A Theor of Prison System's - SAGE Journals - Sage Publications

A Theor of Prison System’s ERIC H. STEELE Research Fellow, Center for Studies in Criminal Justice,

University of Chicago;

Research Attorney, American Bar Foundation

JAMES B. JACOBS Doctoral Fellow, Center for Studies in Criminal Justice, University of Chicago; Adjunct Faculty Member, Department of Social Justice, Lewis University

This paper suggests that scholars and practitioners in correction should turn their attention to the prison system as a crucial unit of analysis. Almost every state has a centralized correctional department with jurisdiction over a variety of institutions ranging from traditional custodial maximum-security warehouses to communitybased innovative halfway houses and treatment centers. How prisoners and resources should be distributed among these institutions is the

key problem.

The central thesis of this paper is that any prison system can be described and analyzed according to the functional relationships among its institutions. The "hierarchical" system is based on a

highly elaborated punishment-reward structure that holds out the incentive of minimum-security living conditions in exchange for cooperation with administration. In this system social control is shifted frcm the individual institution to the system as a whole. The "differentiated" system is designed for the delivery of treatment services, but it requires a degree ofautonomy that correctional systems currently do not enjoy. Finally, the "autonomous" system is made up ofsmall, functionally independent institutions with heterogeneous populations; though attractive because of low cost and moral neutrality with respect to the etiology and treat-

ment of crime, it is also unstable because the type of institution that evolves depends largely on the warden and the natural history of the particular institution.

monolithic 1n5t1tL1Gone are the exists. longer days when all American penal institutions could be characterized as variations on the Philadelphia and Auburn models.1 In response to the increasing PRISON as a

THE tion

no

1. For a

description of the Philadelphia

and

Auburn institutions see David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); Orlando F. Lewis, The Development of American Prisons and Prison Cus-

number of felony prisoners, all fifty have attempted to develop multi-unit correctional systems based on assumptions about the etiology of crime, the possibilities of rehabilitation, and the need to maintain order. Typically a centralized prison administration coordinates the flow of prisstates

toms, 1776-1845

(Montclair, N.J.: Patterson

Smith. 1967).

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150 correctional personnel, and resources in a system of institutions ranging from such notorious maximum-security penitentiaries as Folsom (California), Stateville (Illinois), and Jackson (Michigan) to minimumsecurity facilities-work camps and community release centers. Focusing on the interplay between formal and informal organization, sociologists and others have described prisons as &dquo;total institutions.&dquo;2 While the social system of the prison has been meticulously explored, the system context in which the prison exists has been all but ignored.3 Scholars, prison officials, interest groups, and inmates themselves have given scant attention to the fact that penal institutions exist within the context of prison systems. It would, therefore, be useful to develop a theory of prison systems to make those who would study, administer, or reform prisons aware of the crucial consequences of functional interrelationships for a prison’s goals, social structure, and capacity for change. Toward this goal the following discussion attempts to delineate tliree &dquo;ideal types&dquo;4 of prison systems, oners,

2. See, for example, Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden’ City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961); Donald Cressey, The Prison: Studies in Institutional Organization and Change (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1961); Richard A. Cloward et al., Theoretical Studies in the Social Organization of the Prison (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1960). 3. Gene Kassebaum, David Ward, and Daniel Wilner, Prison Treatment and Parole Survival: An Empirical Assessment (New York: Wiley, 1971), ch. 8, suggests that the development of multi-institutional prison systems has disrupted traditional inmate organization. 4. We use the term "ideal type" not normatively but in the Weberian sense. An ideal type is abstracted from observable social re-

named for the

predominant functionrelationships among institutions in each system―A?oY/7’r/!!co~ differental

tiatccl, and

(/lIt01101l10IlS.

