Inmate Entitlement Attitude - A Growing Problem

Inmate Entitlement Attitudes ~ Growing Problem

By Carl R. ToersBijns

 

 

Today a large segment of our prison population is made up of chronic complainers and unreasonable whiners. These individual whiners are so used to getting things for free that when they are incarcerated they are the most labor intense and most chronic complainers around.

 

Living off the government has developed a society within the prison razor wire that resembles a significant portion of those same habits displayed when in the free world.  Secondary considerations are those persons that are getting older and needing medical care for chronic medical conditions or dental work long overdue.

 

Without any doubt, these prisoners have basic needs and are entitled to some of the same services out there in the communities in the name of being secure and maintaining their wellness. The difference is they have to share these limited resources with thousands of others thus a waiting list is common and the most efficient way of dealing with their issues. This does not make them happy occupants while in prison but that is the reality of how things are.

 

There are exceptions to the rule of course as there are those who truly need these services that are physically or mentally disabled and can’t earn or work for these things they really need.  However, it seems that society has developed a large throng of professional dole takers that also duplicate these same behaviors when incarcerated and living off the prison dole system.

 

Out in the free world, they frequent churches and soup kitchens for free meals and drinks. While incarcerated they hoard the dining hall chairs and complain about the quality and quantity of food served without paying one penny into the cost to feed them.  Some are fortunate to live with family but often they wear their welcome out as they sponge there way into the streets by abusing the gratitude and love of their relatives.

 

They learn to double dip and get more for free while robbing others from a meal as prison food often runs out and do what is called progressive feeding also known as making the meal as the line is being served. Additional staff and coupons had to be used to prevent this double dipping as the cost of a meal is rising and no prisoner will ever contribute to its costs.

 

It also appears that because everything inside prison is practically free and paid for by the taxpayers, they don’t mind going back to prison and compromise the quality of life for a free ride and no responsibilities. Many choose to live like this and most consider it a viable alternative to be a free person and choose not to be working for a living and living free off government food stamps or other dole services.  They know the criminal code well enough to commit minor felony crimes and plan their short term stays around the seasons and the weather so it seems.

It also seems they would rather spent the night in a prison or jail than be free and living in these shelters or churches that offer free overnight bedding or spent the night under the bridge or overpasses where the weather keeps them cold and wet most of the time.  Precisely, prisoners receive free indoor shelter all year around. This avoids them having to find bed space in homeless shelters or other sanctuaries already overcrowded and sometimes hard to get into.

 

While in prison they don’t have to worry about clothing, furniture or household goods and are spared the efforts they spent going through dumpsters, laundromats or looking curbside through garbage cans or stealing clothes from clothes lines waiting for the sun to dry them. After all, it takes a lot of energy to make things come together like that and not many receive the cooperation from others out there.

 

On the outside, it is highly likely a homeless person or down and out ex convict does not have any pocket money to buy anything for themselves unless they go to the blood or sperm banks to redeem their bodily fluids for cash. If they are fortunate enough to collect cans and bottles for recycled funds they compete with others to get the sufficient amounts of items to get a little bit of cash to buy cheap booze, a bus ticket, drugs or cigarettes or toiletries. 

 

However, it takes a lot of effort to make ends meet and money does not come easy to these people.   While in jail or prison, they get an opportunity to work for small wages and receive a small deposit in the inmate bank account at the end of the month to buy items from the commissary or others.  In prison they don’t have to panhandle and look for lost change as they are fed, clothed, seen by medical and even the dentist if their case is serious enough to warrant an appointment.

 

Is it no wonder why entitlement attitudes are growing inside prisons. They are duplicating their lifestyle inside prison as they live on the outside those high walls and razor wire. The basic difference is that they do their time and take advantage of tax funded services that are not available to them on the outside.

 

It makes sense that rather than making the effort to be self sufficient and work for what they need, they can get it all for free inside a warm dry eight by ten cell or a cozy dormitory setting with televisions blaring, food aplenty and medical and dental care for those who need to be seen by healthcare providers. Already conditioned to cope and function within their prison adapted norms, they seem to do it well and survive living off the systems that gives them an opportunity to get things for free.

Working with SMI Inmates & Self Harm issues

Inmate Self-Harm Behaviors for Correctional Officers

By Carl R. ToersBijns

 

For all practical purposes the biggest difference between prisoners and correctional officers is the fact that prisoners are incarcerated subordinates to the correctional officer’s directions and orders while under the supervision of the Corrections Department.

In layman terms, the officer has to constantly struggle and be cognitive of the prisoner’s behaviors including the fact they may possess a learning disability or mental illness that may impede their ability to communicate effectively. This makes perceptions biased as the officer attempts to help the prisoner with his problems but are often challenged to correctly understand their message as it is either emotionally or mentally impaired.

