Modern Arizona Prison Management Style

Modern Arizona Prison Management Style

The history of Arizona prisons appears to be simplistic in appearances and should not serve as a model for any prison system in our United States as it is based on a plantation management style that has been applied for reasons that appear to violate the shear value of human rights and civil rights as well of both employees and workers. 

Their history is based on models many business owners have adapted to and used to bring complete control over their span of operations and keep them competitive in modern days using a generational warfare theme to keep both the staff and inmates at edge and creating an unrest that justifies using several methods to keep order. 

Certainly there is no need to go back into history and demonstrate how slavery has been used to make profit of products that sell based on supply and demand. Slavery at some point in history was a well-established method of production and continues to be used in modern days through the manipulation of laws and cultures that permit vague plantation management styles to occur to manage people. 

One thing is for sure – slavery has been implemented through legitimate venues established by law and supported by legislation drafted, lobbied and legislated into bills by powerful groups such as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and others using various acronyms to avoid being readily detected as such a political group. Basically, the concept of growing prisons and expanding their influence within society has reduced people into “human capital” and considered “assets” rather than human beings. 

People in our society have been manipulated for years to accept prisons as a legitimate reason to keep millions of criminals inside sharp razor wire and high walls. Their tolerance to prisons has been tempered by political groups of the criminal justice system such as police, prosecutors, judges and chief executive officers such as mayor, governors and federal administrators that incarceration was the answer to a rising crime rate. Hence an example is the war on drugs campaign that launched a prison growth never experienced before which targeted drug users rather than drug dealers. 

Plantation management styles share many commonalities. They are simple and straight forward and allows plausible deniability of many issues inside prisons because they are set up in a manner these flaws never reach the top or so it is said officially. 

Characteristics are:

• Many were absentee owners and contract out their work and productivity through third parties such as wardens, administrators, chief of security and supervisors

• Kept complex and meticulous business records but managed them in a manner that makes discovery through the public information freedom act difficult and time consuming

• Carefully monitored their profits and allocated their resources for maximum gain politically and financially making them wealthy even after leaving the business

• Had complete control over their employees (slaves) and their workers (slaves)

• Didn’t have to worry about turnover as their labor was cheap and plentiful

• They could experiment with tactics, moving employees around, demanding loyalty but giving them no added benefits for their loyalty – workers were treated the same

• They could demand higher levels of output without higher compensation

• They could monitor what employees thought, wanted, eat, sleep and personal relationships

• Incentivized workers through stipends but refused to give them raises or better benefits

• Encouraged honesty, handed out bribes to both employees and workers to encourage tales of rumors and snitching each other off offering them better jobs for good work, to police one another

• Could measure an employee or worker by their productivity and corporate worth

• Depreciated an employee or worker worth through the years allowing attrition to lower the costs of keeping them. 

The down side of such business characteristics are as follows: 

• Commodity approach: A person is treated like a commodity who can be bought or sold at a price. This applied to employee and worker

• Machine approach: person is treated as a part of the machine that can be fitted like any other part.

These people (employees) are:

•           Forced to work – through mental or physical threat

•           Owned or controlled by an ‘employer’, usually through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse, intimidation, fear and ostracizes or alienates them with other employees

•           Dehumanized, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as ‘property’

•           Physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.

Using the prison worker (slaves) model today we have: 

•           Bonded labor for employees depended on their wages, benefits and retirement plans

•           Child Slavery –Juvenile systems

•           Conditions of mandated servitude

•           Forced labor – forced work as work refusals result in disciplinary or more restrictive movement housing conditions

•           Human trafficking – moving people from one location to another and forcing them into mandated work conditions.

•           Physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.

Reference: http://www.topmanagementdegrees.com/slave-management/