Unit C Blog #20

The hostage takeover at the Lewis prison shows many things to be true about Britton's study as well as all of the information about gender in prison we have learned up to this point. Their were many aspects that went right along with the study such as the leadership role shown by Dora Schriro in a situation that required a strong leader. Dora had her doubters when she came into this job but she had already led the Missouri prison system and was very experienced in her leadership roles to that point. She was dealing with a situation in which she had a female officer who was being sexually assaulted and had the potential of being killed. This situation went on for 15 days and the leaders who led the prison before Dora had not accurately mapped out the tower which was supposedly impenetrable. Schriro had to use her knowledge of prisoner behavior in order to understand how these men were going to act as well as what would make these men want to reason and give up their stand off when they literally had nothing better to do than to sit and rot in jail. This is one of the reasons why Ms. Fraley (the hostage) felt so suicidal. She felt that her existence was over, she had been morally beaten down to a level in which she could almost not return from, considered suicide on more than one occasion, and was brutally raped, beaten, sexually abused, among other things until she could begin to reason with the men.

Fraley's story of being stuck up in the tower for 15 days kind of fits like a puzzle piece into Britton's study because Fraley had to use her natural ability to nurture and to reason to show these men that she was a human, ironically the same benefit of the doubt that many corrections officers give to these men as they care for them on a daily basis. Fraley eventually made a connection with her assailants by telling lies to get them to relate to her. This most likely did not come invested in the training that prison guards received but maybe this is exactly what an observing person like Britton is trying to get across. Britton wants us to realize that the gender roles as well as the ways that these prisons are generally gendered make the officers in these type of programs need additional training. While the masculine side of the job, which is a large part of what the training details, came out in this situation, a women in the job more than held her own in a situation where she was no doubt feeling alone and that she would die. The job trains men and women alike in the practices of defending against a violent outbreak, but for a "total institution" like a state prison to allow for a total breach of security in a tower that was built for defense shows that perhaps some of the previous male counterparts to Dora Schriro were not held properly accountable for putting officers at a risk for something as horrible as what Fraley had to go through for 15 days. Britton would want us all to see that some of these inmates need help, and the Association for Female Corrections officers is pushing along with Britton's type of study that some of these men get help, but more importantly to help the correctional officer females from being subject to sexual abuse.

It is hard to say whether Britton's suggestions could have prevented this type of hostile take over or not, but it seems that it could have helped. When situations like these arise it is hard to take the blame and to lay it on one person or thing whether that be on an individual, on a training program, on a director, or anything else for that matter. What we do know is that it would be easy to incorporate some better training for female as well as male officers into the program to become a correctional officer and this additional training could be the difference between life and death, or the difference between a hostile prison takeover or just another day on the job.

Unit C Blog #21

On the website for the Association for Female Correctional Officers the issues in which they believe to be of the utmost importance are listed on the pages for legislation. The women of this organization are working hard to make very clear and sure that they have not only equal rights, but also fair access to the legal system in the instance of an emergency. For example, these women are working to improve and reform the laws about rape at a prison facility. The instance of the rape of a female prison officer at a male prison facility, and perhaps even a female facility is a scary reality that these women must worry about every day. They are undergoing a long and strenuous legal process to ensure that they are safer behind the walls of these prisons than they are now, and some of the things that this law would do would be to put the safety of these women officers at a level unseen currently. This law would put the safety of them to new standards and not allow for them to be in situations in which they could get taken advantage of, hurt, raped, or murdered. One of the most important parts to this new piece of legislation involves the idea of detecting this kind of sexual harassing behavior in the inmates and to be able to work on treatments and/or disciplinary actions to penalize this type of behavior for the inmates. The act of sexual harassment involving the female officers at some of these male prisons is utterly absurd and these women should not have to deal with this type of injustice in their everyday work field. We hope that with the push of new legislation that a safer and more comfortable and restrained workplace can be set into place for the brave women who are officers at our prison facilities.