These three ideal types are descriptive of reality in two senses. First, they offer conceptual clarity in thinking about the complex patchwork of con-

prison systems; more particularly, they clarify the strains and dilemmas created by functionally incompatible structures and illuminate the dynamics and possibilities of change within existing systems. Second, and more speculatively, they may temporary

indicate three broad historical eras in the development of prison systems. Hierarchical structure characterizecl prison systems in the past and is only now beginning to give way to the differentiated structure of prison systems. The autonomous prison system, never fully articulated, may achieve prominence after the decline of the differentiated system. The Hierarchical System The earliest prison systems were hierarchical ; they evolved from organizational imperatives of the traditional custodial prison. The prison administration insured control by reaching an accommodation with favored inmates and the inmate power structure, overlooking rule infractions by the inmate 61ite in exchange for the 61ite’s support of the status quo.5 This accommodation was given definite form in the clasin order to isolate its essential characteristics. Existing prison systems demonstrate characteristics associated with each of the ideal types. 5. Clarence Schrag, "Some Foundations for a Theory of Corrections," The Prison, Donald Cressey, ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1961); Richard A. Cloward, "Social Control in the Prison," in Cloward, op. cit. supra note 2.

ality

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151

sifications of prison security as maximum, medium, and minimum. In time the inmates classified

security (trusties) pleasant quarters

were

as

minimum

assigned

more

in honor units or work farms attached to the prison. The farm served by its very existence to reinforce formal control; it was a resource the administration could use as a reward for inmates who obeyed prison regulations and cooperated with the staff. The traditional maximum-security prison also contained a segregation unit to which persistent troublemakers could be banished for

months The

years.6 maximum-security institution did not abolish security designations; incongruously, it housed within its walls inmates classified as requiring or even

maximum, medium, and minimum

custody

even

though

the

state

prison

system may have maintained separate institutions of various security levels. We have associated the hierarchical correctional system with the traditional custodial prison. Both emphasize security and custody over treatment and rehabilitation in designating and utilizing resources. The traditional custodial prison favors this goal because of its utilitarian assumptions about the nature of crime and criminality. The hierarchical prison system favors custody and security because of the dynamics which are set in motion when security level is chosen as the key variable distinguishing the institutions in the system from one another. Once one has decided to construct maximum-, medium-, and minimumsecurity institutions, the relationship among them is all but settled. The highest security prison with the greatest proliferation of rules and the most 6.

George Jackson,

York: Bantam Books,

Soledad Brother

1970).

(New

the degree of order may then be maintained in lower security units (both minimum-security prisons and satellite farms) by the explicit threat of transfer back to the &dquo;gray monster.&dquo; Perhaps this is why hierarchical prison systems typically require all inmates to spend some period of time in a

grincling daily routine serves as system’s punishment center. Some

maximum-security setting to learn to dread its deprivations. Nowhere is this intimidation more dramatically evident than at the Stateville Penitentiary’s satellite farm, situated literally in the shadows of the prison’s 30-loot stone walls and gun towers. While the highest security institution functions as a punishment center for the system as a whole, the lowest security institution serves the system as a reward toward which all inmates may aspire. Indeed, the hierarchical system can frequently be identified by its model or showcase institution. It is ironic that the most ideal correctional units exist within the correctional syslems boasting the most elaborated hierarchical structures and that the best programs exist only by dependence on the grimmest conditions. The creation ol’ institutions ranging from the most austere to the most comfortable transforms the entire prison system into a punishment and reward structure. Those who comply with the rules and participate in formal programs can expect to move rapidly through the system (from walled-in custodial institutions to work-release centers), while those who cause trouble can expect to remain indefinitely in the most detestable unit (a maxi-maxi security prison). Shifting the responsibility for maintaining order from the individual prison to the prison system, with its hierarchical structure of punishment


152 and reward, gives the system extra control. The ability to transfer prisoners makes more potent this added dimension of control. The Federal Bureau of Prisons acknowledges that it has utilized transfers to break up cliques and to prevent potential troublemakers from developing constituencies.7 What makes the system hierarchical is that the defining characteristic of each institution is its security level. It is possible, of course, to conceive of a correctional system made up of functionally unrelated institutions having different degrees of security, in each of which a different type of offender could be kept, according to perceived dangerousness, for the entire prison stay. Such systems would not be hierarchical and have not existed. It is our thesis that the reward-punishment (utilitarian) world-view inherent in any security-oriented prison system will in time force all its units into a hierarchical functional relationship. Once participants in the system-administrators, line staff, and inmatesperceive institutions of varying security levels as varying degrees of punishment, the potential for exploiting them to maximize control throughout the system becomes apparent and all but irresistible. Our thesis is independent of the current policy debate on the wisdom of concentration or dispersion of incorrigibles.8 The historical tendency of the hierarchical system liars been to concentrate troublemakers in one maximum-security prison. But the dynamics

