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How Atrocious Prisons Conditions Make Us All Less Safe

The American prison system seems designed to ensure that people return to incarceration instead of successfully reentering society.

• Shon Hopwood
• Prison and Jail Reform
• Social & Economic Harm

This essay is part of the  Brennan Center’s series  examining  the punitive excess that has come to define America’s criminal legal system .

Imagine one of those dystopian movies in which some character inhabits a world marked by dehumanization and a continual state of fear, neglect, and physical violence — The Hunger Games , for instance, or Mad Max . Now imagine that the people living in those worlds return to ours to become your neighbors. After such brutal traumatization, is it any wonder that they might struggle to obtain stable housing or employment, manage mental illness, deal with conflict, or become a better spouse or parent?

This is no fantasy world. American prisons cage millions of human beings in conditions similar to those movies. Of the more than 1.5 million people incarcerated in American prisons in 2019, more than 95 percent will be released back into the community at some point, at a rate of around 600,000 people each year. Given those numbers, we should ensure that those in our prisons come home better off, not worse — for their sake, but for society’s as well.

Yet our prisons fail miserably at preparing people for a law-abiding and successful life after release. A long-term study of recidivism rates of people released from state prisons from 2005 to 2014 found that 68 percent were arrested within three years and 83 percent were arrested within nine years following their release. And evidence confirms the great irony of our American criminal justice system: the longer someone spends in “corrections,” the less likely they are to stay out of jail or prison after their release. The data tells us that people are spending more time in prisons and the longest prison terms just keep getting longer, and thus our system of mass incarceration all but assures high rates of recidivism.

It is not difficult to understand why our prisons largely fail at preparing people to return to society successfully. American prisons are dangerous. Most are understaffed and overpopulated. Because of inadequate supervision, people in our prisons are exposed to incredible amounts of violence, including sexual violence. As just one example, in 2019 the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division concluded that Alabama’s prison system failed to protect prisoners from astounding levels of homicide and rape. In a single week, there were four stabbings (one that involved a death), three sexual assaults, several beatings, and one person’s bed set on fire as he slept.

Our prisons are so violent that they meaningfully impact the rehabilitation efforts for those inside them. There is an ever-present fear of violence in our gladiator-style prisons, where people have no protection from it. Incarcerated people who frequently witness violence and feel helpless to protect against it can experience post-traumatic stress symptoms — such as anxiety, depression, paranoia, and difficulty with emotional regulation — that last years after their release from custody. Because escalating conflict is the norm for those serving time in American prisons (often provoking violence as a self-defense mechanism), when they face conflict after being released, they are ill-equipped to handle it in a productive way. If the number of people impacted by prison violence was small, this situation would still be unjust and inhumane. But when more than 113 million Americans have had a close family member in jail or prison, the social costs can be cataclysmic.

Part of the reason our prisons are so violent is due to the idleness that occurs in them. As prison systems expanded over the last four decades, many states rejected the role of rehabilitation and reduced the number of available rehabilitation and educational programs. In Florida, which is the nation’s third largest prison system, there are virtually no education programs for prisoners, even though research shows that those programs reduce violence in prison and the recidivism rate for those released from prison.

It is not just the violence that is harmful. How American prisons are designed negatively impacts the ability of people to be self-reliant after their release. Prisons create social isolation by taking people from their communities and placing them behind razor wire, in locked cages. Through strict authoritarianism, rules, and control, prisons lessen personal autonomy and increase institutional dependence. This ensures that people learn to rely upon the free room and board only a prison can offer, thus rendering them less able to cope with economic demands upon release .

The location of our prisons also causes harm. Many prisons are located far away from cities and hundreds of miles from prisoners’ families. Consequently, family relationships deteriorate, impacting both prisoners and their loved ones. Just this past Mother’s Day, more than 150,000 imprisoned mothers spent the day apart from their children. As children with an incarcerated parent run greater risks of health and psychological problems, lower economic wellbeing, and decreased educational attainment, the aggravating effect of imprisonment far from one’s family is obvious.

The ill-considered location of prisons also increases the likelihood of inadequate attention paid to people with serious mental issues, who are widely present in our prisons. Prisons in remote and rural areas fail to hire and retain mental health professionals , and due to a lack of such resources, misdiagnosis of serious mental health issues is more likely. And not only is the treatment of such prisoners inadequate, but false negative determinations can also make it more difficult for them to receive disability benefits or treatment once released.

Prisons tend to rinse away the parts that make us human. They continue to use solitary confinement as a mechanism for dealing with idleness and misconduct, despite studies showing that it creates or exacerbates mental illness. Our prisons also foster an environment that values dehumanization and cruelty. At the federal prison in which I served for more than a decade, I watched correctional officers handcuff and then kick a friend of mine who had a softball-sized hernia protruding from his stomach. Because he was asking for medical attention, they treated him like a dog. There was little empathy in that place. And for over 10 years of my life, when those in authority addressed me, it was with the label “inmate.” The message every day, both explicitly and implicitly, was that I was unworthy of respect and dignity. Such an environment leads people to have a diminished sense of self-worth and personal value , affecting a person’s ability to empathize with others. The ability to empathize is a vital step towards rehabilitation, and when our prisons fail to rehabilitate, public safety ultimately suffers.

In sum, if you were to design a system to perpetuate intergenerational cycles of violence and imprisonment in communities already overburdened by criminal justice involvement, then the American prison system is what you would create. It routinely and persistently fails to produce the fair and just outcomes that will make us all safer.

So what can be done to fix our prisons? One of the reasons why our prison systems are so immune to change is because the worst of prison abuses occur behind closed doors, away from public view. Few prison systems have the independent oversight and transparency needed to ensure that they implement the best policies or comply with constitutional protections such as the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment .

There is no reason why our prisons should not be modeled on the principle of human dignity , which respects the worth of every human being. If you translated that into policy, it would mean that people in prison would be protected from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and would be provided with adequate mental health and medical treatment. It would mean prison systems would foster interpersonal relationships by placing people in facilities close to their loved ones and allowing ample in-person, phone, and video visitation. It would mean providing training on how to become better citizens, spouses, and parents. And it would mean offering educational and vocational programs designed to provide job skills for reentry, and behavioral programs designed to create empathy and autonomy, thereby preparing former prisoners to lead law-abiding and successful lives.

Shon Hopwood is a lawyer and associate professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. He served over 10 years in federal prison and is the author of Law Man: Memoir of Jailhouse Lawyer .

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The Violence Against People Behind Bars That We Don’t See

T he constant violence perpetrated by police officers on Black and Latino people can now be seen by the broader public, thanks to cellphone videos and police bodycam footage. But what we almost never see is the regular abuse people behind bars endure at the hands of correctional officers.

The use of excessive force against prisoners, from punches to chemical spraying, is an everyday occurrence that violates our constitution. Taking measures like installing more cameras to hold perpetrators accountable and implementing meaningful oversight of our nation’s prisons are important to curb abhorrent conditions of confinement. But we need to also prioritize taking steps to significantly reduce mass incarceration so that we are no longer the world’s number one incarcerator.

The late Columbia Law School professor Robert A. Ferguson put it best: we have created a criminal justice system that is divided so that, post-conviction, the “suffering of the convicted is carefully arranged to take place somewhere out of sight.”

In a recent report , the Justice Department and Alabama’s three U.S. attorneys exposed what happens behind the prison gates in their state. They found pervasive use of excessive force against those incarcerated in men’s prisons, identifying violations of excessive force rules in 12 of the 13 Alabama prisons reviewed. Correctional officers, the report said, often relied on force “while making no effort to de-escalate tense situations.”

It took years of officials visiting these prisons, interviewing those who worked and were imprisoned there, speaking to family members of those who were incarcerated, and analyzing reams of testimony, documents, emails, videos, medical records, and more to understand how those who were under the supervision of the state of Alabama were deprived of not only their constitutional rights, but of their humanity.

In one incident, a prisoner stuck his tongue out at a sergeant. The sergeant responded by punching the handcuffed prisoner in the face. The report also found that Alabama’s correctional officers frequently use chemical spray on prisoners while they remained in locked cells.

Although this report was not focused on racial disparities, it’s important to acknowledge who comprises Alabama’s male prisons. Currently, Black men represent 50% of Alabama’s overall prison population and 55% of its male prison population. Yet, only 26.6% of Alabama’s overall population is Black.

The Justice Department’s recommendations for how to remedy Alabama’s constitutional violations range from installing more cameras to allowing prisoners to register formal complaints about uses of force. It is shocking that some of the recommendations aren’t already status quo. But cases of violent staff and a lack of accountability are commonplace beyond Alabama in our country’s vast network of jails, prisons, and detention centers. A group of formerly incarcerated women from New Jersey recently testified they were sexually assaulted and harassed by corrections officers who came into their cells at night while security cameras were pointed at ceilings. In 2018, the Intercept published data uncovering that 1,224 instances of sexual assault were reported in ICE detention centers and only 43 complaints were investigated.

These problems can’t be fixed overnight, yet improvements like some of the DOJ’s recommendations are within reach. In addition, and most importantly, we need to meaningfully reduce our prison population.

Research from the Brennan Center for Justice shows that in 2016, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison population — 576,000 people — were behind bars for no compelling public safety reason. Our analysis found that 25% of those in state and federal prison—364,000 people—most of them convicted of less serious crimes, would be better served by off ramps from the justice system such as diversion and programming, without spending even a day in prison. We also found that about 14% (212,000 prisoners) had already served long sentences for serious crimes and could be safely released. Considering we would need to cut our incarceration rate by approximately 75 percent just to line up with the average of the rest of the world, we could start there.

In states like Alabama, with an extensive backlog of parole-eligible cases, releasing people who are eligible for parole is another key way to remove them from a harmful prison setting. Alabama should also create an independent oversight entity with the authority to conduct surprise inspections of prison facilities and check on those who are incarcerated.

In January, a task force created by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to study the state’s prison system recommended a broad array of solutions to improving Alabama’s prisons, including increasing funding to hire additional correctional staff, expanding medical and mental-health services, and adding educational programs. The task force also called for implementing early release incentives for those who complete certain programs.

But the governor’s recommendations will fall short without a serious culture shift within our prisons and a true, national de-carceration effort. Incidents of sexual assault and violence are far too common in our nation’s prisons and jails. More than 95% of those in our prisons will eventually leave and reintegrate into their communities . We must greatly reduce our use of incarceration, or we condemn people not only to time away from their families and communities but also to years of abuse.

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How Can Prisons Eliminate Violence? One Researcher Is Determined to Find Out.

There are theories about what causes prison violence, but a new three-year, seven-state study is seeking hard data to document the problem — and find solutions.

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Previously: part i, ​ ‘ i can kill you in here and no one would know it’.

Nancy Rodriguez was frustrated.

From her time visiting prisons across the nation as a researcher, Rodriguez knew prison facilities were dangerous places. She knew that both the incarcerated population and correctional staff faced atmospheres of violence and intimidation. But she also knew she was powerless to provide scientifically based guidance to prison officials. There just wasn’t enough data to latch on to — on how often and why prison violence occurred — to come up with a solution.

There were occasional headlines when a death occurred or an incarcerated person leaked photos or video to the media, but it was anecdotal and specific to one prison in one state. There was a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey that collected information from incarcerated people on violence, but that ended in 2004 . There were reports about sexual violence, mandated by the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, and those on homicides. But there was no uniform metric that detailed all violence in all prisons across the United States.

“ As a researcher, not being able to say, ​ ‘ This is what we can do’ — that was tremendously frustrating,” Rodriguez said. She didn’t have the tools to help incarcerated people transition from a life of violence inside prison to their homes and families. She didn’t have strategies or interventions for correctional staff to keep them safe. ​ “ I was frustrated at the fact that we have many correctional leaders who are forward-thinking, who are tremendously innovative in many ways, who value data and research and want to use it to improve correctional systems … and I saw that they just did not have the tools and did not know what to do in many cases. I thought, certainly there is a role for science here.”

