As a long-term prisoner, my experience convinces me that the reasons so many prisoners adjust in ways that fail to prepare them for law-abiding lives upon release may be found in the tactics and strategies of prison management. They extinguish hope. To change the dismal results, we need prison reform that would bring fundamental improvements to prison culture.

Stephanie Kidder, a criminal justice student, asked what sort of incentives I thought would be appropriate to improve our nation’s prison system. The purpose of incentives, I think, ought to focus on inducing prisoners to adjust in ways that will prepare them for the challenges that await their release. Current management practices result in rebellion, defiance, and adjustment patterns that perpetuate cycles of failure. Incentives should not exist to make life easier for prisoners, but to make society safer by lowering both recidivism rates and prison operating costs.

To achieve such an end, the incentives ought to be wide and far reaching. They should provide a mechanism through which all offenders could work toward gradual increases in freedom. That does not mean all offenders can lead a cushy life, but rather that they can improve their existence through merit and positive adjustments.

Some of those incentives would include access to more telephone time, access to more visiting opportunities, access to the use of email and other technologies that may prepare them for release. Congress found through its Second Chance Act that strong networks of community support represent the best probability for success upon release. Administrators ought to offer incentives that prisoners may earn to nurture those ties.

Incentives can lead to a better prison culture. I measure “better” by safer prisons that reduce recidivism and operating costs. Administrators ought to use incentives to create prison cultures where guards can become correctional officers, and thus enjoy more fulfillment from their profession.

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The U.S. Congress made specific findings in The Second Chance Act. One of those findings was that prison administrators fail to make effective use of the family structure to prepare offenders for re-entry. The obstacles that prison culture erects to block family and community ties play a significant role in influencing high recidivism rates.

Jon-Daniel, a bright criminal justice student, asked how society could implement reforms that would strengthen family ties. It would be simple. Administrators could simply provide prisoners with more access to speak with family members over the telephone. The 300-minutes per month BOP phone policy limits prisoners to speaking on the phone for an average of less than 10 minutes per day.

As Jon-Daniel observed in his comment, prison makes it difficult to nurture marital bonds. I am a long-term prisoner, and as such I must invest myself totally in my relationship with Carole. She serves this prison term along with me, and struggles every day as a consequence of the oppressive prison rules that block family ties.

To overcome the challenges of confinement, I must make every effort possible to nurture and sustain my marriage to Carole. That means I must reserve all of my telephone and visiting privileges for her. As a consequence of forcing me to prioritize how I will use my minimal access to family ties, prison policies cause me to sacrifice my relationships with extended family members. This absurdity contributes to high recidivism rates and higher prison operating costs. Prisoners who have strong family ties are more likely to adjust in positive ways. Those who lack strong family ties are more susceptible to the negative influences of the prison. They join gangs and engage in disruption.

 Administrators could implement prison reforms that would offer prisoners access to more privileges and mechanisms that would help them strengthen family ties. They could offer privileges as incentives, making the privileges conditional upon positive adjustment patterns. For example, by educating himself, working, and avoiding disciplinary infractions, a prisoner ought to earn more access to family. Administrators could dispense telephone access, visiting privileges, even e-mail to prisoners who demonstrate a commitment to redemption. Those changes would bring many advantages, including:

*lower recidivism rates

*lower incidences of gang corruption

*lower prison operating costs

*safer communities

*stronger family ties

Incentives would improve America’s prison system.

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In the 1960s, Professor Milgram conducted an experiment at Yale University that measured the power of authority. Later, in the 1970s, Professor Zimbardo found similar results through his Stanford Prison Experiment. When cultures essentially subjugate segments of a population, an oppressive environment cannot help but follow. I think the prison must be a difficult culture for an individual to build a fulfilling career. The reason I say that is because of the cynicism that is so pervasive. It is extremely negative, with a high and seemingly unhealthy degree of distrust. That seems to be the opposite of what I have read about successful corporate cultures, which operate on the principle of transparency and encourages all individuals to strive toward their highest potential.

I have been a prisoner for more than 21 years. I’ve not had any experience in working as a prison staff member. In responding to Christine Allanson’s question about the reason for staff apathy, I can only offer conjecture that the prison culture breeds a sense of distrust. The prison is an us-versus-them environment.

Christine also asked me about the concept of good time and asked whether it would fall into the category of earning freedom that I write about. The answer is no. Rather than awarding good time for merit, or for clearly measurable efforts that prisoners make to prepare for law abiding lives upon release, good time is issued automatically to those who avoid breaking prison rules. In other words, administrators do not distinguish the prisoner who works toward educating himself and preparing for a contributing life; that person who adjusts positively receives no distinction from the prisoner who plays cards all day. In my opinion, it is inequitable and a fundamental flaw in the system.