7. The same point is made concerning the New York State prison system in Attica: The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission (New York: Bantam Books, 1972),

of

punishment and reward would apply with equal logic to a policy of clipspensing them in separate punishment

centers

scattered

tem or to an

throughout the sys&dquo;adjustment center&dquo; in

that prisontransferred to a punishmentt unit, that unit functions as a separate institution since it is assigned a separate but functionally interrelated role. Thus, defining the functional units of the prison system as geographic entities is arbitrary. A single prison operating a full-scale segregation or punishment unit and a minimum-security section as well as its general sections behaves like three distinct prisons. Typically, in the course of his expected or normal career in confinement, an inmate will move downward through and out of the system, from austere maximum security to medium security, minimum security, and finally a work-release center. The hierarchical correctional system is designed to ensure maximum order, not to deliver treatment programs effectively or economically. The daily routine of the custodial prison aims at keeping inmates occupied and under intensive scrutiny. The results of attempts to introduce rehabilitation programs into such institutions have been each ers

prison. To the extent

are

disappointing

and

even

discouraging.

Scholars have pointed out repeatedly that rehabilitation and custody are incompatible.&dquo; What has not been emphasized, however, is that rehabilitation and the hiaarchical prison system

itself are incoynpatible.

The failure of rehabilitation programs in traditional custodial prisons has led some reformers to call for abo-

p. 121. 8. Daniel Glaser, "Politicalization of PrisonA New Challenge to American Penology," American Journal of Corrections, NovemberDecember 1971, pp. 6-9. ers :

9. See Morris Janowitz and Robert D. Vinter, "Effective Institutions for Juvenile Delinquents: A Research Statement," Social Service Review, June 1959, pp. 118-30.


153 litioli of the traditional

prison

and for

construction of minimum-security treatment-oriented units in its stead. The very existence of mulli-institutional correctional systems, however, I~,la nmole it possible for administrators to parcel out their institutions to differcnt prison interest groups, to establish ;) few model units in the shadow of the walls, and thus to appease reformers without sacrificing order and conIrolY’ These model units exhibit the appearance but not the substance of relorm. Since they accommodate only minimum-security inmates and since these inmates include all offender types, all psychological types, all ages of offenders, and inmates at all stages of their prison careers, no single coherent program relevant for all inmates can be developed in the model unit. On the contrary, like its maximumsecurity sister institution, the model unit fabricates a hodgepodge of programs offering a little something for everyone but not addressing the needs of any single group of inmates effectively. Similarly, after rigorous evaluation for six weeks in a diagnostic center, the minutely studied subject is, typically, assigned to one of several institutions that differ from one another only in degree of security. Even a psychiatric unit is unable to function suc-

cessfully as a specialized treatment cenwithin the hierarchical system and often becomes a dumping ground for the most incorrigible. In short, within the hierarchically ordered prison system a model treatment institution, ter

like

a

sophisticated diagnostic center, be more than a tranquilizer

can never

for reform groups. 10. Donald

Cressey,

"Prison

(New York:

Rand

along somewhere in

the system to serve those clients who may by chance benefi from it. The inability to establish coherent treatment programs and the misallocation and duplication of program resources

are

significant disadvantages

built into the hierarchical correctional system. They are by no means the only disadvantages. There is an inherent and inexorable strain in the hierarchical system to proliferate the cantos of hell within and among institutions. Once the emphasis is placed upon control through a punishment-reward hierarchy, there is no logical place to stop. What further punishment can be imposed on an inmate who is already entombed in the punishment center

Organizations,"

Handbook ofOrganizations, James ed.