Today, that science is leading the way as Rodriguez sets out to find answers. With a $ 2 . 7 million grant from Arnold Ventures and the buy-in from correctional leaders in seven states, she is launching a three-year study to collect data and set up an evidence-based framework for reducing and preventing incidents of violence inside prisons.

Grant from Arnold Ventures to launch a three-year study to reduce and prevent incidents of violence inside prisons.

“ It’s a landmark study — an examination of an important dynamic where lives are at stake,” said Jeremy Travis , Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice at Arnold Ventures. ​ “ We thought it was worth a big investment.”

The criminal justice work done at Arnold Ventures is heavily focused on transparency as a way of holding systems accountable and demystifying them so that progress can be made. The new prison violence study will go a long way toward doing just that, said Jocelyn Fontaine , Director of Criminal Justice Research at the philanthropy.

“ Prisons are closed places; they are out of sight, very much out of mind for the general population,” Fontaine said. ​ “ Our theory of change is that the pathway to reform is in opening them, making the invisible more visible, so by revealing what’s happening, then we hope that people would be motivated to change them.

“ And I don’t just mean the public — getting the public to be angered and push on systems to be more accountable — but also administrators themselves,” she said. ​ “ Policymakers will take a look at something and say, ​ ‘ Oh goodness, I didn’t know about this, and so therefore we want to change it’ by knowing the true extent and scope of something. So that’s our theory. That reform can come by them being more transparent and accountable.”

‘ Open and Honest’ About Successes and Failures

Two years ago — after leaving the National Institute of Justice as its Director and settling in California as a Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine — Rodriguez reached out to correctional leaders to gauge their interest in studying the issue of prison violence. Those seven leaders all signed on to be part of her Prison Violence Consortium, holding candid discussions about violence in their prisons, the ways in which violence is captured and reported, how they address incidents, and what can be done to better understand and reduce violence.

Now, with the Arnold Ventures grant, Rodriguez and the seven states are taking their study even further. 

Research will include a review of prison incident reports, interviews with incarcerated people and staff in 23 prison facilities, and a review of the policies and practices that guide the state systems on responding to violence. The seven leaders will then implement the state-specific recommendations from the study and begin collecting data. The ultimate goal is to have the knowledge be used not just by these systems but systems throughout the country. 

Having the states open their prison doors to the study is what makes the work so compelling, Travis said. 

“ There’s an incentive to downplay or minimize or, at worst, sweep under the rug problems of violence,” he said. ​ “ The fact that these states have allowed the UCI team in to look at something that is potentially embarrassing to them is a great testament to their desire to come to grips with this problem. I think this has potential for opening up a different conversation about violence in prisons that begins with the principle of transparency.”

Pennsylvania — which has spent the better part of the past decade working to reduce violence inside its prisons — is one of the states committed to Rodriguez’s study. Over his nine-year tenure as the state’s Secretary of Corrections, John Wetzel has adopted a number of proactive initiatives to address inappropriate behavior in his prisons. The state has a proven intel network to track rumblings of violence, incorporates verbal de-escalation sessions into its staff training, uses a classification system to determine where incarcerated people should be housed, and keeps violence-reduction statistics on its website for the public to view.

Wetzel joined the Prison Violence Consortium because he wanted to share the work his state has done to reduce prison violence, ​ “ but also, opportunities to learn from other systems — you can’t put a price on that,” he said. ​ “ I’ve never been afraid of folks looking inside our facilities. I think the only way to get better is to be open and honest about your successes and your failures and then make modifications to mitigate your failures.”

‘ A Profound Level of Neglect’

Rodriguez’s study seeks to capture which individual, institutional and situational factors cause prison violence. She’s heard her share of theories over the years.

“ I hear everything from you can’t talk about violence without talking about contraband or the illegal drug market, you can’t talk about violence without talking about the racialized environments and the role of gangs, you can’t discount mental health in discussing violence, you can’t ignore the conditions of confinement that exist and the limits of one’s freedom and movement, you can’t ignore staff and their engagement with incarcerated persons,” Rodriguez said. 

All of those factors certainly play a role, Rodriguez said, but because violence is a highly complex problem, it’s important to not lose sight of the fact there could be other factors at play. And that’s why the study — rooted in rigorous methods — is so important.

Craig Haney, a psychologist and professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, has spent decades inspecting prisons and interviewing incarcerated people and correctional officers, trying to understand the causes and psychological impact of various conditions of confinement. He was one of the researchers in the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which investigated the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the prison population and correctional officers. 

Sometimes when prison systems are badly managed, abusive and overcrowded, stress and tension can brew for only so long before it explodes. Take the 1971 Attica prison riot. This was ​ “ a group of prisoners who had been deprived, ignored, mistreated for a long time and were seeking redress, and when they realized that they could not achieve it through normal mechanisms, there was a collective response,” Haney said. 

That’s why the concern about the recent reports of excessive force, neglect and inhumane conditions at prisons in Alabama  and Mississippi  is so appropriate, Haney said.

“ These are places where there has been a profound level of neglect of prisoners’ basic needs, a failure of the prison system to respond in a meaningful and remotely caring way,” said Haney, who has recently spent time at prisons in both states. ​ “ Both places are plagued by really significant levels of overcrowding and corresponding staff shortages; they’re underfunded institutions in which prisoners are in dire need of the basic necessities of life.”

Tabb Bickell, Executive Deputy Secretary for Institutional Operations at the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, saw first-hand how his state turned things around after the 1989 Camp Hill prison riot — of which he, as a young correctional officer, was beaten and taken hostage — and he believes a big factor in reducing violence was gaining resources. 

“ When I started in corrections at $ 6 . 25 an hour, I remember walking out of there thinking, ​ ‘ I just made 45 bucks today to do this ,’” Bickell said. ​ “ And now through Wetzel and some of his people ahead of him, the money has gotten to where it makes it a competitive, decent place to work.”

And when correctional officers are compensated properly, when prisons aren’t overcrowded and understaffed but have good programming and decent living conditions, when the incarcerated population is treated humanely, there is less of a risk for violence, Haney said.

“ Well-run prisons that have the interests and the needs of the prisoners at the forefront are not places where riots break out,” he said.

‘ Always Being on Point’

Anyone who has ever stepped into a prison has witnessed the ripple effects that violence can have, Rodriguez said. And those effects — which will also be researched in the new study — don’t end when a person is released.

Herbert Morales, who experienced violence at the hands of correctional officers and his incarcerated peers during his time in New York State prisons from 1985 to 2017 , has been out for three years but is still triggered by noises that, in his mind, mean a correctional officer may be coming after him.

“ Right now, when I fall asleep, noise could go on about me, people could yell, music could play, I’ll sleep through it,” Morales said. ​ “ But if you take a set of keys and you tap it against metal, I’ll pop up like I was never asleep.”

Tyrrell Muhammad has been home 15  years and he still wakes up every day at 4 : 35 a.m., ​ “ always being on point, always being on alert, and I can’t stop, I can’t get rid of it. It has become part of my everyday existence.” That’s because the shift change in prison was at 5  a.m., and it was imperative to be awake and ready. 

Josiah Rich, a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Brown University and the Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at The Miriam Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, has been witness to the effects of violence on incarcerated people.

He’s been visiting prisons mostly in Rhode Island for the past 25  years, taking care of people with HIV and other infectious diseases as well as providing treatment for opioid addiction. Patients will come into his exam room, close the door and just melt.

“ They’ll talk about their frustrations and their fears and things that have happened to them, repeated traumas,” Rich said, and then the session will come to an end, ​ “ and you can see them kind of like steel themselves and put their battle mask on their face, and it’s like, ​ ‘ Now I’ve got to go back in there. Thanks doc, see you later, back into the maelstrom.’”

Violence, Travis said, is part of the ​ “ dark underbelly” of an already dark prison system, and it’s critical that society not look away. He is hopeful the new study will make the country face what’s happening inside prisons.

“ Prisons are toxic environments, and they do enormous harm, and it’s hard for any society that calls itself civilized to confront that reality, much less the reality that these are living situations that are not safe,” Travis said. ​ “ It’s easier for us to claim there will be episodic outbreaks rather than to acknowledge that violence is a fact of daily life for those who already are deprived of liberty and for those who work in prisons. It’s a harsh reality to grapple with.”

‘ This is the Future of Corrections’

Go inside the Young Men Emerging unit in the D.C. Department of Corrections with this in-depth short film, ​ “ Emerging: The Story of YME ” — produced by a former YME member — and learn how they build community and help one another take ownership of their stories.

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Violence in Incarcerated Populations: a Review of the Literature

• Intentional Violence (S Bonne and M Crandall, Section Editors)
• Published: 27 July 2022
• Volume 8 , pages 172–178, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Ayana Worthey 1 ,
• Arielle Thomas 2 , 3 ,
• Caitlin Jones 1 ,
• Adil Abuzeid 1 &
• Cassandra Q. White 4  

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Purpose of Review

To provide an overview of the current research surrounding violence in prison populations.

Recent Findings

It has been a long-held misconception that race plays a factor in the propensity to commit violence leading to the higher rates of incarceration. On review of recent data, exposure to violence and socioeconomic status play a big part in not only how a person’s path leads to incarceration, but also to the continuation of the cycle of violence. The lack of effective interventions in the prison and jail environments also contributes to the incidence of violence in this patient population. Furthermore, this lack of intervention leads to the development, or worsening in some cases, of medical and psychiatric problems in this group.

Incarcerated populations are at high risk for physical and sexual assault from other inmates as well as from staff. The consequence of this environment exacerbates pre-existing physical and mental conditions. Further research must be done into evidence-based interventions that address these overwhelming disparities.

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Worthey, A., Thomas, A., Jones, C. et al. Violence in Incarcerated Populations: a Review of the Literature. Curr Trauma Rep 8 , 172–178 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40719-022-00234-4

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The phrase “pandemics of violence” appears in Angela Davis’ seminal work on prison abolition,  Are Prisons Obsolete?  In her discussion of abolitionist approaches and alternatives to incarceration, she refers to “the generalized tendency to punish people who are persecuted in their intimate lives as a direct consequence of pandemics of violence that continue to be legitimized by ideological and legal structures” (110-111). Prison abolition and the related though not synonymous term decarceration can be described variously as policies, movements, and approaches. They aim to depopulate prisons and/or to eliminate modes of incarceration by transforming the often interconnected inequities, structures, and ideologies which sustain them. This short virtual display, created by UW student group HOPE (Huskies for Opportunities in Prison Education), is intended only as one of many starting points to enter conversations about abolition and decarceration. The first section includes works that define and contextualize this display’s focus. The second section deepens the examination by focusing on youth, LBGTQ+, indigenous, disabled, and immigrant groups. The final section highlights incarcerated and formerly incarcerated voices, powerfully demonstrating why we need abolition. Not every work in the display explicitly concerns abolition or decarceration; those that don’t often provide intimate and powerful details about the realities of incarceration. We acknowledge that we have left out multiple texts, lenses, positions, and voices, but hope that the additional resources section may fill in gaps, lead to new lines of inquiry, and/or encourage dynamic forms of activism. 

