The video over the Dallas jail to me somewhat opened my eyes to the life of a jail or a prison guard. There are several things, parts of a guard’s duty that caught my attention as we watched the video. Throughout the video it showed one female guard watching over a good amount of roaming inmates in the jail, and that officer had no one there to immediately help her nor did she have any way to protect herself if the inmates ever wanted to attack her. If I or anyone else was working that job it would really make me or whomever works that job, show a lot of respect to the inmates. The guard would have to know how to talk to the inmates because if the inmates ever tried to attack her she would have no chance. Another point that interested me was over half of the employees that worked the Dallas jail were women. I can not even begin to describe what those women were feeling whenever they work their jobs. Even as a man I feel like there would still be a certain level of fear going into that job. Those inmates the majority of the time only see other males, so when you are a woman first starting that job you are going to be heavily tested by the male inmates, they are going to push you to the limits trying to see if you show any fear in your face. It really made me think that during the first couple of days really makes their decision for them. Those first couple of days are going to be really tough on those women, the inmates are going to see a new face, and on top of that, see a woman, this in itself can be very scary for the women just starting their new jobs. Many young women think that they want to work this job; however, when they arrive there they find out that the job is very different than what they thought it was going to be. I also found the amount of non lethal weapons the jail had on hand was pretty amazing. The Dallas jail had a whole room devoted to non lethal weapons. One of the weapons was an electric shield that when pressed onto the body of an inmate will have to a certain point the same effects of a taser. It surprised me that they were able to put those two things together and be very effective against rowdy inmates during a fight or causing problems just by themselves. The Dallas jail also had paintball guns and grenades that are almost like a flashbang. The paintball guns shoot a non lethal round that really leaves a sting on the inmates that it is fired at. The flash bang is used when there are inmates in a cell who are fighting and it is just tossed in the cell and has a deafening bang, and the majority of the time the bang stops the inmates from fighting. -crispychicken711
In the video it informed us about a lot of these that happens in the prison with girls and boys. In the video it mentions that guys are separated by what their crime was. Which is smart because if you went to prison for something to major and you are put in the same room with someone who was murdering multiple people at a time, those men are tuff in their and will do anything to get the person to do what they want. Like they would beat you or even just use you to get what they want. If a woman works in a man prison it can be tuff for the women only because she has to learn to ignore them as much as she can. They have to be able to talk to them but not give them information about their personal life or they would think they like them and will use them or lower them to do things for them. Men in the prison mostly have gangs and, in those gangs, they seem to protect eachother in the inside when a fight break lose they are close to the scene ready. They mention that they make a shank out of the sporks, they will be able to make the bottom of the spork sharpen enough to hurt someone or themselves. It was this lady officer that was really nice in the video she just said that when she has someone in there that is really scared she just tries to talk to them and make them feel a little better even though they don’t want to be there. I forgot what this lady in the video that was basically there whenever something like a fight or a riot is happening in the prison they have a whole room filled with weapon like an electric shield and these guns that will sting once they shoot them. one guy says the only lady in that position is someone not to mess with because she does not play around. In the women prison it is way different they start out like a boot camp type of vibe and there first name is inmate and their number and I like that because it can help reshape the person to be better. In the video it also showed how the women treat the others if they have kids at home being away from them kids can make them want to baby someone else in the prison just make them feel like they have responsibility just like they did in the outside world. It was a really good video because we were able to see how things look in the inside.-babyblue711
I thought this video was very informative and interesting. The amount of women that are incarcerated have a very high mental health problem. As the video interviewed different female inmates, you could tell. There was one particular inmate that was trusted with someone’s compensatory and not even two hours later she was already deciding what she was keeping for herself and what she was selling on their “black market” in order to make money. Another female didn’t care if she was getting in trouble or not. She would sneak off from her pod to go and try and start fights with the other females across the prison. Which the normal person would realize that they could get out early by being good, listening and following the rules, and even going above and beyond to make it a point to be a better person. But some didn’t care if they got locked in isolation, or got in trouble, they were going to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. I believe that the more military style in prisons and jails makes for the inmates to be more respectful and more cooperative. Which not only makes the officers jobs more easy, it will help the inmates in the long run. They want prison to be a whole different world, they want to break down the inmates and make the cry and want to leave. The officer’s jobs is to make them hate it enough so they won’t want to come back. They want the inmates to become better people when they leave and realize that this is where they can start their lives over, therefore they make prison intolerant for breaking rules and they have very strict rules and regulations. Many people just make the wrong decision and end up locked up but then there are other people who enjoy being incarcerated. Many people who are reoffenders will meet up and reunite with other reoffenders they have been locked up with before. The inmates are given little independence and everything they want or need they have to work for. Women sometimes even have to work for their dignity kits. This I believe is a little inhumane because they can’t pick and choose whether they have a menstrual cycle or not. Especially because birth control is not allowed in prisons. People that are in isolation are in a special management program that the officers have to maintain a control. They are on lockdown and are in their cells twenty-three hours a day, usually for thirty days depending on what they did. Sometimes the only thing that the inmates are upset about when they are in isolation is that they can't go to the store and get compensatory. But they normally do not even care what type of situations they are in. ONce you are in prison they all have their own little family, just like how we pick our friends and the people around us. But they normally don’t trust the people that are their friends. The know better to not trust anyone in the prison, Who knows if they will steal your things or turn their back on you. A lot of people want the typical replication of their environment in the prison and decide to replicate it that way. But as a whole, they have more of a group identity than an individual. They are just an inmate with a number. Some females sell their bodies on order to get money for the store, or find someone who fits the masculine male to latch onto. ProbdrinkingStar$’s711
Watching the Dallas County Jail documentary just prior to attending the jail tour at the Peoria County Sheriff’s office was definitely an eye opening experience. Watching this video before going on the tour definitely gave us some negative expectations of what to expect when we went to the Peoria Jail, but we were definitely surprised when we did take the tour and found out the two were significantly different. The first big difference I would like to point out is that the Dallas County Jail is very close to its maximum capacity, whereas the Peoria Jail is not even close anymore. Over the past 5 years, the sheriff of Peoria has reduced the jail population by 50%, down from over 600 to I believe roughly 237 inmates at the time of our tour. Not only does this inmate reduction help with spending costs, but it reduces the amount of danger, as well as helping keep the inmate to correctional officer ratio much better. The Dallas Jail had 7,000 inmates at the time of the video, with 300 inmates being processed everyday and 100,000/year. The range of charges of offenders in the Dallas jail range anywhere from prostitution (very common to receive multiple prostitutes on a daily basis), to murderers, rapists, and child molestors. The way the Dallas County Jail was designed is based on a direct supervision model, in which 1 DS (direct supervisor) is locked in a pod with the inmates, with only a radio, panic button, and some keys. During the filming of the video, there was a guy that came into the facility, I believe who was transferred from another jail facility, who had on his person, a handcuff key, as well as a half smoked joint. This was extremely surprising not only that he was able to bring these items over with him after being searched, but that he was even able to get his hands on a handcuff key. What’s even more scary is the fact that he had plenty of opportunities that could’ve ended extremely poorly for either the staff or himself had he decided to use the key on himself or any other inmates. Something the narrator said during the video was that on a weekly basis, roughly 20+ shanks are found, but most are not used. In the video, we did see the aftermath of a “scuffle” in which one inmate had accused another of his cell members of stealing something of his, so one of them pulled a shank made from a spoon and tried attacking the other with it. In this kind of situation, both inmates would be punished for fighting, even though one instigated it and pulled a shank, while the other was simply defending himself. GMan219711
