Who is Modeling Good Citizenship to Prisoners?

"He's back!" someone called out in the day room. Those of us within earshot looked around.

"Who's back?" someone asked.

Motioning to the officer walking the perimeter of the fence, the announcer called out, "Officer so-and-so." A collective groan went up from every prisoner in the day room who had begun to believe this officer's month-long absence meant he was gone for good. The rumors concerning his absence were numerous, and often humorous. 

"Well, everyone better tighten up when they go to chow tonight," another prisoner warned. "You know he'll be stalking everyone. He's probably been itching to get back and harass us again." Others sat around nodding their heads in agreement. 

As I listened in to this conversation, even participating in the collective groan, it struck me how the presence or absence of a single officer can have such a major effect on the stress levels of prisoners. Whether it is the presence of a particular yard cop, or a non-regular officer working in a housing unit, prisoners don't often deal well with the stress that results. All of the corrections officers have jobs to do, but some take pleasure in being especially rude and treating prisoners inhumanely. Others know we have to live here, and they enforce important rules while relaxing some of the flexible ones. 

For example, prisoners are not allowed to wear their long john shirts without a t-shirt or "blues" (the state-issued dress shirt) over them. Sometimes, intentionally or not, prisoners may throw on a coat and go to chow without putting on another shirt over their long john shirt. Most officers don't care about this slight infraction. It's under a coat, so what does it matter? But a couple of officers perch with eagle eyes at the entrance of the chow hall to catch these offenders and make them return to their housing unit to change. These same officers also take pleasure in loudly berating offending prisoners for their stupidity and for refusing to follow the rules. It is rule-enforcing gone rogue. 

As psychology researcher P. Zimbardo demonstrated in his famous 1971 "Stanford Prison Experiment," some people cannot handle having power over others. When some perfectly healthy-minded people are given positional power over others, they devolve into practicing brutal and dehumanizing behavior. In this experiment, the guards' behavior was due to the (perceived) rewards of identifying with their assigned group (prison guards) and the status and social power they received. Because of the abuse of power, the two-week experiment was terminated in just six days. 

The point of this experiment was to prove the "situational hypothesis" that one's social context influences behavior more than individual psychological characteristics. I tend to agree. I have seen officers who are respectful and treat prisoners with dignity completely change into dehumanizing jerks within a few months, simply because they were partnered with a miserably angry and hateful officer. Surely one's psychological makeup does influence one's behavior, but it's amazing to me how strongly social influences also impact a person. 

If corrections officers are under social pressure to treat prisoners inhumanely, imagine the social pressures prisoners face when housed with others who are committed to their criminal mindsets. I've heard it said that prison makes people worse, and I have to believe that this is generally true. After all, when you force people to live, twenty-four hours a day, under tremendously negative social pressure, you can't expect them to miraculously become better people. Especially when some corrections officers aren't even modeling decency, respect, and good citizenship.