Definitions & Contexts

• Is Prison Necessary? (ARTICLE) by Rachel Kushner Because people will make compromises and sacrifices, and they'll lose the vision. The A.C.L.U.'s Smart Justice campaign, the largest in the organization's history, has been started with a goal of reducing the prison population by 50 percent through local, state and federal initiatives to reform bail, prosecution, sentencing, parole and re-entry. (The department head has a different recollection.) She got her way and has been developing the concept of carceral geography ever since, a category of scholarship she more or less single-handedly invented, which examines the complex interrelationships among landscape, natural resources, political economy, infrastructure and the policing, jailing, caging and controlling of populations. In her 2007 book, "Golden Gulag," she draws upon her vast knowledge of political economy and geography to put together a portrait of significant historical change and the drive to embark upon what, as two California state analysts called it, "the largest prison building project in the history of the world."
• A Student Roundtable on Prison Abolition and Imprisonment Writing (ARTICLE) by Elizabeth Corr ; Kelly Kraemer ; Nicholas Lankford ; Nathalia Roberts ; Paul Lai When someone considers the mental and psychological damage that is caused to prisoners through measures like being thrown in the "hole" (solitary confinement with sensory deprivation)1, insufficient medical treatment for physical and mental illnesses, and physical and emotional abuse (strip searches being likened to sexual assault)2, one has to question how effective prisons are in allowing the prisoners to reform themselves and become individuals who are better able to function in society. [...] through the duration of the course, from the readings of Angela Y. Davis to Mary Rowlandson and up to the poetry from Guantánamo prisoners, my understanding of the concept of imprisonment changed.\n Their concerns tended to cluster around two main questions: (1) what would we do with dangerous criminals if prisons ceased to exist? and (2) how would social problems like poverty, violent crimes, drug use, mental illness, and theft be solved by getting rid of prisons?

• How COVID-19’s Disruption of the U.S. Correctional System Provides an Opportunity for Decarceration (ARTICLE) by Abraham, Leola A ; Brown, Timothy C ; Thomas, Shaun A Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified decades of vulnerabilities, disparities, and injustices within the U.S. correctional system. The spread of the coronavirus poses a particularly serious threat to those that comprise the system, including personnel, attorneys, prisoners, their families and extends into the communities in which facilities are located. These correctional facilities and communities were especially underprepared for the sudden onset of a highly contagious virus, which has resulted in an exceedingly high number of infections among those who work and are held in the facilities. Rampant overcrowding in the U.S. correctional system, an aging population, and a population exhibiting high rates of underlying health conditions are highly likely to exacerbate the spread of this highly contagious virus. This potentially dire set of interrelated circumstances necessitates rapid decarceration measures that effectively balance public safety and public health. Unfortunately, there has been unclear guidance as well as changing and even contradictory information coming from the federal government concerning rapid measures to mitigate the spread of infection to justice system personnel and federal prisoners. In this paper we summarize the federal response and how it has impacted those responsible for implementation. Furthermore, we discuss how systemic deleterious conditions of the U.S. correctional system serve as both accelerants to as well as effects of the pandemic. We end highlighting critical issues relating to early release due to COVID-19 that will necessitate future research.

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• Queering Smart Decarceration: Centering the Experiences of LGBTQ+ Young People to Imagine a World Without Prisons (ARTICLE) by Hereth, Jane ; Bouris, Alida Addressing mass incarceration through smart decarceration initiatives is one of the Grand Challenges for Social Work named by the American Academy of Social Work Welfare and Research. The exponential growth of the U.S. prison system is largely due to legislation that targets marginalized communities, including people of color, poor people, people with mental illness, and those living with disabilities, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people of all ages. In this article, we seek to complicate the current conversation on smart decarceration by arguing that social workers committed to addressing mass incarceration should engage abolitionist theory, politics, and organizing in their work in order to effectively address the root causes driving the buildup of the prison nation. We engage feminist and queer theories as two theoretical interventions that can guide this work. We next describe how LGBTQ+ youth enter the criminal legal system, highlighting how normative systems of gender and sexuality subject LGBTQ+ youth to punitive policing, surveillance, and discipline. Finally, we share three models of prison abolitionist organizing led by LGBTQ+ people of color as case studies. By examining how these organizations embrace queer and feminist abolitionist frameworks, we identify concrete ways that social workers can adopt abolitionist principles and practices in their work to address mass incarceration.

• Carrying Stories of Incarcerated Indigenous Women as Tools for Prison Abolition (ARTICLE) by Krista L. Benson This article centers incarcerated Indigenous women's voices, knowledges, and stories through an examination of (1983), edited by Beth Brant. Prioritizing these knowledges, which are often marginalized or absent in prison abolitionist literature, I illuminate the possibilities offered by decolonial approaches to prison abolition. This article explores the ways that Indigenous perspectives and stories are a vital part of the context for prison abolition in settler states and calls for non-Native prison abolitionists to attend to the experiences and stories of Indigenous incarcerated people as a central component of prison abolition as it is tied to decolonization.

• Ex-Prisoner Pomo Woman Speaks Out (ARTICLE) by Stormy Ogden The article presents the author's experiences as a prisoner. I am a recognized member of the Tule River Yokuts, Kashaya Pomo, and Lake County Pomo Nations. I am a former prisoner and was housed at the California Rehabilitation Center located at Norco. While imprisoned, I was influential in forming the prison's first American Indian women's support group and the first women's sweat lodge built at a state prison in California. Since my release I have allied myself with many American Indian support groups. My focus and commitment has always been to include support for American Indian women imprisoned within the "White Man's" criminal justice system.

• "Something Else to Be”: A Chicana Survivor’s Journey from Vigilante Justice to Transformative Justice (ARTICLE) by Lena Palacios "Within our current carceral landscape, transformative justice feminist praxis is an essential epistemic and organizing tool to achieve such freedom from violence. For those of us who have been victimized by both intimate partner violence and state violence, there is no other choice for us but to continue building community accountability circles and anti-violence movements that guarantee our collective survival. People who harm, like the carceral state, use intimate violence as a way to maintain power, which is why they don’t have an invested interest in ending it. We have to always be . . . “creating something else to be” (Morrison 1974, 52)" (Palacios, 2016, 107).
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Do Overcrowding and Turnover Cause Violence in Prison?

Stéphanie baggio.

1 Division of Prison Health, Geneva University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

2 Department of Forensic Psychiatry, Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Nicolas Peigné

Patrick heller.

3 Adult Psychiatry Division, Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland

Laurent Gétaz

4 Division of Tropical and Humanitarian Medicine, Geneva University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Michael Liebrenz

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

Violence is common in prison and its individual risk factors are well documented. However, there is a mixed evidence on the relationship between prison violence and institutional factors, such as overcrowding and turnover, and recent research suggested that these factors may not be important or relevant. This study investigated the association between prison violence and institutional factors in a Swiss pre-trial prison between 2013 and 2018. Measures included violence (assaults requiring immediate medical attention) as well as the annual overcrowding and turnover rates. Using a meta-regression, the results showed that prison violence was higher when overcrowding and turnover increased. Overall, our study highlighted that institutional prison factors might have notable detrimental effects on prison life. Reduction of prison overcrowding and turnover appear critical to reduce prisoners’ vulnerability. Turning prison into safe places designed to promote desistance would probably not be achievable without considering these crucial factors.

Introduction

Prison overcrowding, when the number of prisoners exceeds the prison capacity, is an important concern worldwide. In 2018, overcrowding remained one of the most important issues in prison ( 1 ), with 27 countries operating at 150% to 200% ( 2 ). Turnover, the rate at which the prison population is renewed, has been less extensively studied ( 3 , 4 ), but may also have detrimental consequences for prisoners ( 4 ). Both can undermine the ability of prison systems to meet human needs, including access to appropriate accommodation, timely health care, and access to rehabilitation programs and educational or vocational activities ( 5 ).

However, in a recent empirical study, Fazel, Ramesh & Hawton ( 3 ) underscored the importance of individual over institutional factors. In their multicentric study conducted in 24 high-income countries, there was no significant association between prison suicide and two major institutional factors, namely overcrowding and turnover. These findings resulted in a call to focus on individual and relevant ecological factors ( 3 ). This mixed evidence also applies to prison violence: A meta-analysis to conclude that future policies should focus on “more important predictors” than overcrowding to predict (violent) misconduct ( 6 , p. 409), even if overcrowding has long been described as a potential risk for prison violence ( 7 ).

These conclusions have risen legitimate fears of misinterpretation and neglect of critical institutional factors ( 8 ). Besides, very recent prison studies highlighted significant associations between overcrowding, turnover, and self-harm ( 4 ); and between overcrowding and violent misconduct ( 9 , 10 ). Another recent study also reported that institutional infractions were more likely to happen a few months after entry ( 11 ). As turnover is associated with an increased number of prison entries, it may lead to increased levels of misconduct, infractions, and violence.

This study focused on violence against others, as there is a paucity of empirical studies investigating the association between institutional factors and this kind of violence. Prison violence has been most often investigated using assaults registered in official prison records (i.e., “violent misconduct”) ( 6 , 7 ). In addition, to our knowledge, previous studies on prison violence focused on overcrowding and turnover has been neglected. We hypothesized that institutional factors would lead to increased levels of violence, and thus, that these factors should not be neglected in empirical prison studies and health policy.

Materials and Methods

Prison-level data were collected between 2013 and 2018 in a Swiss pre-trial prison located in Geneva (Champ-Dollon). This prison is mainly a pre-trial prison, but there are also sentenced detainees. In this prison, prisoners spend 23 h a day in their cell. The prison capacity was 376 (with 22 additional places in 2017 and 2018). Nurses are present in the prison 24/7 in a prison medical unit. This prison has been repeatedly criticized by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) for chronic overcrowding and detention setting, including lack of activities ( 12 ). Data were collected using prison-level statistics and prison nurses’ records. Since we used anonymous quality control data, ethical approval was not required.

Prison Overcrowding

The annual overcrowding rate was computed by dividing the annual mean daily population by the prison capacity. It was extracted from the statistics available each year for the whole prison, upon request to the direction of the prison.

Turnover Ratio

The turnover rate was computed using the number of releases divided by the number of entries plus the average prison population of the previous year ( 3 ). It was also extracted from the statistics available each year for the whole prison, upon request to the direction of the prison.

Nurses recorded systematically and anonymously each assault requiring medical attention immediately after its occurrence, in accordance with the guidelines of a previous study on prison violence, recommending a systematic statistical recording of routine data on prison violence, to standardize injury surveillance ( 13 ).

Statistical Analyses

We tested the association between violence, overcrowding, and turnover using a fixed-effect multivariate meta-regression. Each year was considered as a separate sample (too few events to consider months as separate samples). Analyses were performed with R 3.5.1 (package metaphor 2.0.0).

Over the study period, the average rate of overcrowding was 175.4% and the turnover rate 73.2%. This meant that the prison was overcrowded, as the number of prisoners exceeded its official capacity (100%). However, there is no official definition of what constitutes overcrowding ( 5 ). The turnover rate was also high, with on average 73.2% of the prison population entirely reviewed each year. On average, there was 9.1% of cases of violence/population of inmates over the study period. The meta-analytic prevalence estimate for prison violence over the study period was 8.5% (95% confidence interval: 7.6%–9.3%).

There were significant effects of both overcrowding (b = 0.001, p < .001) and turnover (b = 0.009, p < .001) on prison violence. Increased overcrowding and turnover were associated with increased prevalence estimates of violence. When overcrowding increased of one point (on a one hundred percent scale), prison violence increased of 0.1 point of percentage. Figure 1 shows that increased levels of overcrowding were associated with higher prevalence estimates of prison violence. When turnover increased of one point (on a one hundred percent scale), prison violence increased of 0.9 point of percentage. The pattern was less clear in the forest plot depicted in Figure 1 , but the effect was nonetheless significant.

Forest plot of the effect of overcrowding and turnover on prison violence, sorted by overcrowding rate. 95% CI: 95% confidence intervals. Whiskers represent 95% CI for the prevalence estimate of each year. Prevalence estimates are reported for assaults requiring immediate medical attention. Overcrowding and turnover are reported as percentages.

In our study, there was a meta-analytic percentage of 8.5% of assaults requiring immediate medical attention. This percentage ranged between previous estimates, from 0.8% for assaults classified as violent misconduct in official prison reports ( 9 ) to 23.5% of assaults (including assaults against staff) classified as disciplinary offences in official prison reports ( 10 ). As these studies used very different measures to assess prison violence and were conducted in different settings, comparisons are not possible.