This video was very interesting as it portrayed a side of prison I hadn’t considered. Dallas County Jail is a fairly large prison as it holds on average 7,000 inmates on any given day. They intake around 100,000 people every year. It’s hard to truly understand what those numbers look like in real life with real people. 100,000 people a year in only one jail in only one county, that is just slightly mind blowing. In the video, one of the officers stated that the intake process is the busiest between two and six in the morning. This doesn’t come to much of a surprise as the majority of crime occurs during the night hours. Half of the officers that are employed at the Dallas county jail are females. I found this to be very interesting. I am encouraged to learn that many females are being hired in jails across the country. I think this neat, as it displays the changing view that society has for correctional officers and the rolls of women. A correctional officer is well paid career as it is an important job in the community. There is so much that is required from an officer, their job is a highly stressful job with great demand. However, they are only given three days of training before they are placed on the job in the Dallas County Jail. These officers are required to handle the 7,000 inmates with only three days of training. Some how that just does not seem very fair to the officers. Personally, I feel only three days of training is far from enough to be prepared for this line of work since there are so many risks involved. I am largely uninformed of jail protocols, but I was greatly surprised to learn this. The Dallas County Jail had many different weapons that the officers could use incase there was a situation that required great force. One of the weapons the officers could utilize was a shield that used electric shocks. If the inmate would get touched by the electrical strip on the shield, they would get shocked. This tool acts as protection for the officer and a weapon against the inmate all in one. I think this is a pretty neat as it does not give long term effects to the inmate like a bullet would, but it also contains and controls the inmate. This tool is highly useful for jail confrontations. Within the jail there is a group that handles forceful inmate disrupts. This group is called the special response team (SRT) they have the authority to use more extreme weapons than other officers do. The Dallas County Jail has a team, six members of the team are females. This is a fairly new phenomenon as a few years ago the team was only male. They are required a weeks’ worth of physical tests in order to become a team member. I found this to be very interesting. Since the other officers are only required three days of total training while SRT need seven days of just physical training. I think every correctional officer would greatly benefit from the added training that the SRT officers require. -CoalRoller711
After touring the jail, and watching the videos on what working in a prison as a corrections officer. In the video we watched, it was documenting the Dallas County Jail. Over half of the staff running that jail is female, so it makes it that much easier for the inmates, to interact with the female guards. I think that it's good, and bad having a large presence of females in the jail. I think that bad side of it is, I feel the inmates can develop more of a relationship easier than with male correction officers. Females like to care for people than males, so It would make it easier in that sense. I think the good side to having over half the staff being female, is it shows that females can handle the rough and intense job of a corrections officer. I think the idea of direct supervision is also good in bad in some ways. I feel that it is good because inmates are not locked in cells, it is open dormitories and inmates get more of an opportunity to interact with one another. I also think it allows them to do more things, to work towards good time and receiving parole. I think it is bad, and dangerous for the correction officer. There is one officer locked in a pod with multiple inmates, who have an open dormitory. It is easier for the inmates to assault, and fight each other, and the officer who is in charge of the pod. The jail receives 300 inmates a day. I feel that even though that number seems very high, I feel it is not. Considering the fact that dallas is a very large are, with a very large amount of people living in that area. It was also very interesting to hear that when a cadet gets hired on they only get 3 days of training before they get sent into the jail. Once they prove themselves, then they will be sent to the academy. I Think that is a great method. Before wasting all that money on someone to send them to the academy, and having them come back and quit. It prevents that from happening, it lets the person see if that job really is for him or her.I also think the special response team is a great idea, it's good to have specially trained individuals ready to go if something very serious were to happen. It prevents things like prison riots, and murders, and all the other crazy things inmates do. I like the method of how the prison assigns the inmates jobs to keep them busy, and reduce the idleness the inmate has in prison. I-Like-Cereal711
As juveniles are often influenced by different factors to commit crimes, they are more likely to get caught and sent to a JDC. As we have been learning in class, the influence of family and peers has the strongest effect on juveniles. The living environment aren't giving a good example, so they find an easy way to make money. In our country, we have far more juveniles locked up for petty crimes than any other country in the world. In the “Prison Kids” video, it is mentioned that instead of locking up juveniles for the offenses made, they should be helping them rehabilitate to return to society. Usually, the juveniles that commit crime and are in prison are the ones with unhealthy homes and have gone through a trauma in their life. While being locked up most of them feel as if they are going crazy especially if place in solitary confinement and later a lot of them are diagnosed with some type of mental health. Not only did it affect them mentally but also affected their behavior. Instead of thinking about what they could do better to listen and understand, it would only make them worse according to one other the juveniles in the video. Juveniles are still maturing and developing until the average age of twenty-five. They are still learning to distinguish the positive and negative reasoning for certain behaviors, but as a society we punish them instead of understanding and helping them. There are juveniles that can be charged as adults and once charged as an adult the Juveniles Justice System doesn’t have any jurisdiction. According to “Prison Kids” it is said that Black Americans and other minorities are mostly charged as adults. It is not a hundred percent positive that being charged as an adult will help, so it is a risk that is being taken. There are many cases where the juvenile is just punished and not given a chance to change before getting out and returning to the community. There one juvenile that was incarcerated said that if he committed the crime the needs to man up and deal with the consequences. I think that shows maturity in someone’s mentality and rehabilitation to understand that you can get in trouble again. I also think that for a juvenile the death penalty shouldn’t be a choice once transferred to an adult court for the jury or judge because of his/his brain is still developing of the juvenile. I also think that if a juvenile is ever sentenced life in prison that there should be given the chance of parole so that could be an incentive to not cause problems with other inmates in prison. Nor become an influence on other people that are most likely to get out before themselves. taco007
Watching the video of the Dallas County Jail was very eye opening. One of the first things that was said in the video was that the Dallas county jail staff was nearly half female. That is a pretty cool fact to me because a lot of the times a lot of these jails and agencies are mainly dominated by males. In the jail, the correctional officers are armed with just radios and a panic button. I knew that correctional officers would have a radio but I did not even know that panic buttons were a thing in jails. It would be a great thing for all correctional officers to have on them just in case they are in certain situations where they can not get ahold of their radios. Also, this jail is huge, they process about three hundred inmates a day there. That is a crazy amount of people coming to jail in one day and they do it every day, putting them at around one hundred thousand people a year. The video also followed a young correctional officer on her first day of working as a correctional officer that day. She was only 19 years old starting as a correctional officer. While they were following her around, the video mentioned that the 19 year old female correctional officer had only received three days of training before they started her out in the jail as a correctional officer. Three days? That is actually really scary. Even if you were a larger male, I still feel like you would need a heck of a lot more than just three days of training before they should be thrown into the jail to start working. I am sure there is a lot you could learn in three days but there is going to be way more stuff about the job that you are not going to have a clue about. You may be able to learn the way the jail works or how to do some of the paper work in the jail. In three days you are not going to be able to learn how to effectively defend yourself from some of these inmates, you will not learn as much as you should about how to talk to people and be able to de escalate certain situations. There will be a lot that you will not know how to do by only having three days of training before you start. Also in the video it said that if an inmate assaulted another inmate, they could possible go to lockdown, which is two weeks in an isolated cell and being locked up for 23 hours a day. Two weeks of being locked up for 23 hours a day would be absolutely terrible if you as me. The jail had a SRT which stands for a special response team that would go into pods when a fight or something would break out so they could break them up. There were 36 people on the special response team and six of them were female, which is kind of cool. It was an interesting video for sure. -Steel711
