
rape and sexual harassment; theft and destruction of
personal property; false disciplinary charges;
intentional denial of medical care; failure to protect;
racial abuse and harassment; excessive and
humiliating strip searches.
• Negligent abuse: negligent denial of medical care;
failure to protect, lack of responsiveness; negligent loss
of property or mail.
• Systemic or budgetary abuse: overcrowding;
inadequate medical care; use of isolation units.
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
California
• California’s Department of Corrections described as
corrupt “from the top down”
– Corcoran
– Folsom
– “Green Wall”
– Tanaka
• Incidents of abuse
• Los Angeles County Jail
• Federal consent decree
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Florida
• Prison system is third largest in the country
• Federal courts oversaw state’s prisons for more than
20 years
• James Crosby
• Abusive staff and cover-ups
• Inmate deaths investigated
• The Project on Accountable Justice
• 2015 legislative hearings
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
New York
• Clinton prison
• James Ferro, Leonard Strickland, George Williams,
Kevin Moore, Samuel Harrell
• Only a strong oversight and discipline department has
any chance of changing a culture where abuse of
inmates is accepted.
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Treatment Professionals
• Most news items and academic articles describe
misconduct in prisons by correctional officers, but there
are instances where counselors and other treatment
professionals also engage in misconduct.
• Most common issue is not providing the services that
inmates are legally entitled to.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Community Corrections
• While most news items describe misconduct in prisons,
there are also examples of ethical misconduct and
criminal acts by community corrections professionals.
• Interacting with parolees and probationers in the
community can present officers with opportunities for
corruption.
• In response to scandals, there has been a proposal to
fund body cameras for probation officers to protect
them from allegations that they plan evidence or steal
items from probations’ homes.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Explanations for Misconduct
Individual Explanations
• Correctional managers attribute misconduct to low pay
and poor screening during hiring.
• Another individual explanation of misconduct is PTSD.
• Many slide into corruption because of a lack of
organizational support for ethical behaviour.
• The personal lives of correctional officers influence
their professional ethics.
• The discretion and authority inherent in the role of
correctional, probation, or parole officer takes maturity
to handle as well as a strong ethical code.
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Organizational Explanations
• Abu Ghraib like misconduct:
– Gladiator fights in Corcoran Prison
– The “Tucker telephone” in Arkansas
– Using “dog boys” as live quarry for Texas dog handlers
– Beatings and the use of dogs on prisoners
– Looking the other way while inmates beat and raped a
victim
– Inmates being forced to wear pink underwear as
punishment
– Inmates being stripped as punishment
– Inmates being made to wear black hoods
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Procedural Justice
Procedural justice includes the idea that the perception of
legitimacy (of legal authorities) comes about when the
elements of procedural justice are present and treatment
is fair; specifically:
– Participation (letting people speak),
– Neutrality (governing by rules neutrally and consistently),
– Dignity and respect, and
– Illustrate trustworthiness (authorities are sincerely
concerned with well-being).
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Societal Explanations (1 of 2)
• The community helps to create the correctional
environment by their tacit or direct endorsement of the
informal subcultural norm that inmates deserve less
due process and legal protection than the rest of us.
• When criminal correctional officers are not prosecuted
and simply fired, this provides a message that there
are few costs involved in such misconduct.
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Societal Explanations (2 of 2)
• If society wants an ethical correctional system, then we
must demand it and expect that even murderers will be
treated according to the law.
• There is no ethical or legal justification for punishment
that is not the product of formal due process and
restrained by legal guidelines, regardless of what the
inmate has done. No ethical system supports such
conduct; even under utilitarianism, the cost to justice
and due process is just too high.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Responses to Corruption
• Generate a strong anti-corruption policy to include:
– Proactive measures such as mechanisms to investigate
and detect wrongdoing
– Reduced opportunities for corruption
– Screening of employees using state-of-the-art
psychological tools
– Improved working conditions
– Providing good role models in the form of supervisors
and administrators who follow the appropriate code of
ethics
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Reducing the “Culture of Violence”
• The Commission on Safety and Abuse in American Prisons
developed a comprehensive list of recommendations to reduce
the “culture of violence,” including the following:
– Improve staffing levels, hiring, and training
– Provide independent oversight for complaints and investigations of
misconduct
– Create a national database of violent incidents and misconduct
– Increase access to the courts by repealing or amending the Prison
Litigation Reform Act
– Increase the level of criminal prosecution of wrongdoers (perhaps
using federal prosecutions)
– Strengthen professional standards
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Civility of a Correctional Institution
Souryal believe that the following have an influence:
• level of education required for hire;
• the amount of in-service training officers receive;
• the policies regarding employees who act in unethical
ways; and
• the presence of a professional association or union that
can effectively monitor the agency’s practices.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Wright’s Principles
• Wright offered seven principles as a guide for how
administrators and supervisors should treat employees:
– Safety
– Fair treatment
– Due process
– Freedom of expression
– Privacy
– Participation in decision making
– Information
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
How to Prevent Stress and Burnout
• Burrell suggested methods relating to probation:
– probation (and parole) organizations should provide clear direction
– manage proactively, establish priorities if there are high workloads
– ensure stability and constancy
– be consistent in expectations
– manage with fairness, enforce accountability
– delegate authority
– provide proper resources
– maintain communication
– allow participative decision making
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Ethics Training Program
• Treating all staff fairly and impartially
• Promoting based on true merit
• Showing no prejudice
• Leading by example
• Developing a clear mission statement
• Creating a positive code of ethics (a list of do’s, rather than
don’ts)
• Creating a culture that promotes performance, not seniority
• Soliciting staff input on new policies
• Being respectful
• Letting the word out that upper management cares about
ethics
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
A New Era? Procedural Justice/Restorative
Justice
• America has one of the world’s highest rates of
incarceration.
• High recidivism rates suggest that prisons and other
deterrence mechanisms are not particularly effective in
reducing crime.
• Some advocate a new approach to crime and
punishment.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
The Prison–Industrial Complex
• Prisons provide jobs and profits to legions of
companies and people.
• A major shift may be spurred by the economic burden
that the penal harm era has generated.
• Pendulum may have swung too far toward severe
prison terms, especially toward drug offenders.
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© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Peacemaking Corrections and Wholesight
• Peacemaking corrections offers an approach of care
and of wholesight, or looking at what needs to be done
with both the heart and the head.
• Both restorative justice and peacemaking corrections
are consistent with the ethics of care.
• Might be considered “feminine” models of justice
because of the emphasis on needs rather than
retribution.
• Programs under the rubric of restorative justice include
sentencing circles, family group counseling, and victim-
offender mediation.
© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Discussion Questions
1. Would you participate in the Zimbardo experiment?
Which role do you think you could play more easily
without compromising your ethical outlook?
2. Can you imagine and scenario when you might be
inclined to aid a prison’s escape, as the staff did in the
2015 escape from Clinton prison?
3. Do you agree with Dzur and Wertheimer that was is
good for the individual is good for everyone else?
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