Our study showed that institutional prison factors were significantly associated with prison violence (i.e., assaults requiring immediate medical attention). This result replicated recent empirical findings focusing on overcrowding in the US and using official misconduct reports ( 9 , 10 ). Our study extended these results in a European country and with data not necessarily recorded in the official prison reports. It followed recent guidelines for systematic statistical recording of violence ( 13 ). In addition, to our knowledge, this study was the first to examine the association between turnover and prison violence, highlighting that this institutional factor also led to increased levels of prison violence.

Overall, our study highlighted that institutional prison factors might have notable detrimental effects on prison life and adjustment to prison life. Reduction of prison overcrowding and turnover appear critical to reduce prisoners’ vulnerability and they should not be neglected. These detrimental effects may be even worse for especially vulnerable people living in detention (e.g., those in bad health or having severe psychiatric disorders, older people). Even if these factors are not easily modifiable, future prison policies should be developed to promote prisoners’ health and rehabilitation. Indeed, (violent) misconduct is associated with increased recidivism ( 14 ).

Meanwhile, adequate prevention measures to reduce violence in overcrowded prisons are needed. It should include adequate occupational activities as well as screening and treatment for psychiatric disorders targeting specific needs; as well as enhancement of social skills, social relationships, and social support using relevant psychosocial programs ( 13 , 15 ). Such need for adjustments in prison policy is regularly emphasized in the legal literature as well ( 16 , 17 ).

This study has some limitations. A first limitation was the lack on individual data, such as personal risk factors for prison violence. However, the prison population of Champ-Dollon was stable over time [e.g., rates of psychiatric treatments and socio-demographic profiles, ( 18 )] so we could be confident that the changes in prison violence was mostly related to the institutional factors. Second, the results were probably related to the specific characteristics of the prison, namely the lack of freedom of movement and activities. However, the 23-h confinement period per day and the lack of access to a workplace are comparable in most pre-trial prisons in Switzerland ( 17 ). Furthermore, Champ-Dollon is especially overcrowded ( 12 ). Another shortcoming was that we used an operationalization of prison violence (i.e., assaults requiring immediate medical attention) which did not allow comparisons with other studies. Our study missed less severe cases of violence (not requiring immediate medical care), but it used a less restrictive operationalization of prison violence in comparison with some previous studies relying exclusively on official prison reports. In addition, given its retrospective design, we were unable to collect information on violence against staff members. Future multicentric studies should include prisons’ characteristics, and especially time spent locked up in cells and available pro-health, pro-social, and occupational activities ( 4 ), as well as individual-level factors and all kinds of violence, including those against staff members. Further studies should also develop assessments of prison violence that allow comparisons between prisons and include less severe forms of violence. Finally, prison violence can also mean psychological violence, such as harassment, bullying, or sexual violence ( 19 ). Future studies should also investigate this kind of violence.

To conclude, we believe that institutional factors should not be neglected in prison research and future prison policies. Overcrowding and turnover have an important impact on prisoners’ health, prison life, and adjustment to prison life; even if these effects depend on the specific characteristics of the prison under study. Distress and misconduct in prison should be considered as the interplay between individual and institutional factor, and not only as something prisoners import in prison ( 8 ). Turning prison into safe places designed to promote desistance would probably not be achievable without considering these crucial factors.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements. Since we used anonymous quality control data, ethical approval was not required.

Author Contributions

SB conceived the study’s objective, drafted the manuscript, and performed the statistical analyses. NP participated in data collection. PH, LG, ML, and HW made substantial contributions in the interpretation of the data. NP, PH, LG, ML, and HW revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. All authors approved the final version to be published and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work related to its accuracy and integrity.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Prisoner to Violence

After a bloody fight in the yard, an inmate reflects on his behavior..

This article was published in collaboration with Vice .

S lant whispers and looming stares pass through the prison yard around 3:30 p.m. It’s July, and hotter than usual on Michigan’s upper peninsula.

Gatherings of inmates begin to form: eight by the pull-up bars, four on the basketball court, nine behind the phones. The air is barely breathable with all the tension, which has built up ever since an act of disrespect—the breaking of a gang sign—earlier at chow.

Everyone here has their war story. We’re all long-conditioned by a street life, the hustling, the fistfights. Seasoned from past penitentiary wars, time in the hole, lifting law books in laundry bags for exercise, one thousand push-ups a day. Institutionalized.

But when I look at my friends and homeboys whom I’ve known for awhile, or grew up with, what I see is fear, confusion. Expressions I know too well from staring in my own mirror, trying to remember myself, trying to remember my home. I know there was something before this: my family, an old life. But to think that far back, to try to reconstruct my own innocence and even frailty, would hurt my soul—and a memory of home shouldn’t hurt.

Suddenly, my group of inmates storms one side of the yard.

I feel nothing further as I dash across the court and plunge a self-made shank into a combatant’s jaw, neck, and chest; then into another’s, feeling the rusty metal penetrate flesh with every swing and whack.

“Wassup now!” I yell, as a barrage of my wild punches meets another victim.

Officers with squawking walkie-talkies soon position themselves to regain control of the yard. A gas canister bounces onto the basketball court, spewing out white, thick smoke. It’s followed by another, until the yard is fogged with tear gas. “Get on the fucking ground!” I hear. Inmates scatter, coughing blood—but I never learned how to stop when I got started.

My eyes and face burn as I prowl through the smoke, looking for the rest of the fight. Someone else’s blood is crusted on my knuckles.

I’m not thinking. I’m not human. I’m what a prison made of me. “Get the fuck on the ground!” the officer yells, pointing his taser at my body. I don’t comply. I keep that slow, dragging saunter, striding over the defeated inmates. “Don’t move!” another officer says, before positioning himself to shoot.

Then, in one swift motion, my body stiffens before I smack the ground, the volts bouncing violently inside of me until everything is black.

D izzy and distraught, I awake in a single-man cell with a yellow piece of paper resting on my chest. I’m naked, and my body, all of a sudden, is cold and aching.

There’s a blue jumpsuit on the green mat; the cell itself has not been cleaned since the last occupant.

I put the jumpsuit on slowly, then begin to read what’s on the paper: “This prisoner is unmanageable in G.P. (General Population). Loss of all privileges. No TV, books, sheets, no hygiene products. 24-hour watch.”

It is Saturday. I won’t see administration until Monday. I pace around the small quarters, calming and conjuring the self.

My war story began early, and peaked around the time my son was ready to come into this world. He was seven pounds, four ounces, and I knew then that I had to do what was necessary to take care of my family.

I sacrificed to provide for them—to make money—but got lost in it. My baby momma and I argued nonstop about my being in the streets. She said I was giving too much to something that was sucking the humanity straight out of my body, taking me away from the family.

I didn’t disagree. I knew that when I opened myself to a violent way of life, I would be vulnerable to that violence entering my heart.

Back in my cell, amid the unit’s mix of rap battles, trivia games, and disagreements about Cardi B’s gang affiliation, I hear the news that a few people died earlier in the melee. “That nigga bugged out on them boys,” one inmate says out of the corner of his door. “They shot ’em with that—uhh, uhh... Damn!”

“A taser, old fool,” another inmate says.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, muthafucka,” the inmate declares. “They hit ’em three times and he still wouldn’t stay down!” The inmates riff on the officers’ use of force. “You know they gonna charge them boys for murder… Yup. And over what some young dummy did.”

“What he do?” the other inmate asks.

“He broke a gang sign, with his hands.”

News Inside

My stomach turns. I think about the charges the facility will try to trump on me. What the hell did I do? If it’s true, what the inmates are saying, then I can’t take back what I’ve done.

Later, I learn no one died in the fight that day. But even when I thought they did, I didn’t feel much remorse. Death is too common in prison to feel anything for someone who would take your life too if they had to.

I t’s Sunday morning and the wing officer decides to bring me a third of my property: pictures, hygiene products, and bedsheets. I immediately clean my cell. I clean myself. I scurry my hand over old scars and flinch at new ones on my abdomen and chest; the burnt flesh feels rubbery, like it’s not a part of me anymore, not even real.

Whatever I’ve become has nothing to do with me. Nothing , I think to myself before saying the word into the metal mirror above the steel sink. Nothing . I don’t stare too long at myself, though, out of a fear of what my reflection will tell me.

Solitary confinement is meant for one thing: breaking. The paint peeling off the walls, the scuffed floors from years of pacing, the smell of piss and feces—it is all a message to the soul that it is trapped.

10 o’clock. Count time , I hear.

Automatic lights blink on. As soon as the officer hits the steps, the young brother in the cell next to mine begins to beat rhythmically on the steel door. This continues well into the evening.

T he night lends solitary its brutality. I pace my cell, awake. Cry. Scream.

I haven’t seen my family or friends in 10 years, nor spoken to them in six. My son could end up here, lost in prison, the same violence driving him to the end.

My heart turns now. The system is hungry for my child’s soul. What can I do to stop it? Can I stop it? I have to reject all emotion—I can’t be human, won’t be, I say out loud over and over, my hands pressed against my face. But what about your son?

My neighbor beats on the wall again, but this time asks if I’m working on a rap. “Something like that,” I say.

His name is Marcus, he says. He wants to be a rapper and his sister thinks he’s as good as Gucci Mane.

I listen to him ramble about his family problems.

Marcus’s baby momma is in a serious relationship with one of his friends; his family is not supporting him mentally or financially, even as he keeps on getting jumped by gangs.

Become a Member

“Young dog, don’t let the world call your bluff,” is all I say.

The quietness lingers between us, though outside the unit is loud as usual.

Then, in a low voice, Marcus says that tomorrow morning he is going home.

I pause. Then I tell him to stay focused and that it’s a blessing to make it out of prison in one piece; I also remind myself of it.

First thing in the morning, Marcus will be free. I’m happy for him.

A fter 3:00 a.m. shift change, I hear the young homie packing up, a struggle with his luggage, too heavy maybe, but why so much? Is that the tightening of a bedsheet?

It sounds like his body is beating violently against the wall, a slight change of direction—his decision that it’s too late . I scream out, but all the while I try to block it out, try not to understand why he would choose this, why he would fear his family, the world.

The muffled struggle echoes in my mind. Is he hanging there now, suspended?

In another 30 minutes, the unit is full of officers and nurses, as it was after my fight. Officials want to know, again, what happened. But the inmates behind the steel doors can't explain it, the violence, so they pay no attention to the officials’ requests, nor to the young boy, Marcus, being hauled out like a stillborn out of a woman.

Demetrius Buckley, 32, is incarcerated at St. Louis Correctional Facility in St. Louis, Michigan, where he is serving 18 to 30 years for 2nd-degree murder and two years for a weapons charge.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) confirmed that the author was involved in a fight in July 2014 at Baraga Correctional Facility that broadly meets the description in this essay. However, the DOC had no report of stabbings during the altercation, and the spokesperson said there were no suicides around this time at the facility.

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A better path forward for criminal justice: Changing prisons to help people change

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Christy visher and christy visher professor - university of delaware john eason john eason associate professor - university of wisconsin.

• 17 min read

Below is the third chapter from “A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice,” a report by the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform. You can access other chapters from the report here .

Prison culture and environment are essential to public health and safety. While much of the policy debate and public attention of prisons focuses on private facilities, roughly 83 percent of the more than 1,600 U.S. facilities are owned and operated by states. 1 This suggest that states are an essential unit of analysis in understanding the far-reaching effects of imprisonment and the site of potential solutions. Policy change within institutions has to begin at the state level through the departments of corrections. For example, California has rebranded their state corrections division and renamed it the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. For many, these are not only name changes but shifts in policy and practice. In this chapter, we rethink the treatment environment of the prison by highlighting strategies for developing cognitive behavioral communities in prison—immersive cognitive communities. This new approach promotes new ways of thinking and behaving for both incarcerated persons and correctional staff. Behavior change requires changing thinking patterns and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based strategy that can be utilized in the prison setting. We focus on short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations to begin implementing this model and initiate reforms for the organizational structure of prisons.

