Inmate Prison Violence in America
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This paper will be concerned with the causes and effects of inmate prison violence in America. Violence in prisons is usually dramatized in the form of prison riots, such as the one that broke out at Attica State Prison in New York in September, 1971 (Bell, 1985, p. 19). In that riot, the prisoners took thirty-eight guards and civilian workers hostage for a period of four days. The Attica situation came to a violent and bloody end when state police stormed the prison, and thirty-two prisoners and nine guards and employees were killed (Langone, 1984, p. 65). Another highly publicized prison riot took place in 1983 at Ossining State Prison (formerly known as Sing Sing) in New York. In that uprising, prison inmates held seventeen guards hostage for two days, "freeing them only after inmate demands were read over television" (Langone, 1984, p. 154). It has been noted that the 1983 Ossining incident "was nowhere near as serious as the Attica uprising... but it is another bit of evidence that tempers in prison run high" (Langone, 1984, p. 154). In addition to riots, however, prison inmates are also subjected to violent conditions which occur on a day-to-day basis. Such day-to-day inmate violence involves prisoners and guards alike, and occurs in women's prison facilities as well as men's facilities. Such "in-house violence" can be found "existing on both the physical and the psychological levels" (Anderson, 1988, p. 430). It has been noted that in both men's and women's
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77). Kravitz (1987) has pointed out that "prisons create angry individuals who learn how to become better criminals from convicts with more experience" (p. 5). Thus, prisons overall, including those for women as well for men, can be seen as places were violence is institutionalized and taught rather than controlled and eliminated. The increased number of prisoners in the United States over the past decade has not resulted in a statistical reduction of violent crime. This is true in analyzing conditions both on the streets and in the prisons. In fact, it can be seen that the overcrowding caused by this increase in prisoners has actually worked "to raise the level of violent crime rather than to bring it down" (Goode, 1984, p. 177).
Yet another cause of prison inmate violence can be seen in prison gangs, which are widespread and powerful throughout America's prison system. These gangs are created by inmates who wish to protect one another from other gangs within the prison. Thus, it can be seen that these social organizations come into being as an effort to be protected from acts of violence in prison. At the same time, these prison gangs serve to perpetuate acts of violence among inmates. Thus, rival gangs within prison
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2206
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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