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Phillip Zimbardo was a professor at Stanford University. In the 1970s he conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment which created a mock prison for the purpose of studying how the culture of the prison influenced the behavior of both prisoners and guards. The experiment showed that many guards became tyrannical and abusive while many prisoners adjusted poorly. Dr. Zimbardo had to abort the experiment early because of the chilling results. Volumes of literature have discussed the findings of the academic study, though prisons remain oppressive environments that don’t seem well equipped to prepare offenders for law-abiding lives upon release.

I believe that prison staff members begin their careers with aspirations of making a real contribution to society. They seek stability and an honorable trade through which they can support their families. The prison culture, however, has a pernicious influence not only on prisoners, but on staff members as well. The emphasis on control results in the dehumanization of prisoners. It is abnormal in our society, and it frequently leads to resentment, hostility, anger. Prisons become tense. Years of exposure influence the psyche, diminishing the propensity for happiness and replacing it with cynicism.

I don’t know the personnel statistics, though I would not be surprised to learn that those who build careers in corrections suffer from higher rates of divorce and depression and alcoholism. Such results would follow years of exposure to the negative, hopeless environment of the prison. It seems a culture that by its nature is the antithesis of all we stand for in America, including liberty, family, and each man’s inalienable right to pursue happiness.

My perspective, of course, comes from having served more than 21 years in prison. I have lived with ceaseless pressure that comes with confinement. Clearly, anyone who asks my perspective understands that as a prisoner, I see these cultures differently from those who have not had their ties to family, community, education, careers, and liberty cut.

To change the prison culture, and to foster more fulfillment for those who staff prisons, I would think that administrators would have to create atmospheres of hope rather than oppression. I am not optimistic, though I do expect prison reforms may come soon that will bring improvements to these caged communities.

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When I began serving my prison term, in 1987, I was 23-years-old. Although I did not have a history of violence or previous incarceration, my judge imposed a 45-year sentence. With the length of confinement ahead, administrators locked me inside the walls of a high-security federal penitentiary. As sentencing structures then stood, the term translated into possible release 25 years later, in 2013, provided that I did not lose good-time credits through disciplinary actions.

What did our society expect to benefit through the imposition of such a term? Would the severity of the sentence deter consenting adults from engaging in cocaine transactions? Would it appropriately punish the wrong and illegal behavior of my early 20s? Would isolating me from society during my 20s, 30s, and 40s advance the principles of justice? Did the leaders expect rehabilitation would follow my confinement for multiple decades in a high-security penitentiary?

Our society now confines more than 2.3 million people. The costs to fund this massive system of human warehousing exceeds $60 billion each year. Taxpayers read of inadequate resources to invest in educational programs and teachers, yet budgets to maintain the massive prison system thrive year after year. With recidivism rates that exceed 60 percent, however, citizens ought to question and doubt the wisdom of this public policy. Any objective metric would validate the need for prison reform.

In the book Change We Can Believe In, I read many platform positions of President Barack Obama. Under an Obama administration, the book said, foreign policy would make use of strategies that included incentives to induce behavior from people in failed states. The example to which I refer suggested increasing foreign aid to $3 billion in Afghanistan. Those funds would encourage farmers to grow crops other than those used to make opium and heroin for the Taliban to distribute.

Prison reform ought to duplicate this wise strategy of using incentives to induce positive behavior. With millions incarcerated and high recidivism rates, prisons represent a failed state within our own borders. Just as in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other failed states, when circumstances extinguish hope among citizens, some people adjust in ways that threaten stability.

Without hope, or clearly-defined paths to good citizenship, high recidivism validates the reality that many prisoners neglect to prepare for the challenges that are certain to follow release. Instead, they focus on the perceived immediate needs of living in prison. With decades to serve, and without available mechanisms through which they can distinguish themselves in positive ways, few prisoners sustain the necessary commitment to emerge with skills and resources that translate into success upon release. Reforms to the failed state of American prisons would change such troubling and costly realities.

Legislators and administrators ought to offer incentives that would encourage prisoners to work toward reconciling with society. Judges may impose sentences that could result in the locking of offenders inside boundaries for years or decades at a time. Legislators and administrators ought to support policies that would induce prisoners to work toward redemption through merit. Such change would represent an advancement in our enlightened society. Incentives would empower our citizens, replacing the failed policies of vengeance with the promising policies of hope. Prison reforms ought to include an objective-path through which offenders could earn their way to freedom.