Level Setting

The U.S. has seen a steady decline in the federal and state prison population over the last eleven years, with a 2019 population of about 1.4 million men and women incarcerated at year-end, hitting its lowest level since 1995. 2   With the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, criminal justice reformers have urged a continued focus on reducing prison populations and many states are permitting early releases of nonviolent offenders and even closing prisons. Thus, we are likely to see a dramatic reduction in the prison population when the data are tabulated for 2020.

However, it is undeniable that the U.S. will continue to use incarceration as a sanction for criminal behavior at a much higher rate than in other Western countries, in part because of our higher rate of violent offenses. Consequently, a majority of people incarcerated in the U.S. are serving a prison sentence for a violent offense (58 percent). The most serious offense for the remainder is property offenses (16 percent), drug offenses (13 percent), or other offenses (13 percent; generally, weapons, driving offenses, and supervision violations). 3 Moreover, the majority of people in U.S. prisons have been previously incarcerated. The prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation’s population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, with inadequate education. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work experience. 4

According to data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average sentence length in state courts for those sentenced to confinement in a state prison is about 4 years and the average time served is about 2.5 years. Those sentenced for a violent offense typically serve about 4.7 years with persons sentenced for murder or manslaughter serving an average of 15 years before their release. 5 Thus, it is important to consider the conditions of prison life in understanding how individuals rejoin society at the conclusion of their sentence. Are they prepared to be valuable community members? What lessons have they learned during their confinement that may help them turn their life around? Will they be successful in avoiding a return to prison? What is the most successful path for helping returning citizens reintegrate into their communities?

Regrettably, prison life is often fraught with difficulty. Being sentenced to incarceration can be traumatic, leading to mental health disorders and difficulty rejoining society. Incarcerated individuals must adjust to the deprivation of liberty, separation from family and social supports, and a loss of personal control over all aspects of one’s life. In prison, individuals face a loss of self-worth, loneliness, high levels of uncertainty and fear, and idleness for long periods of time. Imprisonment disrupts the routines of daily life and has been described as “disorienting” and a “shock to the system”. 6 Further, some researchers have described the existence of a “convict code” in prison that governs behavior and interactions with norms of prison life including mind your own business, no snitching, be tough, and don’t get too close with correctional staff. While these strategies can assist incarcerated persons in surviving prison, these tools are less helpful in ensuring successful reintegration.

Thus, the entire prison experience can jeopardize the personal characteristics required to be effective partners, parents, and employees once they are released. Coupled with the lack of vocational training, education, and reentry programs, individuals face a variety of challenges to reintegrating into their communities. Successful reintegration will not only improve public safety but forces us to reconsider public safety as essential to public health.

Despite the toll of difficult conditions of prison, people who are incarcerated believe that they can be successful citizens. In surveys and interviews with men and women in prison, the majority express hope for their future. Most were employed before their incarceration and have family that will help them get back on their feet. Many have children that they were supporting and want to reconnect with. They realize that finding a job may be hard, but they believe they will be able to avoid the actions that got them into trouble, principally committing crimes and using illegal substances. 7 Research also shows that most individuals with criminal records, especially those convicted of violent crimes, were often victims themselves. This complicates the “victim”-“offender” binary that dominates the popular discourse about crime. By moving beyond this binary, we propose cognitive behavioral therapy, among a host of therapeutic approaches, as part of a broader restorative approach.

Despite having histories of associating with other people who commit crimes and use illegal drugs, incarcerated individuals have pro-social family and friends in their lives. They also may have some personality characteristics that make it difficult to resist involvement in criminal behavior, including impulsivity, lack of self-control, anger/defiance, and weak problem-solving and coping skills. Psychologists have concluded that the primary individual characteristics influencing criminal behavior are thinking patterns that foster criminal activity, associating with other people who engage in criminal activity, personality patterns that support criminal activity, and a history of engaging in criminal activity. 8  While the context constrains individual behavior and choices, the motivation for incarcerated individuals to change their behavior is rooted in their value of family and other positive relationships. However, most prison environments pose significant challenges for incarcerated individuals to develop motivation to make positive changes. Interpersonal relationships in prison are difficult as there is often a culture of mistrust and suspicion coupled with a profound absence of empathy. Despite these challenges, cognitive behavioral interventions can provide a successful path for reintegration.

Many psychologists believe that changing unwanted or negative behaviors requires changing thinking patterns since thoughts and feelings affect behaviors. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) emerged as a psycho-social intervention that helps people learn how to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions. It focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and developing personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. 9  In most cases, CBT is a gradual process that helps a person take incremental steps towards a behavior change. CBT has been directed at a wide range of conditions including various addictions (smoking, alcohol, and drug use), eating disorders, phobias, and problems dealing with stress or anxiety. CBT programs help people identify negative thoughts, practice skills for use in real-world situations, and learn problem-solving skills. For example, a person with a substance use disorder might start practicing new coping skills and rehearsing ways to avoid or deal with a high-risk situation that could trigger a relapse.

Since criminal behavior is driven partly by certain thinking patterns that predispose individuals to commit crimes or engage in illegal activities, CBT helps people with criminal records change their attitudes and gives them tools to avoid risky situations. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a comprehensive and time-consuming treatment, typically, requiring intensive group sessions over many months with individualized homework assignments. Evaluations of CBT programs for justice-involved people found that cognitive restructuring treatment was significantly effective in reducing criminal behavior, with those receiving CBT showing recidivism reductions of 20 to 30 percent compared to control groups. 10 Thus, the widespread implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy as part of correctional programming could lead to fewer rearrests and lower likelihood of reincarceration after release. CBT can also be used to mitigate prison culture and thus help reintegrate returning citizens back into their communities.

Thus, the widespread implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy as part of correctional programming could lead to fewer rearrests and lower likelihood of reincarceration after release.

Even the most robust CBT program that meets three hours per week leaves 165 hours a week in which the participant is enmeshed in the typical prison environment. Such an arrangement is bound to dilute the therapy’s impact. To counter these negative influences, the new idea is to connect CBT programming in prison with the old idea of therapeutic communities. Therapeutic communities—either in prison or the community—were established as a self-help substance use rehabilitation approach and instituted the idea that separating the target population from the general population would allow a pro-social community to develop and thereby discourage antisocial cognitions and behaviors. The therapeutic community model relies heavily on participant leadership and requires participants to intervene in arguments and guide treatment groups. Inside prisons, therapeutic communities are a separate housing unit that fosters a rehabilitative environment.

Cognitive Communities in prison would be an immersive experience in cognitive behavioral therapy involving cognitive restructuring, anti-criminal modeling, skill building, problem-solving, and emotion management. These communities would promote new ways of thinking and behaving among its participants around the clock, from breakfast in the morning through residents’ daily routines, including formal CBT sessions, to the evening meal and post-dinner activities. Blending the best aspects of therapeutic communities with CBT principles would lead to Cognitive Communities with several key elements: a separate physical space, community participation in daily activities, reinforcement of pro-social behavior, use of teachable moments, and structured programs. This cultural shift in prison organization provides a foundation for restorative justice practices in prisons.

Accordingly, our recommendations include:

Short-Term Reforms

Create Transforming Prisons Act

Accelerate decarceration begun during pandemic.

Medium-Term Reforms

Encourage Rehabilitative Focus in State Prisons

Foster greater use of community sanctions.

Long-Term Reforms

Embrace Rehabilitative/Restorative Community Justice Models

Encourage collaborations between corrections agencies and researchers, short-term reforms.

To begin transforming prisons to help prisons and people change, a new funding opportunity for state departments of correction is needed. We propose the Transforming Prisons Act (funded through the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance) which would permit states to apply for funds to support innovative programs and practices that would improve prison conditions both for the people who live in prisons and work in prisons. This dual approach would begin to transform prisons into a more just and humane experience for both groups. These new funds could support broad implementation of Cognitive Communities by training the group facilitators and the correctional staff assigned to the specialized prison units. Funds could also be used to broaden other therapeutic programming to support individuals in improving pro-social behaviors through parenting classes, family engagement workshops, anger management, and artistic programming. One example is the California Transformative Arts which promotes self-awareness and improves mental health through artistic expression. Together, these programs could mark a rehabilitative turn in corrections.

While we work to change policies and practices to make prisons more humane, we also need to work towards decarceration. The COVID-19 crisis has enabled innovations in diverting and improving efforts to reintegrate returning citizens in the U.S. During the pandemic, many states took bold steps in implementing early release for older incarcerated persons especially those with health disorders. Research shows that returning citizens of advanced age and with poor health conditions are far less likely to commit crime after release. This set of circumstances makes continued diversion and reintegration of this population a much wiser investment than incarceration.

MEDIUM-TERM REFORMS

In direct response to calls to abolish prisons and defund the police, state prisons should move away from focusing on incapacitation to rehabilitation. To assist in this change, federal funds should be tied to embracing a rehabilitative mission to transform prisons. This transformation should be rooted in evidence-based therapeutic programming, documenting impacts on both incarcerated individuals and corrections staff. Prison good-time policies should be revisited so that incarcerated individuals receive substantial credit for participating in intensive programming such as Cognitive Communities. With a backdrop of an energized rehabilitative philosophy, states should be supported in their efforts to implement innovative models and programming to improve the reintegration of returning citizens and change the organizational structure of their prisons.

In direct response to calls to abolish prisons and  defund  the police, state prisons should move away from focusing on incapacitation to rehabilitation.

As the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, current U.S. incarceration policies and practices are costly for families, communities, and state budgets. Openly punitive incarceration policies make it exceedingly difficult for incarcerated individuals to successfully reintegrate into communities as residents, family members, and employees. A long-term policy goal in the U.S. must be to reduce our over-reliance on incarceration through shorter prison terms, increased reliance on community sanctions, and closing prisons. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that decarceration poses minimal risk to community safety. Given this steady decline in the prison population and decline in prison building in the U.S. since 2000, we encourage other types of development in rural communities to loosen the grip of prisons in these areas. Alternative development for rural communities is important because the most disadvantaged rural communities are both senders of prisoners and receivers of prisons with roughly 70 percent of prison facilities located in rural communities.

LONG-TERM REFORMS

Public safety and public health goals can be achieved through Community Justice Centers—these are sites that act as a diversion preference for individuals who may be in a personal crisis due to mental health conditions, substance use, or family trauma. Recent research demonstrates that using social or public health services to intervene in such situations can lead to better outcomes for communities than involving the criminal justice system. To be clear, many situations can be improved by crisis intervention expertise specializing in de-escalation rather than involving the justice system which may have competing objectives. Community Justice Centers are nongovernmental organizations that divert individuals in crisis away from law enforcement and the justice system. Such diversion also helps ease the social work burden on the justice system that it is often ill-equipped to handle.

Researchers and corrections agencies need to develop working relationships to permit the study of innovative organizational approaches. In the past, the National Institute of Justice created a researcher-practitioner partnership program , whereby local researchers worked with criminal justice practitioners (generally, law enforcement) to develop research projects that would benefit local criminal justice agencies and test innovative solutions to local problems. A similar program could be announced to help researchers assist corrections agencies and officials in identifying research projects that could address problems facing prisons and prison officials (e.g., safety, staff burnout, and prisoner grievance procedures).

Recommendations for Future Research

Some existing jail and prison correctional systems are implementing broad organization changes, including immersive faith-based correctional programs, jail-based 60- to 90-day reentry programs to prepare individuals for their transition to the community, Scandinavian and other European models to change prison culture, and an innovative Cognitive Community approach operating in several correctional facilities in Virginia. However, these efforts have not been rigorously evaluated. New models could be developed and tested widely, preferably through randomized controlled trials, and funded by the research arm of the Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), or various private funders, including Arnold Ventures.