There appears to be a discussion ongoing whether the officer has the willingness to help and doing the right thing when he or she does offer the prisoner assistance with their problem especially to those related to self harm or suicides. The officer has to determine rather quickly if the gesture is genuine or whether the problem is manipulated and a petty opportunity to get some attention from the officer.

This is a very important key to communicating and helping with the problem of self-harm and suicides as each method has motivating factors that determine serious or non-serious actions to be taken and relayed to mental health and supervisors.

Most officers do not possess the ability to determine serious from non-serious thus the risks are high that a sign or awareness level may have been missed and create a situation for the prisoner to actually harm himself severely or commit suicide within short periods of time. Ignoring a response based on a wrong evaluation or assessment can lead to creating a tenser situation from the start.

A lack of response by the officer that ignores or minimizes the prisoner’s behavior is likely to be demonstrated in an animated and aggressive like manner and brings to the confrontation anger, disgust, and frustration by the prisoner as well as a feeling of ridicule by the officer that believes the prisoner tried to play headgames and results in a provocation of anger by the officer towards the prisoner escalating the situation severely.

Therefore, it is important that the officer takes the time and reads and assesses the prisoner’s behavior appropriately and accurately to avoid a critical incident from developing and prevent or intervene in a severe psychological episode by the prisoner and taking the appropriate steps to secure his safety and wellness immediately for the sake of preserving human life.

The officer must be properly trained how to read the motivating conditions, environmental factors or circumstances that triggered the prisoner’s request for interaction or attention so that the proper care can be provided by mental health providers available to treat and stabilize such individuals. In theory, the better the relationship is between officer and prisoner, the better the communication is and the better they understand each other at the time.

This is where the ability to empathize and observe and listen for clues of behaviors is important. Empathy is not sympathy. It is merely the ability to understand another person’s feelings or needs through comprehension of behaviors, feelings and words spoken. Sometimes it takes someone to put themselves in the other person’s place and try to see and hear what they are seeing or hearing to understand the message spoken.

Certainly the officer must understand the reason for anger if the prisoner’s actions or behaviors are ignored or minimized as it draws anger and the feeling that they are alone.

It is important that officers don’t stereotype prisoners and believe that they are all the same and that they might react the same way under most circumstances.

 

Officers must take into account if the prisoner was:

• Unable to cope effectively
• Depressed
• Under the influence of drugs
• Stressed because of changes in environment
• Family turmoil or problems
• Frustrated by recent disciplinary or negative prison factors
• Being bullied by others
• Recent loss of loved one
• Impulsive in nature

 

Once the officer has taken these factors into consideration then another evaluation must be made related to the threat made or actions pending such as cutting or hanging himself and decide if this act is:

 

• A cry for help
• Hoping to gain attention
• Overwhelmed by emotions
• Taking control of the situation
• Avoiding others perceived to be a threat or risk to him
• An act to get a high
• Actual act intended to commit suicide

The fact remains that the officer can’t be certain which reason or motive is correct and must treat the situation with care and determine how to ensure the prisoner’s safety as he makes his notifications and arranges for mental health care providers to see the prisoner as soon as possible and play out this critical incident in a manner that does not empower the prisoner to manipulate others but rather focus on the reality that he is asking for help and needs to talk to someone who specially trained and skilled to obtain an accurate assessment of his needs.

Every agency should take into consideration the need for specialized training in self harm signs and suicide awareness. They should be considerate of those factors that are created by the environment could and can cause additional personal distress and vulnerability that creates harmful behaviors to appear as well as suicide ideations.

Agency staff should realize that reducing the prisoner’s distress level can help reduce self harm and suicides effectively and need to upgrade their training for staff so they can work with these special management prisoners effectively and safely.

 

December 13, 2012

Leadership versus Dominance - Power

Leadership versus Dominance of Mankind

By Carl R. ToersBijns

 

 

“Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal”– Daniel Goleman

 

Traditionally speaking, men are social creatures in a most complex social world. What we do and how we do it based on numerous factors that make us a different kind of animal apart from the others in this world. Human beings are in many ways, smarter than most members of the earth’s inhabitants but for some reason, have engaged in continued conflict at the fundamental domestic levels or fighting wars with each other that will eventually decide the fate of their survival.

 

We must all admit there is a hierarchy and a pecking order in this world we live in that is undisputable a daily influence of our lives. We organize our social skills, needs and desires based on social influences along with cultures, traditions and customs.