Within the hierarchical prison systhe greatest proportion of custodial manpower and hardware is allocated to the highest security institution. Program resources can be neither rationally allocated nor efficiently utilized because inmate placement is determined by security criteria. Only by chance will there be a meeting of the right program with the right inmate. ProfessionaL treatment resources tend to be co-opted into the service of order within the custodial institution.ll There is similarly a tendency for the goals of treatment programs to be displaced within the hierarchical system. For example, a drug rehabilitation program may have considerable merit, but making it available to those inmates who benefit most from it is highly unlikely. This leaves the hierarchical system two choices. It may introduce an attenuated drug program into every institution (which appears, empirically, to be the case) or it may allow the original drug program to limp tem

G.

McNally, 1965).

March,

11. R. Bendix and H.

Powelson, "Psychia-

try in Prisons," Psychiatry, February 1951.


154 and is unmoved by the promise of reward ? The higher an institution is in the hierarchical pyramid, the more difficult it becomes to maintain order. The population in the institution at the apex of the structure has been screened to admit only the most incorrigible of the incorrigibles, and the warden of this institution exerts constant pressure to establish an even more restrictive institution (or unit) for dumping the most troublesome and threatening the potentially troublesome. Within such institutions control becomes increasingly problematic and greater and greater reliance is placed on coercive measures.12 The Differentiated System As soon as sheer volume requires the construction of more than a single penal institution, a prison system is faced with the difficulty of assigning inmates to one institution or another. Such assignments are made according to assumptions about the etiology of crime, the treatment of criminals, and the maintenance of order-the same assumptions that led to the construction of prisons of different types. As we have seen, the hierarchical prison system, based on utilitarian assumptions about crime and criminals, was composed of institutions diflering in degree of security to which prisoners were assigned according to their degree of predicted dangerousness. The differentiated prison system makes a far different assumption about the nature of crime and criminality: it assumes that criminality can be diagnosed and treatecl. It locates the causes of crime variously in poverty, slums,

racism, family disorganization, unemployment, frustration, adolescent pro12. Erik ment

Wright, The Politics of Punish(New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

personality disorder, and the it prescribes for criminality according to the presumed cause. proliferation of causes of crime

test, and

treatments

vary The leads

the differentiation of appro(although there is priate no one-to-one correspondence) and to the typing of convicted men according to etiology and appropriate treatment. For treatment purposes the heterogeneous mass of prisoners has most often been differentiated on such criteria as age, offense, clinical diagnosis, length of sentence, geography, and educational and vocational deficiencies. Division of prisoners by age was orig. inally thought a protection for the young from older, more hardened criminals. Differential processing and treatment of juveniles may also be derived from theories of crime causation that stress masculine protest, peer group processes, and street gang pressure. The division of inmates according to age has not stopped at the single separation of juveniles from adults; many prison systems find it useful to concentrate young adults in one institution and the elderly in another. Until recently, the West Facility of the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo was an institution for the old and infirm. The Sheridan Correctional Center, in Illinois, and the federal Robert F. Kennedy Youth Center, in Morgantown, W. Va., admit the oldest juvenile offenders and the youngest adult offenders. The assumption implicit in these decisions is that age is crucial both to explaining the cause of crime and to selecting the most appropriate rehabilitation technique. Indeed, one could rationally plan a comprehensive prison system based, like the school system, on age gradations with separate institutions and programs for each age group. to

treatments


155 The second

key

variable

by

which

(lenders have been grouped is type of offense. The assumption here is that there is something similar among car thieves that distinguishes tliem from

armed robbers, check forgers, and

mur-

derers. Gibbons has distinguished CI’1111inal careers ranging from professional heavy violence to naive check forgerylB; presumably, he would conclude that, after conviction, each distinct career group should be addressed by a distinct, specific, differentiated institu-

tional

treatment

program. categorization by clinical diagnosis is often made on the basis of a criminal typology. Upon entrance into the correctional system at the reception and diagnostic center, the offender is

psychological evaluation and as passive-aggressive, or sociopathic. immature, paranoid. and Psychiatrists psychologists hold that the criminal act is symbolic of deeply rooted psychological disorder. The type of crime that a particular givcn

a

may be classified

offender commits, therefore, reveals little; thus, legal and behavioral criminal typologies are of little use. Given the offender’s need to deal with massive guilt and overwhelming unconscious psychic pressure, the kind of destructive behavior he ultimately acts out is often fortuitous. According to this view one could rationally design an entire correctional system from narrowly drawn clinical categories. The patient would be assigned to that institution where the resources directed to his particular personality disorder were concentrated. If he lacked personal assertiveness, for example, he would not be 13. Donald Gibbons, Crime,