Correctional agencies in some states may be ready to implement the Cognitive Community model using a separate section of a prison or smaller facility not in use. Funding is needed to evaluate these pilot efforts, assess fidelity to the model standards, identify challenges faced in implementing the model, and propose any modifications to improve the proposed Cognitive Community model. Full-scale rigorous tests of the Cognitive Community model are needed which would randomly assign eligible inmates to the Cognitive Community environment or to continue to carry out their sentence in a regular prison setting. Ideally, these studies would observe the implementation of the program, assess intermediate outcomes while participants are enrolled in the program, follow participants upon release and examine post-release experiences in the post-release CBT program, and then assess a set of reentry outcomes at several intervals for at least one year after release.

Prison culture and environment are essential to community public health and safety. Incarcerated individuals have difficulty successfully reintegrating into their communities after release because the environment in most U.S. prisons is not conducive to positive change. Normalizing prison environments with evidence-based programming, including cognitive behavioral therapy, education, and personal development, will help incarcerated individuals lead successful lives in the community as family members, employees, and community residents. States need to move towards less reliance on incarceration and more attention to community justice models.

Recommended Readings

• Eason, John M. 2017. Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation . Chicago, IL: Univ of Chicago Press.

Travis, J., Western, B., and Redburn, S. (Eds.). 2014. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. National Research Council; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Orrell, B. (Ed). 2020. Rethinking Reentry . Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.

Mitchell, Meghan M., Pyrooz, David C., & Decker, Scott. H. 2020. “Culture in prison, culture on the street: the convergence between the convict code and code of the street.” Journal of Crime and Justice . DOI:  10.1080/0735648X.2020.1772851 .

Haney, C. 2002. “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment.” https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-incarceration-implications-post-prison-adjustment .

• Carson, E. Ann. 2020. Prisoners in 2019. NCJ 255115. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• Travis, Jeremy, Bruce Western, and Steven Redburn, (Eds.). 2014. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. National Research Council; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration . Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
• Kaeble, Danielle. 2018. Time Served in State Prison, 2016. NCJ 252205. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• Haney, Craig. 2002. “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment.” Prepared for the Prison to Home Conference, January 30–31, 2002. https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-incarceration-implications-post-prison-adjustment .
• Visher, Christy and Nancy LaVigne. 2021. “Returning home: A pathbreaking study of prisoner reentry and its challenges.” In P.K. Lattimore, B.M. Huebner, & F.S. Taxman (eds.), Handbook on moving corrections and sentencing forward: Building on the record (pp. 278–311). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Latessa, Edward. 2020. “Triaging services for individuals returning from prison.” In B. Orrell (Ed.), Rethinking Reentry . Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.
• Nana Landenberger and Mark Lipsey. 2005. “The positive effects of cognitive-behavioral programs for offenders: A meta-analysis of factors associated with effective treatment.” Journal of Experimental Criminology , 1, 451–476.

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Richard Lempert

April 24, 2024

The Everyday Brutality of America’s Prisons

It's not just alabama. inmates across the country are living—and dying—in horrific conditions..

Earlier this week, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released a summary of its findings on the state of Alabama’s prisons. The accounts are stomach-churning: The New York Times noted that one prisoner had been lying dead for so long that “his face was flattened,” while another “was tied up and tortured for two days.” A dive into the 53-page report reveals yet more horror. One prisoner was doused with bleach and beaten with a broken mop handle. Another was attacked with shaving cream so hot that it caused chemical burns, requiring treatment from an outside hospital.

It’s hardly news that American prisons and jails can be dangerous places. But the Justice Department’s report mirrors other recent accounts of inmate deaths and violence across the country that, taken together, paint a grim picture of the brutality that occurs behind prison walls—and the horrifying consequences of America’s indifference to it.

Two years in the making, the federal investigation of men’s prisons in Alabama found them plagued with “severe, systemic, and exacerbated” violations of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights. Rates of prisoner-on-prisoner violence have roughly doubled in the state over the past five years, with a homicide rate eight times the national average. Guards told federal investigators that half to three-quarters of prisoners have some kind of improvised weapon. “A weapon that was essentially a small sword was recovered at St. Clair in 2017,” the report said.

Sexual violence is also ubiquitous. The report found that prison staff “accept the high level of violence and sexual abuse ... as a normal course of business, including acquiescence to the idea that prisoners will be subjected to sexual abuse as a way to pay debts accrued to other prisoners.” Alabama officials routinely declared reports of sexual violence as “unsubstantiated” if the survivor declined to press charges, even if he named his attacker and there was other evidence to support the allegation. The Justice Department also found that officials discouraged prisoner reports of sexual assault by regularly dismissing allegations as consensual “homosexual activity.”

The Justice Department attributes this violence to an ouroboros of understaffing and overcrowding. The report found that Alabama’s prison system is understaffed by more than two-thirds. Even the most well-staffed prison, with 75 percent of the necessary employees, was described as “dangerously understaffed.” To make up the shortfall, prison officials regularly force guards to work an additional four hours past their twelve-hour shifts. Meanwhile, investigators estimated that Alabama had a prison occupancy rate of 182 percent of its capacity. Though the state has taken some efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent prisoners in the system, facility closures kept the overall occupancy levels roughly the same.

This report came shortly after a damning investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting, KUOW, and the Northwest News Network found that at least 306 people have died in Oregon and Washington jails since 2008, often from suicide and other preventable causes. But the actual total is unclear because officials in both states haven’t comprehensively tracked how many people die in the government’s custody. “State lawmakers who could improve funding, staff training or standards have taken little action,” the report said. “They say they are in the dark about how many people have even died in jail, let alone how to prevent those deaths. As a result, long-festering problems avoid the spotlight.”

Jails hold a far greater number of people than prisons, and often include people who are awaiting trial and thus haven’t been found guilty of a crime. They also function as America’s social institution of last resort—a place where people struggling with drug addiction or severe episodes of mental illnesses are sent when all else fails. Chicago’s Cook County Jail, one of the nation’s largest pre-trial detention centers, is also effectively the largest mental health hospital in the United States. It’s no surprise that funneling at-risk individuals into a hostile environment can have fatal consequences.

The problem isn’t isolated, either. Four hundred and twenty-eight prisoners died in Florida’s prisons in 2017, amounting to a 20 percent leap over previous years. In Mississippi, 16 prisoners died in the state’s custody last August alone. Some of them may have died from natural causes or unpreventable problems. But that’s not always the case. Arizona regulators testified last month that multiple prisoners in state facilities had died from inadequate healthcare services by a private provider. Perhaps the most famous death in recent years was Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old woman who committed suicide in a Texas jail after she was arrested during a routine traffic stop in 2015. Bland warned officials during her intake procedure that she had made suicide attempts in the past, but they took no extraordinary measures.

How widespread is the problem? It’s hard to tell because the United States generally does a poor job of collecting criminal justice data. The Justice Department faulted Alabama prison officials for misrecording apparent homicides in their facilities, making them seem safer than they actually are in government figures. The Pacific Northwest news organizations also found that neither Oregon nor Washington comprehensively track deaths because jail officials instead report their facilities’ statistics to federal officials—but they do so on a voluntary basis.

This willful ignorance is almost as troubling as the deaths themselves. It suggests that too many states see prison and jail brutality as somehow normal. Not every death in custody may be preventable, but a great many of them are. When public officials don’t act with the appropriate haste to save people under their protection, too many prisoners face what amounts to a death sentence—one for which they were never charged and never tried.

Matt Ford is a staff writer at The New Republic.

Prison Gangs Violence

How it works

• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Aryan Brotherhood Past & Present
• 3 The Black Guerrilla Family Past & Present
• 4 Barrio Azteca Past & Present
• 5 Conclusion: Possible Solution
• 6 Work Cited

Introduction

Gang violence within the prison system is not only an issue in the United States, but all around the world. Issues revolving around prison gangs often relate to racially based problems that occur in and out of prison. This paper will explore the well-known prison gangs which are racially divided, found in America and how race drives a large part of the violence occurring. I will touch base on how these gangs have taken over the prison system. They are used as a way of protection for many at first but turn into a life time commitment eventually.

Even once you are outside the prison walls again.

The stories of murders driven by prison gangs can haunt you. They are gruesome and savage in a way that many people do not understand. For instance:

In 2009, Edward Schaefer was convicted of second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter of a 9-year-old girl. Schaefer, who had a dozen prior convictions, hit the young girl with his motorcycle as she crossed the street. His blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit. Schaefer was sentenced to prison for 24 years to life, but his sentence was short-lived. After only 10 days at San Quentin, Schaefer walked into the prison yard and was stabbed seven times in the neck and chest by an affiliate of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. His attacker, fellow inmate Frank Souza, had manufactured a 7-inch “bone crusher” from a piece of a metal bunk bed. When authorities asked him why he killed Schaefer, Souza responded, “All I got to say, 9-year-old girl.” (Skarbek, David, et al. “To End Prison Gangs, It’s Time to Break up the Largest Prisons.” The Agenda).

In David Skarbek’s book “The Social Order of the Underworld”, he discusses three different levels of gang affiliation, however the group I will be focusing on is labeled “Security Threat Group One”. Skarbek explains, “this category includes members of the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, Mexican Mafia, Nazi Low Riders, Northern Structure, Nuestra Familia, and the Texas Syndicate. These are some of the oldest and most notorious prison gangs” (Chapter 4.” The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System, by David Skarbek). These types of inmates are said to be the “most serious” and hold their status/role in the gang very high. They are also some of the most racially divided prison gangs known in the United States.

The Aryan Brotherhood Past & Present

The Aryan Brotherhood was originally formed at the San Quentin State Prison in California in 1964. The motivation for this gang began when white inmates started to be integrated with the African American inmates at the beginning of the 1960’s. The Aryan Brotherhood is known for their white-nationalistic viewpoints; believing that they were the superior race and above all others. An elderly prisoner who served time in California stated that, “in the beginning, the AB had one true purpose, to stop blacks and Mexicans from abusing whites. If you weren’t picked up by the AB, you were dead” (“Running With the Aryan Brotherhood: ‘You Have to Kill a Black to Get In.'” Real Crime). The original members of this gang were Irish bikers who use to be deemed as the Diamond Tooth Gang, this was until they combined themselves with other small white extremist groups within the prison community, originally for protection purposes. The Aryan Brotherhood isn’t only a functioning gang behind bars, but also in the free life outside the prison walls.

They ran drug rings, realizing that drug trafficking was highly profitable. Which helps them profit from other gangs within the community (Latino mainly). However, the race war did not go to the back burner. To join the Aryan Brotherhood, you would have to earn clout as they call it “make their bones,” by assaulting a rival gang member (African American/Latino) or attacking a correctional officer, quoted, “thus the “blood in” part of the gang’s motto; “blood out” indicates that once a person is part of the gang, the only way out is death” (site2-Aryan). This quote basically lets us know that, once you are initiated you are in for good, and the only way out is to die or even die trying. It didn’t take long at all for the gang to earn their reputation all over the nation.

In the 1980s, there were a series of attacks on correctional officer by the AB gang members. For example, “On Oct. 22, 1983, AB member Tommy Silverstein stabbed corrections officer Merle E. Clutts to death in the Marion, Ohio, federal penitentiary with the help of another inmate. Hours after Clutts was murdered, another AB member, Clayton Fountain, stabbed corrections officer Robert Hoffman and assaulted two other officers because he did not want Silverstein to have a higher body count than him” (“Aryan Brotherhood.” Southern Poverty Law Center), this incident happened in one of the supposedly high security prisons in the country, but it just wasn’t enough to stop the Aryan from making things happened. The members that were known to be a part of a criminal incident was relocated to supermax units or facilities around the U.S. but that still didn’t stop them from doing their dirty work. This gang didn’t get the name “notorious” for no reason, when they have a mission set they will get it done, while locked up they had found multiple ways to commit their crimes, they are known to use highly sophisticated written codes and invisible inks, along with communication during visits from loved ones such as wives or siblings.