In the Dallas county jail, half of the staff is made up of female correctional officers. The correctional officers say that control is a major priority. There are more than 7,000 inmates within the Dallas county jail. There is also a large pod with just one officer locked inside. Each correctional officer is given a radio and a panic button. For the inmates coming in, 90% of them are in there due to drugs. Nearly 300 inmates are processed every day and 100,000 a year. The whole jail takes 90 officers to run. One of the officers said they get a lot of female prostitutes. Recruits also get 3 days on the job training and one of the newer recruits said, "What am I getting myself into?" on the camera and that made me laugh but also cringe as early in the video she had said she was 19 years old and accepted this as her first job cause she thought it would be easy. By saying it is easy, or at least she thought, she was clearly in for a harsh and rude awakening as nothing about working inside the jail is or will be easy. She realized that pretty quickly by second guessing why she got herself into this. Dallas county can also hold you in for sixth months. They even have a special response team which is there to deal with any seriousness that breaks out within the jail needing immediate attention. On a weekly basis, they come across 20+ shanks. One of the senior female correction officers said you have to watch the way you interact with the male inmates being a female because they can easily get the wrong idea. She said the more information you give to an inmate, the more they can do with that, regarding stalking and even accessing you on the internet. This in particular, I feel is very important because one of the male inmates said how he will groom the female guards and it is to get them to fall for their tricks and manipulate them. He said females love the attention and the ones that do make it very easy. There are some men in there too that had stated, "No woman should be telling us what to do". Some people really just think that way and I liked how professional the women were in this and instead of piping up and saying something they should refrain from saying, they were incredibly calm and collected but assertive so the men saying this understood they could feel that way and it is their right to fell that way but they will have to listen to the female officers whether they like that or not. In the Dallas county jail they also have single cells, which are for the high profile or death row inmates. I thought that was neat and intense. Something else I found interesting was when an inmate said that, "the streets raised me" and he had no parental figures growing up. I know we are learning in class the importance of family and reasoning behind delinquency which sets the grounding for a lot of these now adults. I really liked the video and how informational it was. It has given me a visual. -notacop711
There is a saying "there is three sides to a story; your side, their side,and the truth." At Wasbash Valley Correctional Institution many of the inmates join gangs at a young age, for belongness and protection which leads them to being incarcerated or being deceased. Which means there is no way out of the gang once your in. Many of the inmates have absent fathers and could be one of the leading causes why they make the choices the made to be in jail. In the jail that the are in they eat, sleep, and learn all in one unit. Up to fifty teenage boys come to the jail for multiple crimes. The biggest crimes are robbery and murder. Most juveniles are there under ten years unless the crime was very serious. However, no juveniles can be sentenced to death penalty. When the new inmates come in to the jail there is a case worker that they have talk to them about counseling and the most important things. One of the inmates in the jail is in there for sixty five years for murder and he is only seventeen years old. He talks about how he regrets doing what he did. But he also states how it changed his life and how his life stopped just like the kid that he killed. Another inmate is in there for fifty five years for murder also. Him and his friends broke into a persons house for "quick money" and one of his friends ends up dead at the scene from the person who was in the house at the time. Not to mention he was expelled from school and getting high everyday with his friends. After one hundred eighty days of good behavior the inmates are entitled to get a TV in their room and the also enter the reward program for more rewards for good behavior. However if any inmate has bad behavior they have a chance of being forced to move to the adult jail. One inmate threw liquid substance on a officer but meant to throw it on a inmate and is now in the segregation unit for three months and is treated like an adult and not to mention he was already eighteen years old going to the adult prison. The inmate who did this is in jail for aggravated battery, he shot a man who hit his mom. One thing I noticed about him is that he owns up to all his mistakes when a lot of inmates don't. Inmates have the ability to buy their own treats with money that is sent to them. Most inmates have a goal to finish school while they are in jail and to stay focused on getting out as soon as possible. The inmate who got sentenced to sixty five years is trying everything he can to shorten his time because he regrets what he done and learned from his mistakes and for his family. However, he is having a hard time doing that because of how serious his crime is. -SR
A lot of the inmates are sentenced as an adult for their crimes. The inmates that they were interviewing were smart and was regretting everything. Most inmates regret what they’ve done and which they could start over. The case worker and staff are trying to help them do better in life and help them not make more mistakes. The case worker explains her experience with the inmates and shows how much she cares about them. Also the case worker goes by the rules and shows no favoritism to the inmates. She states that they are like her kids but then states how many inmates are in jail and explains how its too much for her to handle as her kids. The inmates show in the video that they respect ger and listen to her. In reality the inmates need her throughout their journey in jail. Most of the inmates never had somebody they could sit down and talk to in their past. She is there to help them with that. She states how the inmates are unhealthy and come from unhealthy families and needs guidance. The staff try to guide the inmates as much as possible. They try to do everything to prevent violence from happening but one staff member states how it always seems to happen no matter what. The inmate named Jesus Macedo-Perez is not eligible for release until 2045. The next inmate named Blake Laymans earliest release date is 2040 but he has launched a appeal. Then the inmate Marquise Lee has left the segregation unit and is now in the adult wing. -SR
The state of Georgia's women prison is a medium to maximum prison. While watching the video they mentioned that 70 percent of the women inside this prison does not have a high school diploma, let alone a GED. They also mention that 70 percent of women in the prison also have at least one child, most of the women are there for a drug crime, non-violent crime. They show their intake process, where inmates come into there prison. During intake, they get searched, fingerprinted, questioned, etc. This prison has more of a military type system that they go by, they do drills, they march, they listen to commands, they sing to a rhythm. During the intake system, the inmates where white, white represents new people into the person and is also called diagnostics, the prison is trying to figure out where the inmate belongs inside the prison, the most common things that happen in diagnostics is one of three things, they go home, they stay and go to GP, general population, or they get transferred to a different prison. If they stay and get classified then they will move to GP, general population, that is, in the video, when we get to meet "blue", Julien Murphy, who is very well known inside the corrections system. "Blue" is charged with 2 burglaries, "Blue" is the example of someone not to be, because she is known by the prisoners and the guards. "Blue" likes to think of herself as a stud, someone who has boy qualities and looks like a boy. "Blue," says that most female prisoners have nurture needs and "Blue" takes that role that they want to nurture "Blue" and "Blue" also claims that she is also a "prison player" who has multiple girlfriends throughout the prisons. Someone like Amy Price who messed up because she got caught with weed. when Amy Price went through the intake system she was thinking on how did she get there and thinks about all of her actions and promises to change. Then the most dangerous women prisoner in max was Onjall, Onjall was charged with life in prison without parole because she burned her girlfriend alive in a car. Onjall is put into confinement for 23 hours a day because she is not a trustee. For prisoners who are trustee's, there is a prison black market that allows them, the standard is 60$, to purchase luxuries which GP's love because they can make contraband trades such as cards, cigarettes, etc. GP's have access to some contents that are contrabands to diagnostics which GP's jack up the prices because the diagnostics know that they won't be able to get those items any other way besides trading with GP's. These trading times or gambling time usually happens in the gym time that this prison offers so the inmates are able to blow off steam or get their exercise because this prison believes that it helps inmates cope with being in prison and get their daily dose of daily interaction. -z33 711