 

The pecking order can be based on many factors that maintain a class order as well. These factors are well known but center on intelligence, strength, wealth and social position in society or government. Regardless of intent, the pecking order is established for one reason, protection; protection from others as well as themselves. Protection designed to provide either a means to be self-sufficient and independent or to avoid an unbalanced dependence on others.  Thus we have what is commonly known as a predator and prey situation.

 

Is such a pecking order appropriate or is it flawed? What is the basis of such a concept and what establishes the rules of engagement to make it orderly and fair or does it have to be fair. Is the pecking order consistent or is it open for a competitive comparison of nature thus competing with other force that coexists in the same dimension or continent? The answers aren’t clear without looking at this a little bit deeper.

 

Does the order posses aggression as a means or a tool? It appears that every pecking order has a balance of “master and subordinate” concepts. This is the key to the organizational purpose of a society.

 

How it functions, copes and manages daily living is based on a master and subordinate concept that develops other elements needed to stabilize this process. Once can say that differences in cultures or ideas will create different societies established with different rules as well as customs and traditions to meet their statutory and religious based views.

 

Thus this social arrangement becomes another reason to divide the human race into smaller groups or interactions setting up its own pecking order and reasons for dominance. As such society becomes a complex system of building blocks with each a different set of rules and social expectations.

 

So how does dominance play into societal development? Observations of human being has confirmed there are at least three types of people within a social organization, the leaders, the workers and the followers alas another hierarchy in place to establish order.

 

Dominance is a prevalent factor in many different scenarios in life. The fact is that when you observe humans you will observe this quality of dominance frequently as it plays a significant and prominent part of any social organization or setup. Therefore, it is fair to say that both the hierarchy and the act of dominance are relevant to our society.

 

Another relevant fact observed are the traits of leadership and dominant functions of humans that are observed taking a lead in an assignment or role within our societies. Therefore one may ask is leadership a major characteristic of being a dominant character or is this assumption that is flawed in some manner.

 

Dominance can be divided into several groups within society and within the human interactions as well. Dominance can police behaviors or resolve or create personal strife or stress. It can take charge of most decision making processes that include where you live, what you do for a living, who your sex partner is and whether you remain single or married with children. It also determines whether you are aggressive or passive and other personal traits well accepted to be human behaviors and characteristics.

 

These are all human developments of domestication and impact daily life to the fullest and are in constant need for guidance and quality of life decisions that impact all those decisions and lead a reasonable safe and comfortable quality of life. There is a need to prevent looseness or direction within the group(s).

 

Hence we identify the word leadership and its purpose within our social structures but part of the problem is that leadership in its own definition is vague and can be broken down to several types of concepts. However, for this purpose, we will focus on social leadership.

 

For example, social leadership can be defined as maintaining law and order between individuals within a group providing protection for some when faced with a threat or predation. It is this type of leadership that is most commonly identified with the concept of leadership or leaders.

 

Leaders that are either appointed or self appointed to provide control, management or guidance of those things that are important to use whether tangible or intangible items within our world. Along with this leadership must come a careful balance to avoid a volatile vision of being master and slave relationships within the social groups.

 

Leaderships must be composed of mutual relationships such as partnerships sharing the burden and maintaining control over those social interests within each group. It must rely on social input and diverse thinking to seek what is best for the group and not individuals.

 

Leadership can develop during critical responses or daily and routine tasks and functions of society.

 

Thus it is fair to say that leadership is prompted by the need for an initiative or action to do something to either protect someone or maintain control or acquire something that is needed to exist, to survive or to manage in order to maintain the most human needs of our lives.

 

It could be concluded that leaders do not have to be dominant or sitting at the head of the table type of positions but rather, a characteristic that is mutually and co-operative in nature and acceptable in all social formats that exist at the time of need or purpose.

 

 

December 11, 2012

Hoarding the Power ~ Charles L Ryand and Arizona Prisons

Arizona Corrections ~ Ryan, Hoarding the Power

By Carl R. ToersBijns

 

 

If we were to look into the future and look back how the Arizona prison system grew and floundered under the leadership of Charles L. Ryan you will undoubtedly find a conclusive description of what can be said is a compulsion to hoard power and build a base of power within that resembles a dictatorial and adversarial method of prison management. Unfortunately, he did this for the sake of evil rather than the good for many. Surely this qualifies him to be unprecedented in such accomplishments of power grabbing everything within his reach or span of control.

 

This is happening as the criminal justice system is cycling hundreds and even thousands of prisoners through its prison system without any inquiries or curiosity by elected officials nobody is asking how this agency spends its billion dollar budget.

 

Daily, he seeks ways to set up control within every aspect of the agency’s individual departmental responsibilities that ranges from custodial care to medical and mental healthcare provisions ruled under one man and one rule.