Criminal Careers

Society and (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

Prentice-Hall, 1972); cf. Marshall Clinard and Richard Quinney, Criminal Behavior Systems (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,

1972).

incarcerated with overly assertive and aggressive patients. Each group would benefit from a specially designed program. Inmates can also be categorized by length of sentence. One reason for the existence of jails w well as prisons is to separate short-termers from persons serving a sentence of more than one year. Conclusions about the needs and clangerousness ol inmates differ according to the length of their sentences. to occupy inmates’ time or to construct a world behind walls; lifers are always perceived as an especially difficult problem for prison administrators. While institutional disposition based upon the etiology and treatment assumption might call for assignment of a prisoner to, say, a drug rehabilitation center, it is not easily made-certainly not at an early stage in his prison commitment -if he comes into the system carrying

.Jails uarely are organized

sentence. Indeed, long sengenerally incompatible with a treatment-oriented prison system. Nlost programs are designed for com-

a

ten-year

tences are

in a few months rather than several years. In England and some other countries, lifers and other longtermers are assigned, after a brief stay in a regular prison, to more comfortable and less program-oriented facilities like Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, where it is expected they will live out the period of confinement. Geography is usually an influential consideration in inmate classifications. For the correctional system the advantage in confining the prisoner near his home town lies in his desire for family visits; the system’s power to deny them diverts some inmate energies away from institutional rebellion. Keeping the offender close to home so that he can maintain contact with family and friends is said to be in his best interest

pletion


156

-although friendship patterns and family relationships are just as frequently said to be the grounds for crime in the first place. Insofar as crime is seen as caused by educational and vocational deficiencies, grouping inmates according to such deficiencies is appropriate. Consequently, they are assigned to academic schools, vocational centers, and classes in social skills, without regard to age or type of crime. So far we have indicated that differentiated prison systems type inmates not

by predicted dangerousness

but by assumptions about causation and treatment. Now we need to consider what a differentiated system would look like. It would consist of a large number of complementary, functionally differentiated institutions, each specifically designed to meet the needs of a distinct group of offenders with

specialized

professional

programs.

are

divided

by

age,

psychological dial.

nosis, vocational deficiencies, educavocational needs, geography, of sentence, it is likely that differentiated correctional a will evolve an eclectic array of system tional

or

or

length highly

unclerscoring a multicausa) approach the etiology of crime and treatments

to

the treatment of criminality.14 Within this system one can expect to find a large and powerful central administration dominated by medical and social welfare professionals. In the hierarchical system the central administration’s function is to serve as an umpire among the wardens, reacting only when.a malfunction appears within the system-for example, when the institutions attempt to rid themselves of all troublemakers. The central administration must see to it that &dquo;dumping&dquo; does not exceed the level that is

minimally required to maintain punishment-reward structure. In

the the

Economies of scale and optimal resource utilization require that the resources for a single type of treatmentt be concentrated in a single institution unless the number of prisoners requiring the particular treatment is so large that duplication at another location is needed. Once the treatment resources are concentrated the clients of the particular treatment program must also be concentrated. Depending mainly on the size of the client population, separate concentrated treatment programs might be housed in geographically separate prisons or in separate units of the same prison. As we noted in relation to the concentration-dispersion issue in our discussion of the hierarchical system, programs located in separate units of the same prison will function as separate parts of the sys-

differentiated system, however, the central administration must play an active role: it allocates highly expensive treatment resources, carries out sophisticated evaluation, and sees to it that the right inmates are brought together with the right professional staff in the right institution at the right time to achieve both optimal individual treatment and optimal resource utilization. This is no simple management task. It requires the services of highly trained administrators, diagnostic and treatment specialists, and research personnel. California’s correctional system, which comes the closest to approximating a differentiated

though they are geographically contiguous. Whether offenders

Juvenile Delinquency (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1951).