This video was about the Dallas County Jail. It has seven thousand inmates. Some inmates come in here from other jails. I thought it was interesting that half of the officers were female. Law enforcement has been a male dominated career and people have been wanting more females to join and I think this is a good step in the right direction. One of the officers ask why they underestimate her because she’s a female. I thought that was interesting because I think women can do what men do. Just because she’s a female does not mean she can not do the job. They talked about how the south tower was the most modern. Ninety percent of the people are in there for drugs. It’s the direct supervision pod. It’s a large open pod that has tables, beds, and no bars. Everyone shares on giant room. I feel like when people are by themselves all the time, it can change them and possible make them worse. I like how it’s an open concept. They can socialize with people but I feel like it can be unsafe. You never know what can happen. I thought it was interesting how a lot of the women that go to the jail are prostitutes. There was a woman named Samantha and it was her fifth time getting arrested for prostitute and she’s involved in a gang. There was a correctional officer named cadete Cob and she was nineteen. I think it’s interesting how you can get a job as a correctional officer at a young age. Before she started her first day she would say things like “just like babysitting” and “pays well and it’s not a hard job”. During her shift her mind set changed and she thought to herself “I’m scared, what did I get myself into?”. I thought that was interesting because I think a correctional officer can be a dangerous job. There is a high risk for injury. Fights can break out, people can get hurt and you never know what can happen. One of the correctional officers was searching someone and they found a handcuff key in their possession. They could of unlocked their handcuffs or they could of unlocked other peoples handcuffs and that could of been a very bad situation. They hand out razors and I know they need razors and the correctional officers make sure they get them back but I feel like that can be very dangerous. When they have that there can be a chance that someone can get injured or possible killed. There was a woman that has spent twenty years in a cell. She is on lockdown twenty three hours a day and she is know to have anger issues. I think being on locked down for almost an entire day every day is not going to do any good. Putting someone in solitary confinement does not do any good. More places should be offering imantes ways to get reward for more time out of their cell. Some places do that but not all of them. I thought it was interesting about the SRT which stands for the special response team. I’ve never hear about this team before until now. There are thirty six officers on the team and six of them are female. They help assist other officers until they get a call. One of the officers on the team said that they come across at least twenty shakes a week. They explained some of the the things that the team has that they sometimes use when something happens. They have an electric shields that they have to protect themselves if an inmate is trying to hurt them. I didn’t think they could use those. I understand having to protect yourselves but I feel like that might be a little much. -Soccer31711
Part one: The Dallas County Jail is a crowded jail that is close to capacity. The most interesting thing about this video to me was that there was mostly female officers working the jail. Yes, there were male officers in the video, but they were focused on the least. The only time they really showed up was if they were in a side shot in the intake area of the jail or while they were helping the female SRT officer. It was a disappointment in my mind that one of the female officers shown that was new said she only wanted the job because it pays well and that was just about it. She said that it looked easy so she was going to go for it. When it comes to any job in criminal justice, the job should not be looked at lightly. It is definitely not an easy job, especially one in the correctional area. Most of that job is oral, you don’t get any guns or any major weapons to protect you. All you have is your mouth, radio, and hands against several inmates (mostly male in this case) that watch your movements every day, learn your patterns of movement and the way you talk to them. If you respect them, they will respect you, but don’t get friendly with them and don’t trust them one hundred percent ever because if you are new they will definitely get under your skin because they have nothing else to lose. By the end of her work day, she was glad it was over, but she also seemed really soft spoken and no where close to confident. She’ll have to gain thick skin and a look of dominance if she wants to get through her day. She realized that and it is hard to tell if she will keep her job. She cannot go into real training until she is proven worthy dealing with the inmates. On another note, the SRT unit are higher in training and deal with the harder inmates. -Tanlion_nala711
A female SRT came to investigate a cell after a fight had broken out. The first thing that I noticed was that none of the inmates questioned her authority. None of them even bothered messing with her. Even one of the most prone to mess with female officers said that despite his confidence, she is one that he will never mess with. She explained how inmates make shanks out of the ends of sporks and use them as knives against other inmates and officers. To make the search quick and safe it was her and her backup. They had them against the wall while the others searched on the inside. One key thing about this situation was that the one that said someone had a shank was actually the one that initiated everything so he lied to try to cover himself when it was found. As a result, he was put into his own cell for while. After covering the male inmates they looked at one female inmate and it was important to note that her acting out and starting fights was not because she was a bad person but because she was more or so acting out because she no longer had the connections that she use to have. In this case it was her boyfriend that came out to see her after missing several other visits. Her mood boosted and her behavior seemed to change a bit. Let it be a male that would so and it would be completely different because social circles are less important than males. Tanlion_nala711
Part three: ON ANOTHER NOTE with the prison that we looked at, there style was completely different in style. Compared to the other one it was paramilitary. New inmates would be there to learn the rules and the way that the prison worked. It was like a bootcamp. They woke up early for drills and other things to keep them going and to remake who they were. Not for the worst but for the better. Those inmates were the ones in white. The ones in brown had been there longer and were harder to deal with. Not more white and now to brown. Here there were instantly more social circles seen. Now, focusing on Blue, she played more of the stud figure and would flirt with other women and start relationships and break their hearts later on. Some women would be affected by it while others would not be. Her way of getting through was with more sexual relations (verbal) while others would make families. They’d call each other brother (for the gay ones), sister, mom, aunt, cousin, etc. Another interesting thing to see was the way that they kind of had their own black market system because the whites could not get the better items, chapstick for example ,and would pay big to get their hands on it. Then we have other inmates like Mohammed who caused a lot of trouble due to their life sentence. They would make deals with the people in their cell, one for example wanted her to hold her items, but Mohammed kept them mostly to herself. These videos were extremely interesting because it showed how the prison world is way different than the outside world. Everyone inside acts way different but also runs their own worlds to get through it in different ways. Corrections is definitely a hard job. And those who underestimate it should really think twice. -Tanlion_nala711
Part 1: I thought that the Dallas video was very interesting to watch but also very eye-opening as to what really goes on inside a county jail. I think it is crazy their capacity size is 7,000 inmates on a given day. With that inmate number, it makes me think what their inmate to officer ratio would be. Unless they said it in the video and I just didn’t hear it lol. I thought that it was interesting and nice to hear that half the officers are women. It makes sense that the officer's number one priority is control cause if they didn’t have control it would be chaos. It is terrifying the fact that there are murderers, sex offender, drug addicts, rapist, robbers, and child molesters. I would never want to go to jail let alone prison. I would be freaked out to have to stay with them. It is also scary to hear that they beat up child molesters even though we know why they do. Just watching and listening to what happens in the intake. How there are 90 officers, 3 different shifts and again half of them are women. How the intake officers get a lot of prostitutes. I was scared for the 19-year-old who had her first day as an officer at the jail and the way she responded to the inmates. Then said says “ what am I getting myself into.” yeah that’s what i would be thinking after that too. Then there was the pregnant 18-year-old who went to visit her 37-year-old boyfriend who was in there for I think violating his probation or parole, then after his court date, they are moving him upstate. When they jail get inmates from other jail and the guy that they had received had a handcuff key in his pocket that they found. The officers talking about what could have happened if he had used it and freed other people around him was scary. Then there was the girl that they got for gang banging who they had to keep in isolation for 23 hours a day for 2 weeks because she assaulted another inmate. I don’t know why they would do that because being in isolation for 2 weeks in there 23 hours a day would be awful and so boring. -mmmchicken711
Part 2: Then there is the north tower who are the special response team or the SRT who maintain and control bad situations like if a fight broke out and also assist officers when they get the call. They have 36 officers for the special response team and 6 of them are women. One fight broke out because one inmate accused another inmate of stealing his towel and so then he got mad and went back to grab a shank that he had made from the end of a spoon that had been sharpened and tried to stab the guy he accused. The male inmates also try to manipulate female officers by getting close to them and asking them questions and asking and listening to their problems. If you give them too much information they can figure out where you live and stalk you when they get out. -mmmChicken711