Making such a shift in strategy through effective prison reforms would reflect American values of hope and promise. Incentives would induce positive adjustment patterns in America’s prison population, thus making society safer through lower recidivism rates. As a long term prisoner, that is change I could believe in.

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To further the possibilities for prison reform, and the safer communities that would result from lower recidivism rates, I’m hoping to persuade television networks to show the flip side. I’d like Americans to have a better understanding of the reasons behind the high rates of failure that come out of our nation’s corrections system. The truth that I’ve lived for the past 21-plus years suggested that if Americans wanted to see more prisoners emerge as law-abiding, contributing citizens, then they would have to support meaningful prison reforms. Prison administrators obstruct the public from learning about the oppressive infrastructures that policies create. Instead of showing the motivation behind negative adjustment patterns, the administrators advance their cause by profiling prisoners who plunge knives into the flesh of others, or men who run with gangs that terrorize.

American citizens need access to another type of prison show. They should see how policies extinguish hope among men who serve time. Without hope for a better life, too many prisoners succumb to the negative influences that pervade the penitentiary.

The prisons of America confine more than 2.3 million people. Ironically, the longer we expose a man to corrections, the less likely that individual becomes to emerge as a law-abiding citizen. Prisons condition failure. A man cannot swim through the rough seas of imprisonment when administrators shackle his ankles and wrists in steel manacles.

Although I expect to meet resistance, I intend to work toward helping Americans understand how prison reforms can lead to safer communities. We need reforms that will encourage more people in prison to reach their highest potential. They need hope. They need mechanisms through which they can work to reconcile with society and earn freedom.

For more than 21 years I’ve been working to build a record that would help me counter the image most Americans have of the long-term prisoner. Now, as I advance through these final years of my term, I hope media representatives will join these efforts to show how prison reforms can lead to more enlightened society.

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One reader of the book wrote to ask how such a sexual orgy was possible in a high security prison. The reader felt as though someone should have been on patrol to help the weaker prisoners. She questioned how prisoners could get away with such behavior in a high-security prison.

High security prisons are dangerous places. They are dangerous because more than 1,000 prisoners are locked inside concrete and steel human warehouses, and administrative policies extinguish hope for the men inside. Administrators rely on surveillance cameras, metal detectors, locked gates and doors, as well as correctional officers to maintain security in the penitentiary. Yet the prisoners are locked inside the institutions for years, or even decades at a time. They know where the blind spots are. They know when the officers will make rounds and the prisoners develop a sense of who is weak and vulnerable. Like any predator, they can spot the easy prey.

Prison policy makers can post memorandums that encourage weak inmates to seek assistance from staff. Yet those platitudes miss the dynamics of penitentiary life. Prisoners who seek assistance from staff in high-security penitentiaries risk retaliation from those in the prison community who adhere to the tacit convict code. Once a prisoner is saddled with the snitch label, other prisoners will ride him for the duration of his sentence. Prisoners who are forced to serve their sentences in high security prisons should accept a viper pit, and use all of their creativity to persuade administrators that they are worthy candidates for reductions in their classification status.

I served longer than 16 years in higher security prisons before staff members transferred me to minimum-security camp. My disciplined adjustment enabled me to thrive through my prison term and avoid a single altercation with others. Whereas the two victims I described in my book engaged in activities that made them vulnerable, I recognized that the dangerous environment of prison required that I avoid interactions with those who courted trouble. Living a goal-centered adjustment enabled me to prepare for release while simultaneously avoiding problems in prison.

The post Why Can’t Guards Stop Prison Rape? appeared first on Prison News Blog.

The fact that drugs are a problem in prison baffles some. With solid concrete walls and rows of high fences surrounding secure prisons, people wonder how drugs penetrate prisons at all. Yet the barriers that surround the prison are not effective deterrents. Much more effective deterrents, as is evidenced by the lack of drugs in minimum-security camps, are programs that inspire hope.

Policies that extinguish hope result in prisoners who focus exclusively on living inside the institution. Since they do not see opportunities to advance their release dates or influence their lives in positive ways, they engage in activities that ease their time inside the prison.

Secure prisons are large, confining thousands of felons together. Hundreds of staff members work in the institution, some of whom are susceptible to corruption. Those staff members have access to inmate files and can read about which prisoners are reliable to participate in illicit schemes.

To supplement their income, corrupt staff members may agree to mule drugs through all of the security procedures and pass them along to their trusted conspirators. That is one of the most common ways that drugs enter prisons. Other prisoners use creative techniques to breach security. They have conspirators outside of prison work together with them, for example, to pass drugs through the mail or through visits. The walls and security measures have not been effective in keeping drugs out of prison.