tem even

system, has

a

sophisticated organizadisplays forty-one sep-

tional chart that arate

divisions, twelve staff services,

14. S. Glueck and E. Glueck,


Unraveling Mass.:

157 line operation dividivision has an aclminisEach sions.15 trativc apparatus and is accountable ,o the director of the department. Several divisions are concerned primarily with coordinating all the institutions’ programs and managing the flow of inmates through them. For example, the Classification and Transportation Section is responsible for functional supervision of the reception-guidance center as well as inmate classifications and transfers; the Program and Facilities Planning Section is responsible for assessing the department’s future workload with respect to types and numbers of offenders and for designing specialized programs and facilities to meet their needs. The prisoner’s career in the differentiated correctional system starts in a highly sophisticated reception and diagnostic intake institution. In California the new inmate remains in the diagnostic intake facility for six weeks, during which time a treatment plan is formed to fit his particular needs. The federal system boasts a computerized procedure to monitor an inmate’s progress and to revise his prescribed program if necessary to make rational allocations of program resources.16 The inmate’s career is guided by his treatment plan, takes him through several institutions, and may well include later trips back through evaluation and diagnostic units.

and

twenty-nine

15. Attachment California

73/48,

to

Administrative Bulletin of Corrections,

Department

Sept. 27, 1973. 16. "The system is called ’RAPS,’ an acronym for ’Rating, Age, Prior Commitments, Sentence.’ With this guideline, program managers can make priority allocations of correctional resources (counseling, education, training) to the inmate treatment programs where they will ’do the most good." A Look at the Federal Prison System, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, 1973, p. 6.

The specialized treatment programs characteristic of the institutions within the differentiated system are too expensive not to be fully utilized. Their high cost inevitably stimulates an effort to move an inmate through a required program and then transfer him to another institution where he can benefit from another program so that another inmate can utilize the program :;e has just vacated, much as the Army utilizes its training centers in processing recruits. The extreme difficulty of effective utilization is one major drawback to the allocation of resources to such expensive treatment

programs. This kind of coordinated flow of instaff, researchers, and resources cannot function smoothly if exceptions are made tor security reasons, if staff are preoccupied with security problems, and if placement and transfer are determined by security rather than treatment criteria. Since a goal of the differentiated system is involvement of 100 per cent of inmates eligible for a program, it is beneficial to maintain all institutions at a single medium-security level. The differentiated system will contain no units with conditions either as comfortable or as grim as those found in hierarchical systems. Escapes and disciplinary incidents are accepted as unavoidable costs of doing business. Violation of rules, except when serious, can be handled in each institution by unexceptional methods of social controlwithdrawal of privileges (commissary, mates,

phone calls, yard exercises, etc.)-or limited punishment (short periods of cell confinement). Hardest-core incorrigibles can be kept in a small jail; for them, treatment will simply be written off. For the vast majority of inmates, however, who remain in program, the


158

institutions to which they are sent will not differ in their pleasantness as places to do time but only in the programs they offer. If the specialized institutions within the differentiated system are kept small, they will function securely even with reduced surveillance. In contrast to the hierarchical system the fully elaborated differentiated system is expected to earn the normative support of its population; inmates will want to conform because

they believe in the program.17 Clearly, the differentiated system can run smoothly only when it has complete control over length of incarceration. The system is not achievable in the present context of lengthy sentences and parole board control of release. The differentiated system must diagnose an individual, plan his course of treatment, and release him upon successful completion of the course. It can never be fully elaborated where sentence and parole decisions are based on

retribution, deterrence,

or

pre-

dangerousness. Logjams can be expected to pile up throughout the

dicted

system when inmates who have completed their entire program are retained in custody. Warehousing institutions will be constructed, and the maximum-delivery-of-treatmentservices system will once again be deflected to the task of safe and secure custody. Under these circumstances, treatment staff and inmates become frustrated, discouraged, and embittered. Whatever legitimacy the system may have established is forfeited, and the consequent security problems create a demand for security measures based on utilitarian principles. In 17. Amitai Etzioni, Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York: Free Press, 1961).

short, the system will be under pressure to transform to a hierarchical system

for maintenance of order.