The videos that we watched in class were very informative, it gave us information on both the inmate side and the CO side of prison. In the first video that we watched in class was the Correctional officer side. In Texas half of the staff is female. In the south tower, which is the most modern part, they have an open pod of inmates which there is one officer. The CO says that she always half to be on watch. Along with always being on watch the CO has to inform the inmates on important dates such as hearings and visitation. When an inmate from the pod get a visitation the CO informs them on it, when they get ready to leave the CO frisk them. When the Inmate comes back into the pod the CO has to frisk them again. In the North tower to be a CO they have 3 days of training before they are sent into the general population. To maintain control in case of a riot they have SRT. These officers have to take an extreme test that last a week. They cannot fail any of the test throughout the week of training. When I was watching the video I was surprised to see that there are 4 inmates per cell, it seems that there is no room for them to stand. To me I would think that it would cause fights between the inmates because they are always rubbing elbows. The tanks that house the violent inmates are separated by what crime they did to reduce the number of fights. In the second video that we watched in class showed us more on the inmate side of prison. 75 percent of women that are incarcerated in prison usually have 2 to 3 children. They will look for a family dynamic while they are in prison. You see that when they were interviewing Blue in many ways. In one instance she states that they all have a role in the cell. She even calls one lady “Mom,” while she was setting up another inmates bed. She also is the stud of the prison allowing some women to have the sense of a relationship with a man. Most of the women in prison usually do not have a high school education or a GED. They also have a high chance of having HIV and having some sort of mental health problem. Before they got in trouble they were probably a victim. They were a victim of some sort of abuse physical or mental. After they have been victimized they will become a offender. The crimes that women will usually do are nonviolent crimes such as drug use. In the video inmate Julie would do almost anything for drugs. She stole from her family to feed her habit. They are most likely self-medicating from the abuse that they had happen to them. If the women would do a violent crime it would most likely be in retaliation to a relationship issue. The one violent inmate we saw had killed her girlfriend because she was fighting with her. She would spray her with gasoline and light her on fire. -ClarkKent711
The video over the Dallas jail to me somewhat opened my eyes to the life of a jail or a prison guard. There are several things, parts of a guard’s duty that caught my attention as we watched the video. Throughout the video it showed one female guard watching over a good amount of roaming inmates in the jail, and that officer had no one there to immediately help her nor did she have any way to protect herself if the inmates ever wanted to attack her. If I or anyone else was working that job it would really make me or whomever works that job, show a lot of respect to the inmates. The guard would have to know how to talk to the inmates because if the inmates ever tried to attack her she would have no chance. Another point that interested me was over half of the employees that worked the Dallas jail were women. I can not even begin to describe what those women were feeling whenever they work their jobs. Even as a man I feel like there would still be a certain level of fear going into that job. Those inmates the majority of the time only see other males, so when you are a woman first starting that job you are going to be heavily tested by the male inmates, they are going to push you to the limits trying to see if you show any fear in your face. It really made me think that during the first couple of days really makes their decision for them. Those first couple of days are going to be really tough on those women, the inmates are going to see a new face, and on top of that, see a woman, this in itself can be very scary for the women just starting their new jobs. Many young women think that they want to work this job; however, when they arrive there they find out that the job is very different than what they thought it was going to be. I also found the amount of non lethal weapons the jail had on hand was pretty amazing. The Dallas jail had a whole room devoted to non lethal weapons. One of the weapons was an electric shield that when pressed onto the body of an inmate will have to a certain point the same effects of a taser. It surprised me that they were able to put those two things together and be very effective against rowdy inmates during a fight or causing problems just by themselves. The Dallas jail also had paintball guns and grenades that are almost like a flashbang. The paintball guns shoot a non lethal round that really leaves a sting on the inmates that it is fired at. The flash bang is used when there are inmates in a cell who are fighting and it is just tossed in the cell and has a deafening bang, and the majority of the time the bang stops the inmates from fighting. -crispychicken711
ReplyDeleteIn the video it informed us about a lot of these that happens in the prison with girls and boys. In the video it mentions that guys are separated by what their crime was. Which is smart because if you went to prison for something to major and you are put in the same room with someone who was murdering multiple people at a time, those men are tuff in their and will do anything to get the person to do what they want. Like they would beat you or even just use you to get what they want. If a woman works in a man prison it can be tuff for the women only because she has to learn to ignore them as much as she can. They have to be able to talk to them but not give them information about their personal life or they would think they like them and will use them or lower them to do things for them. Men in the prison mostly have gangs and, in those gangs, they seem to protect eachother in the inside when a fight break lose they are close to the scene ready. They mention that they make a shank out of the sporks, they will be able to make the bottom of the spork sharpen enough to hurt someone or themselves. It was this lady officer that was really nice in the video she just said that when she has someone in there that is really scared she just tries to talk to them and make them feel a little better even though they don’t want to be there. I forgot what this lady in the video that was basically there whenever something like a fight or a riot is happening in the prison they have a whole room filled with weapon like an electric shield and these guns that will sting once they shoot them. one guy says the only lady in that position is someone not to mess with because she does not play around. In the women prison it is way different they start out like a boot camp type of vibe and there first name is inmate and their number and I like that because it can help reshape the person to be better. In the video it also showed how the women treat the others if they have kids at home being away from them kids can make them want to baby someone else in the prison just make them feel like they have responsibility just like they did in the outside world. It was a really good video because we were able to see how things look in the inside.-babyblue711
ReplyDeleteI thought this video was very informative and interesting. The amount of women that are incarcerated have a very high mental health problem. As the video interviewed different female inmates, you could tell. There was one particular inmate that was trusted with someone’s compensatory and not even two hours later she was already deciding what she was keeping for herself and what she was selling on their “black market” in order to make money. Another female didn’t care if she was getting in trouble or not. She would sneak off from her pod to go and try and start fights with the other females across the prison. Which the normal person would realize that they could get out early by being good, listening and following the rules, and even going above and beyond to make it a point to be a better person. But some didn’t care if they got locked in isolation, or got in trouble, they were going to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. I believe that the more military style in prisons and jails makes for the inmates to be more respectful and more cooperative. Which not only makes the officers jobs more easy, it will help the inmates in the long run. They want prison to be a whole different world, they want to break down the inmates and make the cry and want to leave. The officer’s jobs is to make them hate it enough so they won’t want to come back. They want the inmates to become better people when they leave and realize that this is where they can start their lives over, therefore they make prison intolerant for breaking rules and they have very strict rules and regulations. Many people just make the wrong decision and end up locked up but then there are other people who enjoy being incarcerated. Many people who are reoffenders will meet up and reunite with other reoffenders they have been locked up with before. The inmates are given little independence and everything they want or need they have to work for. Women sometimes even have to work for their dignity kits. This I believe is a little inhumane because they can’t pick and choose whether they have a menstrual cycle or not. Especially because birth control is not allowed in prisons. People that are in isolation are in a special management program that the officers have to maintain a control. They are on lockdown and are in their cells twenty-three hours a day, usually for thirty days depending on what they did. Sometimes the only thing that the inmates are upset about when they are in isolation is that they can't go to the store and get compensatory. But they normally do not even care what type of situations they are in. ONce you are in prison they all have their own little family, just like how we pick our friends and the people around us. But they normally don’t trust the people that are their friends. The know better to not trust anyone in the prison, Who knows if they will steal your things or turn their back on you. A lot of people want the typical replication of their environment in the prison and decide to replicate it that way. But as a whole, they have more of a group identity than an individual. They are just an inmate with a number. Some females sell their bodies on order to get money for the store, or find someone who fits the masculine male to latch onto. ProbdrinkingStar$’s711
ReplyDeleteWatching the Dallas County Jail documentary just prior to attending the jail tour at the Peoria County Sheriff’s office was definitely an eye opening experience. Watching this video before going on the tour definitely gave us some negative expectations of what to expect when we went to the Peoria Jail, but we were definitely surprised when we did take the tour and found out the two were significantly different. The first big difference I would like to point out is that the Dallas County Jail is very close to its maximum capacity, whereas the Peoria Jail is not even close anymore. Over the past 5 years, the sheriff of Peoria has reduced the jail population by 50%, down from over 600 to I believe roughly 237 inmates at the time of our tour. Not only does this inmate reduction help with spending costs, but it reduces the amount of danger, as well as helping keep the inmate to correctional officer ratio much better. The Dallas Jail had 7,000 inmates at the time of the video, with 300 inmates being processed everyday and 100,000/year. The range of charges of offenders in the Dallas jail range anywhere from prostitution (very common to receive multiple prostitutes on a daily basis), to murderers, rapists, and child molestors. The way the Dallas County Jail was designed is based on a direct supervision model, in which 1 DS (direct supervisor) is locked in a pod with the inmates, with only a radio, panic button, and some keys. During the filming of the video, there was a guy that came into the facility, I believe who was transferred from another jail facility, who had on his person, a handcuff key, as well as a half smoked joint. This was extremely surprising not only that he was able to bring these items over with him after being searched, but that he was even able to get his hands on a handcuff key. What’s even more scary is the fact that he had plenty of opportunities that could’ve ended extremely poorly for either the staff or himself had he decided to use the key on himself or any other inmates. Something the narrator said during the video was that on a weekly basis, roughly 20+ shanks are found, but most are not used. In the video, we did see the aftermath of a “scuffle” in which one inmate had accused another of his cell members of stealing something of his, so one of them pulled a shank made from a spoon and tried attacking the other with it. In this kind of situation, both inmates would be punished for fighting, even though one instigated it and pulled a shank, while the other was simply defending himself. GMan219711