In recent years, officials have started to become frustrated at the fact that, the leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood, are still able to organize these crimes while incarcerated. Keep in mind that the majority of the members are located in the ADX Florence prison in Colorado, so these crimes and attacks shouldn’t be so easy to pull off. There have been leaders in the past that have been accused for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act also known as “RICO”. The RICO Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. The act was put into place to stop criminal behavior committed by gangs or other organized groups. It has been reported that in 2002, “they indicted 29 leaders of the federal AB organization for violations of federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Twenty-one of the leaders were charged with death penalty offenses, even though many were already serving life terms, because prosecutors felt that was the only way they could stop their criminal activities” (“Aryan Brotherhood.” Southern Poverty Law Center). The death penalty charges are meant to help deter other gang members.

With the number of Aryan Brotherhood members climbing (over 20 thousand), they are also growing more confident. Recently, an outside confirmed AB member named Christopher Copson took a plea deal and was charged with violating the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, along with aggravated assault, possession of a firearm by a felon, criminal damage to property and other counts. As reported:

On Sept. 18, 2016, Copson and two co-defendants happened upon the victim, who had inadvertently blocked a driveway the defendants were trying to leave in their car, authorities said. After driving by, the defendants stopped about fifty yards away and Copson fired two rounds from a .38 pistol at the victim’s vehicle. The victim called 911 and followed the defendants’ vehicle, only to be fired upon again. The additional rounds only struck the victim’s vehicle. Moments later, when law enforcement officers stopped the defendants’ vehicle, Copson “repeatedly uttered heinous racial slurs directed toward the victim, making clear that the victim’s race was [Copson’s] only motivation for this cowardly act of violence,” Cranford said in his statement. (“Hatewatch.” Southern Poverty Law Center)

As you can see, the race war is still existent among the Aryan Brotherhood. It is an issue that will continue to be persistent in this nation.

The Black Guerrilla Family Past & Present

The second most notorious prison gang known for their hand in the race wars behind bars is the Black Guerrilla Family. They were was brought up on beliefs of political views back in the late 60s. The gang originated back in 1966, it was formed by an activist that was a part of the Black Panther Party, this prison gang was formed with intentions to help fight against the racism that was going on in the west coast. Eventually, the gang ended up doing things for their own good after losing faith in the Black Panther Party and beginning to secure the African American inmates from prison-made racism and violence. The member’s oath that must be lived by is as follows:

If should ever break my stride, and falter at my comrades’ side, this oath will kill me. If ever my world prove untrue, should I betray this chosen few, this oath will kill me. Should I be slow to take a stand, should I fear to any man, this oath will kill me. Should I grow lax in discipline, or in time of strife, refuse my hand, this oath will kill me. Long live comrade George Jackson! Long live the Black Guerrilla Family! (“The Black Guerrilla Family Prison Gang.” Police Magazine).

After having a bad reputation, the Black Guerilla Family have decided to call a truce with gang violence. Their goal is trying to fight for prisoner equality, “While the gang never completely renounced their criminal activities, recent history saw members of the Black Guerilla Family actively working towards achieving both prisoner equality for different races and the reduction of prison-related violence” (“Black Guerrilla Family.” Unitedgangs.com,). They also now have a book now available called The Black Book and this book was distributed amongst the inmates to at least try to spread the word of peace throughout the facilities. The book has also made it to gangs on the street, to try promoting peace between all the gangs. We see that gangs promotes a lot of problems in our correctional facility, but there are some inside and out of prison who try to look at the idea as a whole. In order to get the point across it would have to take someone that’s a member of the gang to stand up and encourage others to stand up for what is right. Afterall BGF was not originally based off of racist acts, the main focus was protection. Which is similar to the start of the AB.

The Black Guerrilla Family fell silent for many years in the race war, but a recent spike in police brutality has called for the gang to reappear and be heard once again. In 2016 there was a warning sent out to correctional officers across the country that in August of that year members of BGF were seeking revenge by attacking officers for the death of one of their gang members. The warning read “attacks in prisons and on the streets could see an escalation of violence after a member of BGF was stabbed to death during a prison riot in Sacramento last year in what the gang believes was an attack orchestrated by police and members of the Aryan.” (Sinclair, Harriet. “Black Guerrilla Family Vow Revenge against Prison Officers and Aryan Brotherhood.” International Business Times UK). With police brutality cases on the rise, I believe the violence surrounding Black Guerrilla Family will continue, along with their involvement in the race war against the Aryan Brotherhood.

Barrio Azteca Past & Present

The last gang that I will be talking about is the “Los Aztecas” gang now known as Barrio Azteca gang led by the FBI most wanted Eduardo Ravelo. The gang originated in El Paso, Texas prison system in 1986, ten years later they grew tremendously across the United States in reaction to deportation of imprisoned Mexican criminals by the United States. The estimated number of members is at least 3,000 just in the United States alone but the number of members may have increased by now since 2013. In 2013 FBI, has reported that they found possible affiliates located in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas, and maybe New Mexico. This gang was known to be involved in a lot of criminal behavior that was requested by Juarez Cartel, “The Juárez Cartel’s armed wing, “La Linea”, recruited members from Barrio Azteca to fight the Sinaloans in 2008, and many gang members were killed or arrested. The group also helped the Juárez Cartel to move people and drugs as well as to acquire weapons and vehicles” (“Barrio Azteca.” InSight Crime,). The gang has very strict guidelines, they’re known to use a ranked structure, so they are somewhat similar to the army.

They have multiple ways of committing they’re crime most of their crimes aren’t even done by the actual members. The way that they get their drugs around is by using “soldiers” who are normally underage children that would locally distribute out the products. While incarcerated the gang communicates over the phones by using code names. They also use postal service to send their product. As though it seems that this gang focuses purely on drug trafficking, they also separate themselves from others based on race. However, unlike the Aryan Brotherhood and the Black Guerrilla Family, their crimes are not hate driven. They are not afraid to kill anyone who steps in their way, even of that is one of their own.

Conclusion: Possible Solution

As you can see from the information above, prison gangs driven by race cause a large issue for our criminal justice system. The violence has gotten out of control and I believe it will just get worse. A possible solution to the prison gang violence may be to break down the prisons into smaller sections. Davis Skarbek believes that prison overpopulation is the cause of prison gang race wars for the most part. For example, “California’s prisons went from housing a small, well-known group of inmates to housing a large, diverse population of strangers. The norms that facilitated a broader social cooperation behind bars were no longer effective. Violence went unchecked, and prison personnel were overwhelmed” (Skarbek, David,The Agenda). Skarbek argues that if prisoners feel safe from the very beginning of their sentence, then there would be no need to turn to prison gangs looking for protection. The fear is what’s fueling the gangs and had helped them ride to the level they are today. “Small prisons also limit the size of the illicit marketplace, leaving fewer profits for gangs. When officials do not govern inmate life, inmates will turn to gangs for a brutal but effective source of order” (Skarbek, David,The Agenda).

To accomplish the goal, you could build smaller sized prisons and set a low max capacity of inmates. Another option would be to enforce laws such as California’s Proposition 47, which is also know as the three-strike rule. This will make nonviolent drug related offences worth shorter sentences for the offender, causing the overcrowding of prisons to decrease.

• “Chapter 4.” The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System, by David Skarbek, Oxford University Press, 2014.
• “Aryan Brotherhood.” Southern Poverty Law Center, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/aryan-brotherhood.
• “Running With the Aryan Brotherhood: ‘You Have to Kill a Black to Get In.'” Real Crime, www.realcrimedaily.com/inside-the-aryan-brotherhood-you-have-to-kill-a-black-to-get-in/.
• “Hatewatch.” Southern Poverty Law Center, www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/20.
• “The Black Guerrilla Family Prison Gang.” Police Magazine, www.policemag.com/blog/gangs/story/2012/07/the-black-guerilla-family-prison-gang.aspx.
• Sinclair, Harriet. “Black Guerrilla Family Vow Revenge against Prison Officers and Aryan Brotherhood.” International Business Times UK, 5 Aug. 2016, www.ibtimes.co.uk/black-guerrilla-family-vow-revenge-against-prison-officers-aryan-brotherhood-1574582.
• “Black Guerrilla Family.” Unitedgangs.com, 8 July 2017, unitedgangs.com/black-guerrilla-family/.
• Skarbek, David, et al. “To End Prison Gangs, It’s Time to Break up the Largest Prisons.” The Agenda, 13 May 2015, www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/end-prison-gangs-break-largest-prisons-000034.
• “Barrio Azteca.” InSight Crime, 9 July 2018, www.insightcrime.org/mexico-organized-crime-news/barrio-azteca-profile/.

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'When you improve nutrition, you reduce violence': Psychologist Kimberley Wilson on working in Europe's largest women's prison

Kimberley Wilson has worked in prisons and with patients from all walks of life. Her years of providing therapy suggest improved nutrition could be key to mental health and brain function.

British psychologist Kimberley Wilson has worked with people from all backgrounds following her years working as a therapist at London's Holloway Prison, which was Europe's largest women's prison at the time. But those formative years shaped the advice Wilson gives her clients and patients to this day.

During her time at Holloway, Wilson learned about surprising links between diet, mental health and behavior in the population she worked with. Those early findings were so promising they inspired the work Wilson has done over the past decade, as well as her two books: " How to Build a Healthy Brain " (Yellow Kite, 2020) and " Unprocessed: How the Food We Eat is Fueling our Mental Health Crisis " (Ebury Publishing, 2023).

In an interview with Live Science, Wilson described her journey from those early years to her current practice, emphasizing the links between mental health and nutrition.

Sascha Pare: You became interested in nutrition after training as a psychologist — how did food first pop up on your radar?

Related: How long does it take to digest food?

Kimberley Wilson: My first proper job when I qualified was in a prison working for a charity developing and offering therapy to prisoners. The thing about women at that time [between 2008 and 2013] — and I'm going to assume it's still the same — is that, although they only made up about 6% of the overall U.K. prison population, they accounted at the time for about 50% of the self-harm that was occurring across the entire U.K. prison estate. [ Recent figures show that in 2022, women prisoners accounted for 29% of self-harm incidents while making up only 4% of the U.K. prison population. And between 2022 and 2023, rates of self-harm increased by 43% in female establishments.] 

It was around that time that this replication [in the Netherlands] of a [2002 U.K.] study came out. They had taken a cohort of violent male prisoners and improved their nutritional status through supplementation [capsules containing vitamins, minerals and fatty acids]. They found that objective incidence of violence — and I say objective, so not like "How are you feeling? Do you want to punch anyone today?" but actually going through the log book at the end of the wing and counting how many infractions had happened — were 30% lower in the supplemented group compared to the placebo group.

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That was just extraordinary to me. I was already working in prison, I was already thinking about safety and harm — and here was this good quality, gold standard research demonstrating that a safe, accessible, low-risk, low-cost intervention could meaningfully improve not just the wellbeing of the prisoners, but also the staff.

SP: That sounds very promising. How did this new information sit with how you were trained as a psychologist?

KW: This raised really interesting questions as a psychologist as to actually how much of my patients' behavior is within their grasp and how much is it being influenced by things that they are completely unaware of. I just found it a fascinating area and also one that was really relevant to the work I was trying to do.

SP: And how was the new information received by your peers and colleagues? Did you implement any nutritional changes during your time working at the prison?

Related: Why do we crave comfort food?  

KW: I tried to speak to the governor [warden] and head of health care to tell them about this and to see if we could do a small trial, or if we could take our riskiest women and offer them a supplement. But I got no response whatsoever: it was just crickets. It's really interesting how unwilling people are to engage with that question. Since then, we have had two more replications of that data, so we've got four now — in the U.S. , U.K., the Netherlands and Singapore — showing the same thing: When you improve nutrition, you reduce violence.

SP: So, you were convinced by the data that was coming out, even if some of your colleagues weren't. Fast forward a few years: You left your forensic work at the prison and opened a private practice in central London. How did you begin to integrate nutrition into your therapy work?

KW: I did my master's in nutrition and looked specifically at the role of nutrition in brain health, so I was looking specifically at brain health and neurodegeneration, and then within that I was thinking about how — broadly — a healthy brain improves mental health outcomes. That's when I started to think about nutrition with my clients and patients. 

