Violence vs. Vigilance -The
high cost of incarceration
By Carl R.
ToersBijns, former deputy warden, ASPC Eyman, Florence, AZ
Arizona prisons, by
reputation and demographics, have increased their tolerance for deadly violence
exponentially in the manner it has been addressed and managed. Allowing
willfully and deliberately the existence of organized gang violence to occur,
they are setting up the public and the taxpayers for a huge demand of funding
in future needs to secure our prisons that have been exploited by those who
wanted to see them grow in size and need for profit making and mass
incarceration agendas.
For all practical
purposes, prison management is taking weak reactive approaches on the
management of violence inside these state prisons. Through slow and “deliberate
indifference methods” of blaming these events on individuals and not the gangs
that are actually ruling the yards with orders coming from upstairs inside
their maximum security units. Just like the outside world, taxes are up and the
failure to pay them results in physical harm or assaults that often hospitalize
men or women for weeks at a time. This philosophy of gang enforcement by boots
and stomping has been a growing disease with no relief in sight. Since these
acts are tolerated by the administration, it is likely to increase over the
next few years before someone says enough is enough and attempts to retake
control from the gangs will result in widespread violence throughout the state
for a momentary conflict for control and power.
The strategy is simple
and not complicated at all once you understand the mentality of creating a
“gladiator” environment inside our prisons and how this impacts your political
wishes to spend more money and control more power over a most ignored and
invisible event such as managing prisons.
Their deliberate
ignorance of such gang growth has allowed them to deny there is a growth in
gang related violence within the prison setting as there are now more violent
individuals incarcerated than ever before. This myth will eventually be
dispelled by future leaders but until such a farce is revealed, the taxpayers
and constituency base will suffer needless as more money is allocated for
prison operations and programs.
For the longest time
now, prison officials have turned a blind eye at the “beat downs” and severe
assaults that have been occurring inside state prisons since the ideology has
changed from rehabilitation to mass incarceration. Medical bills and
hospitalization needs has jumped up the costs of associated treatment and care
as there appears no end to the gang violence inside Arizona prisons.
The agenda is filled
with expanding maximum security beds rather than providing a safe and secure
environment for staff and prisoners to enhance and allow a peaceful coexistence
and functionality and coping skills. Today’s standards are well within limits
that allow only a small degree of humanity to exist inside prisons. This makes
the majority of prison culture inhumane and torturous to many trying to co-exist
under such vile conditions.
This concept is
designed so that administrators don’t experience back-drafts of criticism for
the ongoing violence from those that embrace anarchist ideology on both sides
of the fence. Allowing such conditions to exist permits the agency to point the
fingers at prisoners rather than their own miscalculations or moral and legal
responsibilities of how to handle violence inside their prisons. It also allows
a justification for resources to be used in a manner unquestioned by those top
executives or legislators that make the rules but rarely see to it that
oversight of compliance is occurring.
It is much easier to
blame prisoners for their negative and often rebellious behaviors than to
explain how the agency allowed such breeding conditions to occur and foster
such a disruptive mood without intervention. After all is said and done, the
agency, in its righteous tone of addressing the prisoner’s misconduct and
assaultive behaviors will come out asking for more funding, more staff, more
maximum security beds and more sympathy from the governor’s office, the
legislature and the public.
It’s a strategy that
has worked often elsewhere and is growing inside Arizona prison managers’ minds
as a new tool to warrant current prison expansions based on the self created
need and self fulfilling prophecy that prisoners are more violent today than
ever before and that the expenditures requested are needed to calm the setting
and manage violence that has been embraced through silence and inaction and
used a means to attain and acquire more money for more prisons and beds.
November 24, 2012
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