ReplyDeleteThis video was very interesting as it portrayed a side of prison I hadn’t considered. Dallas County Jail is a fairly large prison as it holds on average 7,000 inmates on any given day. They intake around 100,000 people every year. It’s hard to truly understand what those numbers look like in real life with real people. 100,000 people a year in only one jail in only one county, that is just slightly mind blowing. In the video, one of the officers stated that the intake process is the busiest between two and six in the morning. This doesn’t come to much of a surprise as the majority of crime occurs during the night hours. Half of the officers that are employed at the Dallas county jail are females. I found this to be very interesting. I am encouraged to learn that many females are being hired in jails across the country. I think this neat, as it displays the changing view that society has for correctional officers and the rolls of women. A correctional officer is well paid career as it is an important job in the community. There is so much that is required from an officer, their job is a highly stressful job with great demand. However, they are only given three days of training before they are placed on the job in the Dallas County Jail. These officers are required to handle the 7,000 inmates with only three days of training. Some how that just does not seem very fair to the officers. Personally, I feel only three days of training is far from enough to be prepared for this line of work since there are so many risks involved. I am largely uninformed of jail protocols, but I was greatly surprised to learn this. The Dallas County Jail had many different weapons that the officers could use incase there was a situation that required great force. One of the weapons the officers could utilize was a shield that used electric shocks. If the inmate would get touched by the electrical strip on the shield, they would get shocked. This tool acts as protection for the officer and a weapon against the inmate all in one. I think this is a pretty neat as it does not give long term effects to the inmate like a bullet would, but it also contains and controls the inmate. This tool is highly useful for jail confrontations. Within the jail there is a group that handles forceful inmate disrupts. This group is called the special response team (SRT) they have the authority to use more extreme weapons than other officers do. The Dallas County Jail has a team, six members of the team are females. This is a fairly new phenomenon as a few years ago the team was only male. They are required a weeks’ worth of physical tests in order to become a team member. I found this to be very interesting. Since the other officers are only required three days of total training while SRT need seven days of just physical training. I think every correctional officer would greatly benefit from the added training that the SRT officers require. -CoalRoller711
ReplyDeleteAfter touring the jail, and watching the videos on what working in a prison as a corrections officer. In the video we watched, it was documenting the Dallas County Jail. Over half of the staff running that jail is female, so it makes it that much easier for the inmates, to interact with the female guards. I think that it's good, and bad having a large presence of females in the jail. I think that bad side of it is, I feel the inmates can develop more of a relationship easier than with male correction officers. Females like to care for people than males, so It would make it easier in that sense. I think the good side to having over half the staff being female, is it shows that females can handle the rough and intense job of a corrections officer. I think the idea of direct supervision is also good in bad in some ways. I feel that it is good because inmates are not locked in cells, it is open dormitories and inmates get more of an opportunity to interact with one another. I also think it allows them to do more things, to work towards good time and receiving parole. I think it is bad, and dangerous for the correction officer. There is one officer locked in a pod with multiple inmates, who have an open dormitory. It is easier for the inmates to assault, and fight each other, and the officer who is in charge of the pod. The jail receives 300 inmates a day. I feel that even though that number seems very high, I feel it is not. Considering the fact that dallas is a very large are, with a very large amount of people living in that area. It was also very interesting to hear that when a cadet gets hired on they only get 3 days of training before they get sent into the jail. Once they prove themselves, then they will be sent to the academy. I Think that is a great method. Before wasting all that money on someone to send them to the academy, and having them come back and quit. It prevents that from happening, it lets the person see if that job really is for him or her.I also think the special response team is a great idea, it's good to have specially trained individuals ready to go if something very serious were to happen. It prevents things like prison riots, and murders, and all the other crazy things inmates do. I like the method of how the prison assigns the inmates jobs to keep them busy, and reduce the idleness the inmate has in prison.
ReplyDeleteI-Like-Cereal711
As juveniles are often influenced by different factors to commit crimes, they are more likely to get caught and sent to a JDC. As we have been learning in class, the influence of family and peers has the strongest effect on juveniles. The living environment aren't giving a good example, so they find an easy way to make money. In our country, we have far more juveniles locked up for petty crimes than any other country in the world. In the “Prison Kids” video, it is mentioned that instead of locking up juveniles for the offenses made, they should be helping them rehabilitate to return to society. Usually, the juveniles that commit crime and are in prison are the ones with unhealthy homes and have gone through a trauma in their life. While being locked up most of them feel as if they are going crazy especially if place in solitary confinement and later a lot of them are diagnosed with some type of mental health. Not only did it affect them mentally but also affected their behavior. Instead of thinking about what they could do better to listen and understand, it would only make them worse according to one other the juveniles in the video. Juveniles are still maturing and developing until the average age of twenty-five. They are still learning to distinguish the positive and negative reasoning for certain behaviors, but as a society we punish them instead of understanding and helping them. There are juveniles that can be charged as adults and once charged as an adult the Juveniles Justice System doesn’t have any jurisdiction. According to “Prison Kids” it is said that Black Americans and other minorities are mostly charged as adults. It is not a hundred percent positive that being charged as an adult will help, so it is a risk that is being taken. There are many cases where the juvenile is just punished and not given a chance to change before getting out and returning to the community. There one juvenile that was incarcerated said that if he committed the crime the needs to man up and deal with the consequences. I think that shows maturity in someone’s mentality and rehabilitation to understand that you can get in trouble again. I also think that for a juvenile the death penalty shouldn’t be a choice once transferred to an adult court for the jury or judge because of his/his brain is still developing of the juvenile. I also think that if a juvenile is ever sentenced life in prison that there should be given the chance of parole so that could be an incentive to not cause problems with other inmates in prison. Nor become an influence on other people that are most likely to get out before themselves. taco007
ReplyDeleteWatching the video of the Dallas County Jail was very eye opening. One of the first things that was said in the video was that the Dallas county jail staff was nearly half female. That is a pretty cool fact to me because a lot of the times a lot of these jails and agencies are mainly dominated by males. In the jail, the correctional officers are armed with just radios and a panic button. I knew that correctional officers would have a radio but I did not even know that panic buttons were a thing in jails. It would be a great thing for all correctional officers to have on them just in case they are in certain situations where they can not get ahold of their radios. Also, this jail is huge, they process about three hundred inmates a day there. That is a crazy amount of people coming to jail in one day and they do it every day, putting them at around one hundred thousand people a year. The video also followed a young correctional officer on her first day of working as a correctional officer that day. She was only 19 years old starting as a correctional officer. While they were following her around, the video mentioned that the 19 year old female correctional officer had only received three days of training before they started her out in the jail as a correctional officer. Three days? That is actually really scary. Even if you were a larger male, I still feel like you would need a heck of a lot more than just three days of training before they should be thrown into the jail to start working. I am sure there is a lot you could learn in three days but there is going to be way more stuff about the job that you are not going to have a clue about. You may be able to learn the way the jail works or how to do some of the paper work in the jail. In three days you are not going to be able to learn how to effectively defend yourself from some of these inmates, you will not learn as much as you should about how to talk to people and be able to de escalate certain situations. There will be a lot that you will not know how to do by only having three days of training before you start. Also in the video it said that if an inmate assaulted another inmate, they could possible go to lockdown, which is two weeks in an isolated cell and being locked up for 23 hours a day. Two weeks of being locked up for 23 hours a day would be absolutely terrible if you as me. The jail had a SRT which stands for a special response team that would go into pods when a fight or something would break out so they could break them up. There were 36 people on the special response team and six of them were female, which is kind of cool. It was an interesting video for sure. -Steel711