SP: Do you think that interest in the kind of work you do — more holistic therapy that integrates lifestyle factors — has increased in recent years?

KW: There's certainly been more conversations about it, and that's also come with more skepticism, which I think is important, but I think there is a much broader appreciation certainly on social media. Could the brain be associated with the body in some way, and could the quality and status of your nutrition be playing a role in your neurological or psychological symptoms? I think those are really important questions — that reintegration of the brain into the body is absolutely crucial, I think, for the future of mental health treatment and research.

SP: The gut-brain axis immediately comes to mind here, but is there any more recent research demonstrating links between nutrition and brain health?

KW: When we look at maternal diet and brain health outcomes in offspring, yes, there's a very clear association. For example, we know without any hesitation that iodine insufficiency is the leading cause of preventable brain damage in the world and leads to permanently suppressed IQ. Similarly, we know that the higher the maternal intake of omega-3, the larger the baby's overall brain volume and connectivity . [These studies are small, observational and were not designed to show that higher omega-3 intake caused higher brain volume.]

In terms of broader dietary intakes, that data is kind of coming in now. First of all, a diet that's high in ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is lower in nutrients. We see that across the world, and the issue for the brain with that relationship is that the brain is the hungriest organ in the body . It has a huge nutrient demand and so the concern is, if we have a population of both adults and children that have a high proportional intake of UPF, are their brains getting what they need to function well? The likelihood is no. 

People who have higher UPF [intake] have increased incidence of depression and anxiety , and increased risk of depression and common mental health conditions later on. They also have faster cognitive decline and greater overall dementia risk . 

[High UPF intake is tied to other major factors that impact people's health — for example, people with low incomes who face food insecurity and receive government food benefits often consume more processed foods , and they are thus facing additional stressors beyond the foods they eat.]  

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SP: How do you pass that information on to your clients and patients?

KW: I just try to present the evidence: "The evidence suggests to us that just getting a few more fruits and vegetables into your diet will help you feel a little bit better . Is this something you'd be willing to try?" [Studies showing the impacts of fruit and vegetable intake on mood are largely observational.] 

For some people nutrition might be a significant influence on how they're feeling, but for other people it's really not, and so you can just give it a bash for a while and see.

SP: You also do a lot of science communication work on your social media platforms. Do you communicate differently online, maybe in a way that's more prescriptive? (I must confess I've had a stalk of your Instagram .)

KW: The ironic thing about social media is that people are looking for you to tell them what to do, whereas I'm just kind of like: "Here's some information, do with it what you like." I think it's important for people to have that information, but it's not a command.

Kimberley Wilson will be co-hosting a talk called " Gut Feelings " at this year's Cheltenham Science Festival , which will run from June 4 to 9.  

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.  

Sascha is a U.K.-based trainee staff writer at Live Science. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Southampton in England and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and the health website Zoe. Besides writing, she enjoys playing tennis, bread-making and browsing second-hand shops for hidden gems.

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Paul Pelosi attacker resentenced to 30 years in prison

T he man who attacked the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at his home was resentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday, following an unusual second go at the hearing after a judicial error.

David DePape was initially sentenced in May to 20 years in prison for the October 2022 attempted kidnapping of Speaker Pelosi and 30 years for the attempted murder of her husband, Paul Pelosi, to be served simultaneously.

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley did not allow DePape to speak before the hearing for the purpose of mitigating his sentence, an error that forced Corley to hold a second hearing for the sentencing Tuesday. 

Paul Pelosi barely survived the attack , during which he was hit in the head multiple times with a hammer. DePape initially planned to kidnap the then-Speaker, though she was not home.

DePape apologized Tuesday, but Corley gave him the same 30-year sentence.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said, adding that he felt horrible and never meant to hurt Pelosi and that he should have left the house when he realized the former Speaker was not there. 

DePape blamed the violence on a poor mental state, and said he has since reconnected with family and improved mentally.

Corley said the sentence needed to act as a deferral against future political violence.

“The message has to be out there that it’s absolutely unacceptable to our democracy,” she said. 

DePape’s attorneys argued against bringing the defendant back into the courtroom, claiming that the process could interfere with his California state trial. He faces charges of attempted murder, elder abuse, residential burglary and other felonies. Opening statements in that trial are scheduled to start Wednesday.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

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Manhunt Underway in France After Prisoner Escapes in Ambush

The French authorities said that armed assailants had attacked a prison convoy, killed two guards and freed an inmate.

By Roger Cohen

Reporting from Paris

The black Peugeot 5008 rammed the police van carrying a prisoner as it emerged from a tollbooth on a major highway about 85 miles northwest of Paris. Hooded men with automatic weapons leaped from the car, encircling the van and firing on it with unhurried precision for more than two minutes.

When they were through, two prison guards were dead — the first to be killed in the line of duty in 32 years — three more were wounded, and the still-handcuffed prisoner the van was transporting, Mohamed Amra, had escaped, setting off a manhunt involving several hundred officers.

“The attack this morning, which took the lives of prison guards, is a shock to us all,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on X after the attack, which occurred around 11 a.m. on Tuesday and stunned the country with its brazenness and violence. “We will be uncompromising,” he added, promising to track down the perpetrators.

But more than 10 hours after the ambush, no trace of the assailants, who also used a white Audi that followed the van, had been found, and Mr. Amra remained at large.

Laure Beccuau, the top Paris prosecutor, said at a news conference on Tuesday that one prison guard was still in critical condition. She said investigators were combing through a crime scene that showed signs of “extreme violence.” A national unit specialized in organized crime is leading the investigation, a move that is reserved for the most serious cases.

Ms. Beccuau said that Mr. Amra, 30, had no drug-related convictions. But French news outlets reported that Mr. Amra was known as La Mouche, or the Fly, and had been involved in international drug trafficking and organized crime.

“It was a war operation,” Dominique Rizet, a commentator on police affairs, told the TV network BFMTV. The French authorities have not suggested that Mr. Amra has any links to terrorism.

The attack was captured on security camera footage and video filmed by bystanders that was later posted on X. At a time when France is trying hard to project an image of law and order ahead of the Olympic Games, the images of violence on the main highway from Paris to Normandy were a blow. The attack came just days after the Olympic flame arrived to much fanfare in Marseille.

Jérôme Barbier, a resident of Incarville, France, who was on his way to his beehive about 100 yards from the tollbooth, said he heard shooting, but did not see it.

“It was a big, big shooting; it lasted for five minutes,” Mr. Barbier, 58, said in a telephone interview. “Then it calmed down for one to two minutes, and then there was an explosion. And then two more gunshots.”

Mr. Barbier, who said that he had worked for the gendarmerie — the force that oversees smaller towns and rural and suburban areas in France — in the 1980s, said he could tell it was “heavy fire.”

“It wasn’t a light weapon; it was really powerful,” he said.

Ms. Beccuau said that the black Peugeot — which passed through the tollbooth several minutes before the convoy and waited for it to arrive — had been stolen. Two other cars, including a white one, were found burned in separate locations about a dozen miles from the tollbooth. Both are believed to have been used by the assailants, she said.

Prison guards are armed with handguns and equipped with bulletproof vests during transfers, and the van transporting Mr. Amra was accompanied by another prison administration car. But no armed police escort joined the convoy on the one-hour journey from a courthouse in Rouen to a prison in Évreux.

Ms. Beccuau said that Mr. Amra, who had been transferred last month to that prison, was “very well known” by the police. He has been convicted 13 times since he was 15 years old for offenses including extortion and assault, as well as several thefts.

A court in Évreux sentenced him last week to 18 months in prison for burglary. He is also under investigation in Marseille in connection with a kidnapping and homicide case and in Rouen in connection with an attempted homicide and extortion case.

Ms. Beccuau said that the prison administration had decided several weeks ago to increase the number of officers securing Mr. Amra’s transfers. She did not say why, but noted that he was supposed to undergo a disciplinary review after prison staff members noticed what appeared to be saw marks on the bars of his cell.

Hugues Vigier, Mr. Amra’s lawyer, told BFMTV that he was “completely dumbfounded” by the attack and said it did not “fit the profile” of his client.

The attack occurred on the same day that a Senate committee completed a report on rampant drug trafficking in France and recommended the creation of a French equivalent to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It said that the government has not taken the measure “of the dimensions of the threat.”

“The extent of drug trafficking gives us the feeling that there is a relationship of strong versus weak, in which the strong are the criminal organizations and the weak is the state,” Jérôme Durain, a Socialist senator and one of the two authors of the report, told Le Monde , a French daily newspaper.

Ms. Beccuau said one of the guards who was killed was a 52-year-old father of twins with nearly three decades of experience in the prison administration. The other guard who was killed was 34 years old and expecting a child with his wife.

France’s main prison guard unions called for a symbolic shutdown of the country’s jails on Wednesday to honor their dead colleagues and to protest working conditions.

“This was an attack of an unparalleled violence, in the brutality and cowardice of the killers,” Gabriel Attal, the prime minister, told the National Assembly, which observed a minute of silence on Tuesday. “We will spare no effort or means to find them. We will track them down — and they will pay.”

Aurelien Breeden and Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.

Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist. More about Roger Cohen

Fort Liberty soldier charged with unpremeditated murder in death of infant daughter

An 82nd Airborne Division soldier is facing allegations he is responsible for the death of his infant daughter in 2023.

The U.S. Army Office of Special Trial Counsel preferred charges of unpremeditated murder, involuntary manslaughter and domestic violence against Sgt. Gabriel Ceville in the death of 8-month-old Misty Lee Delatorre, according to Special Trial Council spokesperson Michelle McCaskill.

Ceville, originally from Oklahoma, is a member of the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Battalion, 505th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, said Maj. Matt Diaz, spokesman for the division. He said Ceville entered the military in 2011 and was assigned to Fort Liberty in 2021.

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On May 22, a preliminary hearing was held at Fort Liberty, McCaskill said.

Misty's grandmother, Misty Bray, of Wake County, said she attended the hearing that addressed the death of the granddaughter named after her.

Bray said that her daughter, Alina Delatorre, met Ceville online on a military chat site in 2021 as she was preparing to join the Army. Those plans were foiled when she became pregnant, Bray said. Their child was born prematurely in Moore County on May 31, 2022.

“She was determined. My grandbaby was so determined,” Bray said. “Big personality for a little baby.”

Bray said the relationship between her daughter and Ceville was tenuous and that she had only met him briefly on a few occasions.

“I met him when he went and got the DNA test done,” Bray said. "It was always a fight because he didn’t want to deal with anything financially.”

The court records indicate Ceville served Delatorre with custody papers when the baby was 3 months old and mother and child had moved to California.

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On Feb. 7, 2023, a Cumberland County judge awarded primary custody of Misty to Ceville, with both parents sharing custody in six-month intervals, according to the records.

On Feb. 10, three days after the judge entered the custody order, Misty was in the care of her father when she the hospital, Bray said. Misty's grandmother said she and Delatorre learned from the hospital that the baby had been admitted 24 hours earlier.

On Feb. 13, 2023, Misty died from blunt force trauma to her head and neck, according to an autopsy report.

The report states the 19-pound child, who was positive at death for COVID-19, also had abrasions and contusions to her chin, eyelid and cheek.

"The distribution of the scalp injuries Misty sustained, in particular, suggests multiple impacts to multiple sides of the head. The unexplained bruising of her face (and past bruising noted months prior) is also highly suspicious. As no alternative explanation for this trauma has been provided (per discussion with law enforcement), by far the most likely scenario is inflicted/abusive head trauma," the autopsy report states. "Even were Misty to have had an inborn bleeding vulnerability such as a coagulation disorder or a metabolic defect (or even clotting abnormalities from COVID-19), the chances of her spontaneously having bleeds in so many different locations simultaneously to simulate massive head trauma (and with no bleeds elsewhere) are essentially zero."

Public safety reporter Joseph Pierre can be reached at [email protected] .