Prison Officials: "Do as I Command, Not as I Do"

 

This past week, some in the news media criticized Michigan's Governor Whitmer for her duplicity regarding Tik Tok. Whitmer banned the use of Tik Tok on government devices, but she continues to maintain and use her own Tik Tok account. It's unclear to me whether or not Whitmer uses a government device to access Tik Tok, but certainly she has a right to her own personal use of the site. However, the optics are definitely bad. The media termed her actions, "Good for thee, but not for me." Working against Whitmer is her duplicity during the pandemic when she mandated mask wearing in public places, but then was photographed in a crowded restaurant without a mask.  I'm not at all surprised by the governor's duplicity. It's a problem rampant in most, if not every, branch of power. Abuse of power has become so normalized that I'm surprised the media even notices anymore.  Let's take the Michigan Department of Corrections, for example. Clearly, I have a front row seat to its many abuses of power and its blatant duplicity in punishing prisoners for violating the law and prison rules while shamelessly doing the same themselves. In my fourteen years in prison, I have seen numerous occasions where corrections officers wrote false misconducts on prisoners they disliked. These officers simply made up an infraction, lied on official paperwork, and because of the lack of due process afforded prisoners, punished them for rules they didn't even violate. This behavior is common among corrections officers.  Of the two times I know of when officers' lies have been exposed (and not defended or hidden by administrative staff), the officers have only been nominally punished. One was fired, but then got his job back with back pay. He was simply transferred to another part of the same prison facility. Another was demoted and transferred to a different prison where he continues to exercise power over the very people he lied about.  I've also seen and heard of officers planting prison knives (called "shanks") in the property of prisoners they don't like. They then "discover" these shanks on shakedowns (wow! magically!), and the prisoner gets punished. These prisoners receive dangerous contraband misconducts, are sentenced to weeks in segregation, and then shipped to a higher security prison.  In the only time the officers' actions came to light, that I know of, the officers were not disciplined at all. They were simply moved to a different housing unit in the same prison. Recently, I had pieces of my mail removed without timely or proper notice. When I grieved the issue, my grievance was denied, rubber stamped, at all three steps. This despite glaring violations by mailroom staff of the prison's own policy. There is absolutely zero accountability for prison officials who violate the very rules they write to keep themselves "in line." The rules only apply to prisoners, not to prison staff.  I happen to believe that there is a very good place for authorities who enforce the law. I'm not an anarchist! But I find it increasingly difficult to have any respect for these very authorities when they hold two standards: one for prisoners and a very different one for themselves. Basic behaviorism teaches that you cannot train people to follow the law when the enforcers of the law do not apply it to themselves. Their own duplicity weakens the force of the very laws they claim to protect.  Law enforcement officials are facing public backlash for the very same reasons. The people sworn to protect the law regularly violate it, and others within the system too often protect the violators. Well, this problem goes far deeper than the very public abuses of power in law enforcement. It has infected, matastasized, and spread to the arm of the law that conducts its business in the shadows - corrections.  And nobody will hold them accountable.  These normalized abuses of power are not sustainable. The entire system's authority requires public trust and the moral high ground. It's quickly losing both (if it ever really had it).