ReplyDeleteIn the Dallas county jail, half of the staff is made up of female correctional officers. The correctional officers say that control is a major priority. There are more than 7,000 inmates within the Dallas county jail. There is also a large pod with just one officer locked inside. Each correctional officer is given a radio and a panic button. For the inmates coming in, 90% of them are in there due to drugs. Nearly 300 inmates are processed every day and 100,000 a year. The whole jail takes 90 officers to run. One of the officers said they get a lot of female prostitutes. Recruits also get 3 days on the job training and one of the newer recruits said, "What am I getting myself into?" on the camera and that made me laugh but also cringe as early in the video she had said she was 19 years old and accepted this as her first job cause she thought it would be easy. By saying it is easy, or at least she thought, she was clearly in for a harsh and rude awakening as nothing about working inside the jail is or will be easy. She realized that pretty quickly by second guessing why she got herself into this. Dallas county can also hold you in for sixth months. They even have a special response team which is there to deal with any seriousness that breaks out within the jail needing immediate attention. On a weekly basis, they come across 20+ shanks. One of the senior female correction officers said you have to watch the way you interact with the male inmates being a female because they can easily get the wrong idea. She said the more information you give to an inmate, the more they can do with that, regarding stalking and even accessing you on the internet. This in particular, I feel is very important because one of the male inmates said how he will groom the female guards and it is to get them to fall for their tricks and manipulate them. He said females love the attention and the ones that do make it very easy. There are some men in there too that had stated, "No woman should be telling us what to do". Some people really just think that way and I liked how professional the women were in this and instead of piping up and saying something they should refrain from saying, they were incredibly calm and collected but assertive so the men saying this understood they could feel that way and it is their right to fell that way but they will have to listen to the female officers whether they like that or not. In the Dallas county jail they also have single cells, which are for the high profile or death row inmates. I thought that was neat and intense. Something else I found interesting was when an inmate said that, "the streets raised me" and he had no parental figures growing up. I know we are learning in class the importance of family and reasoning behind delinquency which sets the grounding for a lot of these now adults. I really liked the video and how informational it was. It has given me a visual. -notacop711
ReplyDeleteThere is a saying "there is three sides to a story; your side, their side,and the truth." At Wasbash Valley Correctional Institution many of the inmates join gangs at a young age, for belongness and protection which leads them to being incarcerated or being deceased. Which means there is no way out of the gang once your in. Many of the inmates have absent fathers and could be one of the leading causes why they make the choices the made to be in jail. In the jail that the are in they eat, sleep, and learn all in one unit. Up to fifty teenage boys come to the jail for multiple crimes. The biggest crimes are robbery and murder. Most juveniles are there under ten years unless the crime was very serious. However, no juveniles can be sentenced to death penalty. When the new inmates come in to the jail there is a case worker that they have talk to them about counseling and the most important things. One of the inmates in the jail is in there for sixty five years for murder and he is only seventeen years old. He talks about how he regrets doing what he did. But he also states how it changed his life and how his life stopped just like the kid that he killed. Another inmate is in there for fifty five years for murder also. Him and his friends broke into a persons house for "quick money" and one of his friends ends up dead at the scene from the person who was in the house at the time. Not to mention he was expelled from school and getting high everyday with his friends. After one hundred eighty days of good behavior the inmates are entitled to get a TV in their room and the also enter the reward program for more rewards for good behavior. However if any inmate has bad behavior they have a chance of being forced to move to the adult jail. One inmate threw liquid substance on a officer but meant to throw it on a inmate and is now in the segregation unit for three months and is treated like an adult and not to mention he was already eighteen years old going to the adult prison. The inmate who did this is in jail for aggravated battery, he shot a man who hit his mom. One thing I noticed about him is that he owns up to all his mistakes when a lot of inmates don't. Inmates have the ability to buy their own treats with money that is sent to them. Most inmates have a goal to finish school while they are in jail and to stay focused on getting out as soon as possible. The inmate who got sentenced to sixty five years is trying everything he can to shorten his time because he regrets what he done and learned from his mistakes and for his family. However, he is having a hard time doing that because of how serious his crime is.
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A lot of the inmates are sentenced as an adult for their crimes. The inmates that they were interviewing were smart and was regretting everything. Most inmates regret what they’ve done and which they could start over. The case worker and staff are trying to help them do better in life and help them not make more mistakes. The case worker explains her experience with the inmates and shows how much she cares about them. Also the case worker goes by the rules and shows no favoritism to the inmates. She states that they are like her kids but then states how many inmates are in jail and explains how its too much for her to handle as her kids. The inmates show in the video that they respect ger and listen to her. In reality the inmates need her throughout their journey in jail. Most of the inmates never had somebody they could sit down and talk to in their past. She is there to help them with that. She states how the inmates are unhealthy and come from unhealthy families and needs guidance. The staff try to guide the inmates as much as possible. They try to do everything to prevent violence from happening but one staff member states how it always seems to happen no matter what. The inmate named Jesus Macedo-Perez is not eligible for release until 2045. The next inmate named Blake Laymans earliest release date is 2040 but he has launched a appeal. Then the inmate Marquise Lee has left the segregation unit and is now in the adult wing.
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The state of Georgia's women prison is a medium to maximum prison. While watching the video they mentioned that 70 percent of the women inside this prison does not have a high school diploma, let alone a GED. They also mention that 70 percent of women in the prison also have at least one child, most of the women are there for a drug crime, non-violent crime. They show their intake process, where inmates come into there prison. During intake, they get searched, fingerprinted, questioned, etc. This prison has more of a military type system that they go by, they do drills, they march, they listen to commands, they sing to a rhythm. During the intake system, the inmates where white, white represents new people into the person and is also called diagnostics, the prison is trying to figure out where the inmate belongs inside the prison, the most common things that happen in diagnostics is one of three things, they go home, they stay and go to GP, general population, or they get transferred to a different prison. If they stay and get classified then they will move to GP, general population, that is, in the video, when we get to meet "blue", Julien Murphy, who is very well known inside the corrections system. "Blue" is charged with 2 burglaries, "Blue" is the example of someone not to be, because she is known by the prisoners and the guards. "Blue" likes to think of herself as a stud, someone who has boy qualities and looks like a boy. "Blue," says that most female prisoners have nurture needs and "Blue" takes that role that they want to nurture "Blue" and "Blue" also claims that she is also a "prison player" who has multiple girlfriends throughout the prisons. Someone like Amy Price who messed up because she got caught with weed. when Amy Price went through the intake system she was thinking on how did she get there and thinks about all of her actions and promises to change. Then the most dangerous women prisoner in max was Onjall, Onjall was charged with life in prison without parole because she burned her girlfriend alive in a car. Onjall is put into confinement for 23 hours a day because she is not a trustee. For prisoners who are trustee's, there is a prison black market that allows them, the standard is 60$, to purchase luxuries which GP's love because they can make contraband trades such as cards, cigarettes, etc. GP's have access to some contents that are contrabands to diagnostics which GP's jack up the prices because the diagnostics know that they won't be able to get those items any other way besides trading with GP's. These trading times or gambling time usually happens in the gym time that this prison offers so the inmates are able to blow off steam or get their exercise because this prison believes that it helps inmates cope with being in prison and get their daily dose of daily interaction.