The Autonomous

System

Though the third alternative ideal type, the autonomous prison system, is not current in the literature, it is use. ful to describe it if only to add clarity to the previous discussion. There are intelligent individuals in our midst who maintain that the current controversy about the future of the prison is misguided and misleading. A number of them, questioning both the possibility and the desirability of behavioral change.,18 would advocate a kind of benign neglect for prisoners. They point to the long history of promising treatment projects, initially extolled and eventually discarded ; continually high rates of recidivism ; the indeterminate (translation: longer) sentence, signifying the corruption of treatment; and the immorality of compelling the poor and powerless to adopt the standards of middle-class America. These are not the only reasons for supporting a stance of benign neglect. Some of the benign neglecters view the whole prison reform effort as a romantic fantasy and a distortion of priorities. Regardless of the possibility or the morality of changing prisoners, they argue, our attention and resources ought to be focused on the more pressing needs of the whole community. The litany of more important problems is impressive: disease, old age, poor education, poverty, bad housing, pollution, corruption, etc. One of the most dramatic and more specific objections of this group is the inequity that 18. Robert Martinson, "The Paradox of Prison Reform," New Republic, April 1, 8, 15,

29, 1972.


159 on criminals while igof their victims. needs the noring A third line of reasoning that might lead one to advocate benign neglect is the ineffectiveness and impropriety of coerced change. If the only change acceptable is spontaneous self-made change, treatment is irrelevant and wasteful, and the most economical setting is as good as any other. Each of these lines of reasoning suggests that we ought to build humane warehousing institutions where convicted men may pass the entire time of their confinement in reasonable comfort and safety without being labeled sick, degenerate, or in need of modification. This model is not without historic roots. It is curiously analogous to remote places of exile, where for centuries those who would not or could not conform to the prevailing rules and mores were banished. Australia, several of the early American colonies, and Siberian labor camps are examples of such places (proof, to some, of spontaneous rehabilitation and, to others, of the impossibility of rehabilitation). Furthermore, it is submitted, benign neglect is what we have often used for our &dquo;respectable&dquo; white-collar criminals. No attempt is ever made to treat or rehabilitate the likes of Jimmy

heaps

treatment

Hoffa, Tony Boyle, Bobby Baker, Billy Sol Estes, Otto Kerner, Spiro Agnew, or even the run-of-the-mill tax-evader, embezzler, or securities swindler. Most such individuals in this group who are actually incarcerated in a federal facility are sent to a comfortable correctional institution in Allentown, Pa., or Sandstone, Minx., to serve out their sentences.

for

Indeed, similar

political prisoners

in many

treatment

seems to

prevail

parts of the world. Landsberg

Fortress, where Hitler was committed after the abortive beerhall putsch of

special prison for political he was free to work where prisoners, on Meiii Kampf. In Mexico, political prisoners and other long-time offenders are exiled to the Islas Marias Penal Colony, where they are allowed to live with their families and enjoy a substantial degree of freedom. In Sweden, conscientious objectors are sent all but unattended no rural areas to build schools for the local residents. The autonomous prison is characterized by small size, remote setting, small staff, and absence of professional treaters. Its goal is to hold prisoners for a relatively long period at low cost and with the least possible damage to them. Over time an autonomous prison does not fit well into either a differentiated or a hierarchical system. It neither delivers the specific short-term treatment compatible with the former nor fits into the punishment-reward structure established under the latter. The experience of the C-Unit project at California’s Deuel Vocational Institution can be summarized as an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to establish an autonomous prison within a hierarchical prison system.19 Those in charge of the experiment concluded that it could not succeed without autonomous control over security and discipline. The attempt to create a 1923,

was a

gemeinscha ft, a problem-solving community of prisoners and staff, eventually succumbed to the pressures for functional integration with other units demanded by the hierarchical prison system. The primary function of the central administration under a system of autonomous institutions is to provide 19. Elliot Studt, Sheldon L. Messinger, and Thomas P. Wilson, C-Unit: Search for Community in Prison (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968).