 

In other words, Mr. Ryan makes decisions for every aspect of custodial, medical and mental health care as well as contractual services rendered and prison policies. He is the sole decision maker that writes his Director Executive Orders whether he is qualified to make these decisions or rarely seeking advice from others more qualified in such special areas.

 

Working with what can be described as an unprecedented amount of money provided by the legislature and the governor, Ryan has managed to set up a power base that spans from controlling and expanding public prison beds, commissaries, food and medical contracts to private prison beds and other profit making schemes. One would think this strategy was done for the best interest of the state but rather the opposite is true.

 

The public has been hoodwinked into thinking their prison system is well and intact but in fact it is dilapidated and in dire need of attention. Nobody has noticed the growth as they feel it is just and unworthy of criticism as well as oversight.

Ryan has hired and re-hired former colleagues and hand-picked friends to control the tight niche circle of power as well as maintaining a silent and firm control on all internal environmental issues with effective damage control at the correctional officers’ expense through unwarranted discipline and compromising their safety.

 

As their staffing patterns dwindle, their bed capacity increased. Double bunking without adding staff is a dangerous practice especially at level 5 units where the propensity of violence and misconduct is the highest.

 

Mr. Ryan has abandoned all practical and safe correctional practices for the sake of expansion and more prison money allocated to a system that is already demonstrated to be weak in security and public safety. Specific by-products of this management style are more violent offenders, higher death rates, increased suicide risks and continued staff assaults with and without weapons.

 

Correctional best practices are waning as a thing of the past as good security is now rare and vanishing quickly. Today, the prisons are run by those in orange jumpsuits rather than those wearing the badge, the brown khaki shirts and BDU pants.

 

His latest project of expanding maximum custody bed to construct a Special Management III in the Lewis prison complex is the latest example of his expansion plans.  Asking the governor for $50 million dollars to build a complex for Level 5 inmates is hardly necessary if Ryan would allow the prison management team to do what is called the inmate classification process. Meddling with the risk assessment tool, he has altered the entire population by ignoring risks and threats within.

 

Since day one he took over, he has focused on locking up and locking down prisoners with discretionary powers to hold them at the higher levels for reasons that are based on repetitive misconduct charges that elevates the custody score and increases risk to the general population setting.

 

He has effectively manufactured a higher risk group through administrative means and justifies asking for more Level 5 beds through his own self fulfilling prophecy of increasing detention beds and max custody beds over the last three and a half years.

 

He accomplished this plan by executing a three stage process that first included segregating all severely mentally ill prisoners at a higher custody level mixing them with anti social behavioral prisoners so that the chaos and violence would increase and the justification would show good reasons for such placements thus justifying the means at the end. This method allowed him to classify Arizona prisoners as more violent than ever before.

 

Second he destroyed the inmate employment program and reduced both work hours and wages through an austerity program leaving thousands of inmates idle and without a job to earn their commissary or other costs. In other words, he effectively destroyed the prison economy and created the same conditions that exist in the free world where crime is based on the need or the greed of individuals with a criminal mind. These created an unbalanced and predatory living environment to cope within as it became the “only the strong survive” culture and the weak pay for protection.

 

Lastly he eliminated self help programs and substance abuse studies that effectively created an uncontrolled drug infested prison environment unprecedented in modern penology and Arizona prisons and allows the presence of drugs to maintain the instability to keep the prisoners divided and the staff in danger. This created a drug infested culture that became more violent and more addicted than ever before posing threat to the staff that work there and the public safety.

 

He has facilitated this growth in drugs through his permissive attitude of allowing prison gangs to exist. He has forsaken good and effective searches to find the drugs and has basically allowed the “inmates to run the asylum.” This reduction in the inmate’s income resulted in more misconduct that included theft, assaults, gang violence, extortion and other criminal behaviors.

 

His goal is simple; infuse more money giving him more power. No matter. The taxpayers are picking up the tab for this most volatile environment as the prison system, although not managing what they already have, keeps growing and becoming more unstable in unbelievable epic proportions statewide.

 

Taxpayers have no idea how these “covert” ideas has fragmented the agency and don’t seem to care how their tax dollars are being spent. In fact, it is safe to say even the legislators haven’t the faintest idea what it actually costs to accommodate Ryan’s plan and the governor isn’t interested in asking either.

 

In the meantime, you pocketbook will continue to write blank checks and receive nothing in return.

At a cost of over one billion dollars, you would think that somebody in Phoenix government would be keeping an eye on how this money is spent and how many lawsuits have been paid out to avoid bringing this horrific prison management situation to the attention of the public.

 

December 11, 2012