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This video was about the Dallas County Jail. It has seven thousand inmates. Some inmates come in here from other jails. I thought it was interesting that half of the officers were female. Law enforcement has been a male dominated career and people have been wanting more females to join and I think this is a good step in the right direction. One of the officers ask why they underestimate her because she’s a female. I thought that was interesting because I think women can do what men do. Just because she’s a female does not mean she can not do the job. They talked about how the south tower was the most modern. Ninety percent of the people are in there for drugs. It’s the direct supervision pod. It’s a large open pod that has tables, beds, and no bars. Everyone shares on giant room. I feel like when people are by themselves all the time, it can change them and possible make them worse. I like how it’s an open concept. They can socialize with people but I feel like it can be unsafe. You never know what can happen. I thought it was interesting how a lot of the women that go to the jail are prostitutes. There was a woman named Samantha and it was her fifth time getting arrested for prostitute and she’s involved in a gang. There was a correctional officer named cadete Cob and she was nineteen. I think it’s interesting how you can get a job as a correctional officer at a young age. Before she started her first day she would say things like “just like babysitting” and “pays well and it’s not a hard job”. During her shift her mind set changed and she thought to herself “I’m scared, what did I get myself into?”. I thought that was interesting because I think a correctional officer can be a dangerous job. There is a high risk for injury. Fights can break out, people can get hurt and you never know what can happen. One of the correctional officers was searching someone and they found a handcuff key in their possession. They could of unlocked their handcuffs or they could of unlocked other peoples handcuffs and that could of been a very bad situation. They hand out razors and I know they need razors and the correctional officers make sure they get them back but I feel like that can be very dangerous. When they have that there can be a chance that someone can get injured or possible killed. There was a woman that has spent twenty years in a cell. She is on lockdown twenty three hours a day and she is know to have anger issues. I think being on locked down for almost an entire day every day is not going to do any good. Putting someone in solitary confinement does not do any good. More places should be offering imantes ways to get reward for more time out of their cell. Some places do that but not all of them. I thought it was interesting about the SRT which stands for the special response team. I’ve never hear about this team before until now. There are thirty six officers on the team and six of them are female. They help assist other officers until they get a call. One of the officers on the team said that they come across at least twenty shakes a week. They explained some of the the things that the team has that they sometimes use when something happens. They have an electric shields that they have to protect themselves if an inmate is trying to hurt them. I didn’t think they could use those. I understand having to protect yourselves but I feel like that might be a little much. -Soccer31711
ReplyDeletePart one: The Dallas County Jail is a crowded jail that is close to capacity. The most interesting thing about this video to me was that there was mostly female officers working the jail. Yes, there were male officers in the video, but they were focused on the least. The only time they really showed up was if they were in a side shot in the intake area of the jail or while they were helping the female SRT officer. It was a disappointment in my mind that one of the female officers shown that was new said she only wanted the job because it pays well and that was just about it. She said that it looked easy so she was going to go for it. When it comes to any job in criminal justice, the job should not be looked at lightly. It is definitely not an easy job, especially one in the correctional area. Most of that job is oral, you don’t get any guns or any major weapons to protect you. All you have is your mouth, radio, and hands against several inmates (mostly male in this case) that watch your movements every day, learn your patterns of movement and the way you talk to them. If you respect them, they will respect you, but don’t get friendly with them and don’t trust them one hundred percent ever because if you are new they will definitely get under your skin because they have nothing else to lose. By the end of her work day, she was glad it was over, but she also seemed really soft spoken and no where close to confident. She’ll have to gain thick skin and a look of dominance if she wants to get through her day. She realized that and it is hard to tell if she will keep her job. She cannot go into real training until she is proven worthy dealing with the inmates. On another note, the SRT unit are higher in training and deal with the harder inmates. -Tanlion_nala711
ReplyDeleteA female SRT came to investigate a cell after a fight had broken out. The first thing that I noticed was that none of the inmates questioned her authority. None of them even bothered messing with her. Even one of the most prone to mess with female officers said that despite his confidence, she is one that he will never mess with. She explained how inmates make shanks out of the ends of sporks and use them as knives against other inmates and officers. To make the search quick and safe it was her and her backup. They had them against the wall while the others searched on the inside. One key thing about this situation was that the one that said someone had a shank was actually the one that initiated everything so he lied to try to cover himself when it was found. As a result, he was put into his own cell for while. After covering the male inmates they looked at one female inmate and it was important to note that her acting out and starting fights was not because she was a bad person but because she was more or so acting out because she no longer had the connections that she use to have. In this case it was her boyfriend that came out to see her after missing several other visits. Her mood boosted and her behavior seemed to change a bit. Let it be a male that would so and it would be completely different because social circles are less important than males. Tanlion_nala711
ReplyDeletePart three: ON ANOTHER NOTE with the prison that we looked at, there style was completely different in style. Compared to the other one it was paramilitary. New inmates would be there to learn the rules and the way that the prison worked. It was like a bootcamp. They woke up early for drills and other things to keep them going and to remake who they were. Not for the worst but for the better. Those inmates were the ones in white. The ones in brown had been there longer and were harder to deal with. Not more white and now to brown. Here there were instantly more social circles seen. Now, focusing on Blue, she played more of the stud figure and would flirt with other women and start relationships and break their hearts later on. Some women would be affected by it while others would not be. Her way of getting through was with more sexual relations (verbal) while others would make families. They’d call each other brother (for the gay ones), sister, mom, aunt, cousin, etc. Another interesting thing to see was the way that they kind of had their own black market system because the whites could not get the better items, chapstick for example ,and would pay big to get their hands on it. Then we have other inmates like Mohammed who caused a lot of trouble due to their life sentence. They would make deals with the people in their cell, one for example wanted her to hold her items, but Mohammed kept them mostly to herself. These videos were extremely interesting because it showed how the prison world is way different than the outside world. Everyone inside acts way different but also runs their own worlds to get through it in different ways. Corrections is definitely a hard job. And those who underestimate it should really think twice. -Tanlion_nala711
ReplyDeletePart 1: I thought that the Dallas video was very interesting to watch but also very eye-opening as to what really goes on inside a county jail. I think it is crazy their capacity size is 7,000 inmates on a given day. With that inmate number, it makes me think what their inmate to officer ratio would be. Unless they said it in the video and I just didn’t hear it lol. I thought that it was interesting and nice to hear that half the officers are women. It makes sense that the officer's number one priority is control cause if they didn’t have control it would be chaos. It is terrifying the fact that there are murderers, sex offender, drug addicts, rapist, robbers, and child molesters. I would never want to go to jail let alone prison. I would be freaked out to have to stay with them. It is also scary to hear that they beat up child molesters even though we know why they do. Just watching and listening to what happens in the intake. How there are 90 officers, 3 different shifts and again half of them are women. How the intake officers get a lot of prostitutes. I was scared for the 19-year-old who had her first day as an officer at the jail and the way she responded to the inmates. Then said says “ what am I getting myself into.” yeah that’s what i would be thinking after that too. Then there was the pregnant 18-year-old who went to visit her 37-year-old boyfriend who was in there for I think violating his probation or parole, then after his court date, they are moving him upstate. When they jail get inmates from other jail and the guy that they had received had a handcuff key in his pocket that they found. The officers talking about what could have happened if he had used it and freed other people around him was scary. Then there was the girl that they got for gang banging who they had to keep in isolation for 23 hours a day for 2 weeks because she assaulted another inmate. I don’t know why they would do that because being in isolation for 2 weeks in there 23 hours a day would be awful and so boring. -mmmchicken711
ReplyDeletePart 2: Then there is the north tower who are the special response team or the SRT who maintain and control bad situations like if a fight broke out and also assist officers when they get the call. They have 36 officers for the special response team and 6 of them are women. One fight broke out because one inmate accused another inmate of stealing his towel and so then he got mad and went back to grab a shank that he had made from the end of a spoon that had been sharpened and tried to stab the guy he accused. The male inmates also try to manipulate female officers by getting close to them and asking them questions and asking and listening to their problems. If you give them too much information they can figure out where you live and stalk you when they get out. -mmmChicken711
ReplyDeleteThe videos that we watched in class were very informative, it gave us information on both the inmate side and the CO side of prison. In the first video that we watched in class was the Correctional officer side. In Texas half of the staff is female. In the south tower, which is the most modern part, they have an open pod of inmates which there is one officer. The CO says that she always half to be on watch. Along with always being on watch the CO has to inform the inmates on important dates such as hearings and visitation. When an inmate from the pod get a visitation the CO informs them on it, when they get ready to leave the CO frisk them. When the Inmate comes back into the pod the CO has to frisk them again. In the North tower to be a CO they have 3 days of training before they are sent into the general population. To maintain control in case of a riot they have SRT. These officers have to take an extreme test that last a week. They cannot fail any of the test throughout the week of training. When I was watching the video I was surprised to see that there are 4 inmates per cell, it seems that there is no room for them to stand. To me I would think that it would cause fights between the inmates because they are always rubbing elbows. The tanks that house the violent inmates are separated by what crime they did to reduce the number of fights. In the second video that we watched in class showed us more on the inmate side of prison. 75 percent of women that are incarcerated in prison usually have 2 to 3 children. They will look for a family dynamic while they are in prison. You see that when they were interviewing Blue in many ways. In one instance she states that they all have a role in the cell. She even calls one lady “Mom,” while she was setting up another inmates bed. She also is the stud of the prison allowing some women to have the sense of a relationship with a man. Most of the women in prison usually do not have a high school education or a GED. They also have a high chance of having HIV and having some sort of mental health problem. Before they got in trouble they were probably a victim. They were a victim of some sort of abuse physical or mental. After they have been victimized they will become a offender. The crimes that women will usually do are nonviolent crimes such as drug use. In the video inmate Julie would do almost anything for drugs. She stole from her family to feed her habit. They are most likely self-medicating from the abuse that they had happen to them. If the women would do a violent crime it would most likely be in retaliation to a relationship issue. The one violent inmate we saw had killed her girlfriend because she was fighting with her. She would spray her with gasoline and light her on fire. -ClarkKent711
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