160 broad humanitarian constraints the limits of each community’s development. The infamous Tucker Prison FarM2&dquo; is an example of an autonomous prison that had developed so extreme a style that Arkansas politics and public opinion finally demanded a full-scale reorganization. Not every autonomous prison need evolve like the Tucker Prison Farm. Much depends on the charismatic qualities of the chief administrator of the institution.21 The degree of inmate self-government will be high, as will be the likelihood of major crises. Autonomy may create a face-to-face community of supportive interaction between staff and inmates in a therapeutic milieu protected from the pressures inherent in hierarchical or differentiated prison systems. One might consider the Synanon experience in this light.22 While Synanon is not part of a correctional system and its exaddicts are not compelled by the state to live there, it is an excellent example of an autonomous inmate-operated, therapeutic community in selfimposed exile. An autonomous system could set two goals for itself: (1) to minimize damage done to any of the convicted men within the system and (2) to provide some modicum of protection for the larger community by preventing an intolerable number of escapes or, at least, by providing for the immediate apprehension and return of escapees. A reception and diagnostic institution within this system would be unnecessary. Convicted men would simply be assigned to various institutions, at ransome on

20. Tom Murton and Joe Hyams, Accomto the Crime (New York: Grove Press,

plices 1970).

21. Georg Stürup, Treating the Untreatable (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968). 22. Lewis Yablonsky, The Tunnel Back: Synanon (New York: Macmillan, 1965).

or by geography. Olfcnder types, age groups, and perhaps even sexes (given the growing popularity of co-ed prisons) might be mixed in one com. munity, and the very heterogeneity of al inmate population paralleling the population outside might enhance the growth of interpersonal skills. The chief administrator for each in. stitution would be free to innovate, and each institution would be responsible for working out ways to deal with its own deviates-the unstable, the infirm, the pcculiar, and the violent. In some instances the prison community might turn to the outside world for

dom

help-for example, sending a clearly psychotic inmate to a mental hospital or a physically ill inmate to a medical hospital. It is not unlikely, of course, that there will be some incorrigible inclividuals so threatening to the prison community that, as in the differentiated system, some kind of small jail will be needed where they can be sent for punishment for short periods of time. Conclusion We have

that it is misleaclprison&dquo; when the function of processing convicted men has been allocated to a panoply of institutions ; that one cannot accurately examine the social organization, aciministrative policy, or treatment program of a single institution in a clepartment of correction without taking into account the functional position assigned to that institution; and that no prison can be accurately examined without laying bare the assumptions and goals upon which its prison system has been constructed. The crime and punishment debate among scholars, prison administrators, reformers, and offenders themselves must incorporate the perspective and the vocabulary of

ing

a

to

speak

argued

of &dquo;the

systems approach.


161


162

emphasize the crucial imporof a systems perspective we have focused attention on three ideal types of prison systems and have shown how each system has major consequences for the custody, treatment, and warehousing of convicted men, The chart on page 161 is an attempt to define and contrast more clearly the characteristics of hierarchical, differentiated, and autonomous prison systems. To

tance

Those reformers who have long been committed to the rehabilitation ideology have pointed to the fundamental inconsistency of treatment and intensive security. This paper suggests that they have misconceived the problem by simultaneously advocating minimum-security institutions, intensive treatment and therapeutic communities, and the general applicability of all reforms to all prisoners. They have failed to recognize that minimumsecurity correctional institutions can

exist only within the context of a hier. archical prison system, whose basic assumhtions and steals are necessarily antithetical to efficient and comprehensive delivery of rehabilitative pro-

grams. By equating minimum-security units with treatment, these reformers may have defeated the very purposes which they set out to achieve. A com-

prehensive treatment delivery program be grafted onto a hierarchical system. Similarly, the fully artiprison culated therapeutic community is inipossible within the context of either

cannot

the hierarchical or the differentiated system, both of which require homo. geneous populations and continuous inmate transfers. While this paper does not address the morality of warehousing, the effectiveness of treatment, or the desirability of therapeutic communities, policy-makers must be seiisitive to potentialities and strains inherent in different types of prison systerns.
