PRISONER EXPRESS

Most inmates don't know psychology or good sense. When some arrogant bastard mean-mugs us, we return hostility. Escalation results, building up to explosive proportions in seconds, or years, though inevitably in whatever time frame. We don't give a sweet god damn because we are the walking dead anyway. We are often so deprived that we relish a confrontation. They don't give a rat's ass because whatever they do is usually justified by a few words or clever rhetoric.

Prison is a secret place where events are concealed. There is no oversight; the guards control everything. They have evolved a closed society where only their own version of events is taken as reality and believed. No oversight means no quality control. When no quality control is had, personalities tend to warp toward sadism as certainly as absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sadism results from there being no possibility of real accountability.

A good correctional officer is the new guy: usually one who has had no contact with the military. If he is a good guy despite military service, he's usually one who has never actually killed anyone. Extensive training in efficient mass-murder techniques tends to make life cheap, especially when it belongs to the people we are programmed to hate.

The good officers are well adjusted and score well on personality tests. Bad officers skew towards excessive suspicion, paranoia, self-esteem and egoism. Criminals have recently been found to possess too much self-esteem; exactly opposite of what was generally theorized only two years ago. Persons who think too much of themselves necessarily think too little of others. This is why the good officers are often new guys with open minds.

This is also part of how bad officers tend to drive out good ones. Good correction officers are exploring a new environment with few prejudices to color their perception. They exhibit curiosity because they have not been trained too extensively that the answer is to be found only in policy statements. The good officers are able to ask their prisoners for answers and to consider prisoner input valid for use in arriving at solutions to mutual problems. Bad officers issue orders coupled with threats to force compliance. Good officers treat people with respect and as adults. When people are approached as adults with respect, the best of a bad situation can ensue with a minimum of grumbling. The famous "show of force" is gratifying for the ones perpetrating physical or psychological violence to obtain their ends, but it creates resentment. Its victims plot vengeance that eventually costs the oppressors time, effort, money and materials, even lives. It can be as subtle as a stopped-up drain and a flood or as brash as a rock to your face, but something will happen despite all their precautions. Oppressors are by nature outnumbered by their oppressed. Thus mutual respect and human compromise are always a better course.

A good corrections officer is one who is outgoing, extroverted and enjoys people. He smiles, laughs and jokes. He doesn't stereotype people. He isn't trying to prove anything. He isn't trying to hurt you. What makes a good corrections officer is his ability to imagine himself in your place. He's got compassion instead of a judgmental attitude. Instead of being highly trained, he's highly educated and intelligent.

What would make good officer training is work inside an old folks' home and a hospital setting with the usual set of harried, overworked nurses and aides. Women are naturally compassionate and caring. Nurses and aides can instill compassion and caring into correction officers as easily as the military training can instill violence and sadism into formerly normal men and women.

Even bad correction officers can be made into better ones. We do this by taking the secrecy out of their jobs. A camera eye quietly recording a scene drastically cuts down on crime, plus it makes people more polite and forgiving. An officer's workplace should have a camera feeding into the Internet for all of us to see. This type of oversight from third-party citizens who are still being capable of being shocked by scenes of inhumanity leads to the most efficient type of quality control. Officers in such a system would always wear identifiable names and numbers emblazoned across their uniforms, like football players. This way we would have feedback loops: when abuse occurs, people would see and be shocked and horrified. They would immediately see who is responsible and demand he cease and make amends.

If a pattern of abuse was uncovered, the perpetrators could be placed in jobs where they would never again have the opportunity for abuse, same as we have done for decades with rapists, pedophiles and drug addicts.

Power is an addiction worse than all drugs combined. Unrestrained power has killed millions of people and is the deadliest force on this planet. Restraint of power can be taught. Power is readily abused because its consequences are almost never felt by the person abusing it. They have made themselves safe from ever experiencing its pain. Occasionally, a judge will pretend to suffer a jail cage for a scant few moments. Some cops have briefly worn correctly applied shackles just so they can say, "I feel your pain".

Every person who yields power should be made to suffer it in a realistic manner for a realistic duration. Actual physical experience of abusive power would make an excellent correction officer out of normal people and better ones out of bad officers.

Good officers come from a good environment. They enjoy supportive, two-parent families with siblings, quality education and at least a modicum of financial affluence. They are free of prejudice and abnormal training in arts that no human has any business practicing, such as torture and murder. They feel honest compassion for man, animals and our ecology. They are subject to guidance, oversight, quality control, censure, and feedback loops from moral individuals and real punishment for deliberate acts of abuse. They will know what it feels like to be abused. The scientific application of all these principals will make good corrections officers.