In minimum-security camps, on the other hand, administrators do not have as much trouble keeping drugs out. Some may find this surprising, as minimum-security camps do not have fences or walls surrounding the prison. Despite their openness, camps run without much threat of contraband. The reason that camps run more smoothly is that prisoners inside have hope. They are closer to release; they participate in programs that enable them to interact with society; they have a higher degree of freedom. Since they do not want to lose the privilege of serving time in the camp, most prisoners abide by the rules.

To lower problems with contraband and violence in higher security prisons, administrators ought to reevaluate policies that extinguish hope. They should consider using incentives to encourage good behavior in addition to the numerous policies available to punish bad behavior.

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I’m responsible for keeping the beverage bar clean during the lunch and dinner meals. The reason I like the job is that it is clearly defined, and once I complete my duties, I’m free to work on the independent personal growth projects that I create. Most of the other prison jobs where I have been assigned require that I spend entire seven-hour shifts working for the prison. Even when I completed those duties, supervisors would prohibit me from reading or writing while on the job. I appreciate the independence I have at Taft Camp.

Ever since my confinement began, in 1987, I have been working to develop skills and credentials. I reasoned that such an adjustment would position me to overcome the obstacles that I expect to follow this quarter century of confinement. During my first decade I focused on educating myself. Since then I’ve been working on my writing skills, hoping to reach beyond these fences to contribute to the lives of others. That strategy has helped open numerous opportunities that few long-term prisoners ever enjoy. Yet a few days ago, I was reminded how few of my fellow prisoners identify with my choices.

As I was waiting for the noon meal to conclude so that I could commence my job, I sat with my friend Juan Moore. I met Juan while I was confined at the Federal Prison Camp in Lompoc, but he transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island within a few weeks of my arrival at Lompoc, in 2005. From FCI Terminal Island, Juan transferred here, to Taft Camp.

Juan is from Watts, California, and grew up surrounded by criminal influences. He made some decisions that resulted in his receiving a prison sentence of nearly 16 years. Juan is now less than three months away from his release.

During his time inside, Juan worked hard to ensure that he would leave prison with skills. He attended college in prison and participated in numerous self-improvement programs. Juan’s friends, known as “homies” in prison, resented his efforts to change. They would taunt him with questions like, “What are you going to do when you get out? Are you going to have heart or are you going to lie in the park?” What they are really asking Juan is whether he is going to return to the life of gangbanging and “dope slanging.” Because to them, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” His peers, most of whom have numerous prison records, are pressuring him to stay “in the game.”

While we were chatting that early afternoon, one of Juan’s homies sat with us. Juan introduced me to his friend who said that he remembered the weeks when I first arrived at Taft Camp. “The homies was hating on him when he first pulled up,” Juan’s friend said of me. “They was saying that he ain’t really served no 20 years. Look at how he be walkin’ ’round here all smilin’ and happy. Ain’t nobody served no 20 years gonna be happy like that.”

The irony is that as Juan’s friend was telling his story to us, I was supposed to feel offended that my fellow prisoners did not recognize me as someone who had served 20 years. Yet according to the values by which I have lived, I feel as if my strategy is succeeding when others cannot identify me as a long-term prisoner. For me, the goal has always been to succeed upon my release, not to lift my social status within the abnormal society of prisons.

As I described in my book Inside: Life Behind Bars in America, prison infrastructures are complicitous in perpetuating these cycles of failure. By extinguishing hope for better lives, they simultaneously discourage prisoners from making efforts to grow or change or emerge successfully. Many prisoners stay committed to the underworld values by which they lived prior to confinement. Consequently, when they see someone like Juan, who is striving to make positive changes in his life, they discourage and taunt him; they doubt that a man can endure 20 years of imprisonment without the telltale scars of failure marking his every action.

It is not only prisoners who expect long-term offenders to show the signs of failure. When staff members meet me for the first time, or first become aware of how much time I have served, they frequently look at me with astonishment, as if to say “What happened?” They do not understand how it is that I can express my thoughts without profanity, or how I focus with such intensity on the self-empowerment projects to which I commit. They expect anyone who has been exposed to “corrections” for significant lengths of time to show clear signs of failure. The way our system operates today, the longer we expose an individual to corrections, the more likely that individual becomes to fail in society upon his release.

I expect to serve longer than three but less than five more years in prison. While I conclude this final portion of my sentence, I will continue working to prepare myself for release. I have very specific goals that I am striving to achieve. Those who are interested may follow my progress through the regular postings I make through MichaelSantos.net and PrisonSuccess.com.

I encourage readers to send comments or questions through e-mail, or directly to me at Taft Prison Camp.

Thank you for your interest and support.

Godspeed,

Michael G. Santos

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