Unit C Blog #19

When Geena Davis is speaking about the movie Thelma and Louise she really hits the nail on the head about how women are viewed in the media in this country and the kind of impact that these media devices have on the viewers and others within the United States. She talks about how people were surprised to see that their was a movie involving women with guns and that this took the nation, especially the men, by storm. People were writing news articles about this movie saying that it was bad and unnatural for women to be going about entangled in violence and murder suicides. This shows such a steep gap in gendered assumptions as our media shows non stop clips of hyper masculine men with gigantic muscles pulling the triggers on automatic guns and putting an end to entire groups of "bad" men. This type of mentality towards women and dealing with violence does some justice to Britton's case study on prisons and how men feel that women do not belong in the workplace because the men feel that the women will not be able to appropriately handle the violence aspect of a job like a prison guard. Britton suggested that prior to beginning your career path in this industry that the officers be subject to gendered training which would lead to a more humble environment. I believe that Britton has a point because many men come what seems like preset with ideals about what men should be doing as well as what women should be doing and most of this can be attributed to the medias roles in creating roles, essentially, and forcing them to be reflected on in our society. Geena Davis is right when she speaks of her movies and the media and the way that the dominate group, white men, seemed to take sort of a backlash out against the type of media that portrayed women in this way which is just biased to begin with.

Unit C Blog #17

After viewing the video for NBC's Locked Up in North Carolina we can see that many aspects of prison life as well as the life of a correctional officer are similar to Britton's study while other points are a little contrasting. I will attempt to answer all of the questions on the blog assignment while comparing and contrasting the Britton study with the NBC video.

Building relationships with the prisoners can be viewed in two very distinct ways, just as Britton's study showed. The two ways are that either the guards feel as if the prisoners are still human and that they still deserve to be treated as such or they feel as if the prisoners are too pampered and that they do not deserve to have so much access to goods and services. In the NBC video none of the guards expressed their feelings on this situation too clearly, but they seemed to take more of a strict friend approach to the prisoners situations. For example, in the kitchen one guard said that she would be there to talk to the prisoners whenever they needed someone to talk to, but she also said that she would be the first person to lock these ladies up and they were well aware of this. I believe that the officers in the NBC documentary do believe that these women are human and that they deserve to have the rights to do some of the things in which they want to do. For instance the officers let them do cosmetology related tasks such as do hair with curling irons and scissors so obviously there is some trust involved in the relationship between guard and prisoner in this situation.

In Britton's study the role of African American and Latino corrections officers did not differ than that of a Caucasian detention officer. Britton thought that perhaps there might be some sort of difference in the treatment or perhaps even the way the job works for the racial minority because of the high level of minority prisoners in prisons across the United States but this seemed to have little effect on the officers. In the NBC video there seemed to be no correlation between race of inmate, officer, or treatment of either one because of these things. The race in the women's prison in North Carolina differed tremendously with a high percentage of white inmates as well as African American. I do not believe that race, when considering correctional officers, had much to do with the study in either case.

It seemed as if the officers assumptions and perceptions of the inmates seemed to differ by the officer, but I could not see a case in which an officer was particularly hostile toward an inmate for an unidentified reason. I think the assumptions that the officers make is that these inmates are here to serve time, and that these inmates are potentially dangerous. While the officers may want to look and seem like a friend who can help out the inmate, they also have to watch out for themselves because things can go wrong very fast for an officer trying to engage an inmate with either a sexual connection or by bringing them items. The perception that the officers have toward inmates seemed to be to give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove that they do not deserve it by getting into extra trouble with fights etc. The overseer of the North Carolina prison seemed very strict and unwilling to make extra connections with the inmates. She seemed very by the book and for her this is a great thing because if she allows her employees to gain any slack or ground on her by being too friendly with the inmates then her job is at stake.

The forms of social control that were used were primarily isolation tanks in which the inmate is usually miserable and separated from human life 23 hours a day. This is a very demoralizing aspect in the prison for the inmates yet it seems to be one of the most effective because often times the only other people that the inmates can rely on is each other, and with isolation you start a journey of complete loneliness and moral adjustment. I did not see in the video that any of the guards were purposely infantilizing the inmates by nurturing them but I can guarantee that this happens after reading about Britton's study and how the guards, especially female guards, will try to nurture the inmates in a motherly type of way.

Blog #18

In Britton's study the correctional officer prison guard job is viewed primarily as a masculine type job, at least as far as the training and perception are concerned. We learned that this job is viewed as so masculine mostly because of the training process. The training process for a prison guard consists of mostly hands on training regarding the ways in which to handle a violent outbreak. It is this training mechanism that promotes the idea of a masculine, violent workplace into the minds of many of the people whom apply. Many people were noted as leaving after the training sessions. The women stated that they left because of the chances of getting hurt or being involved in a violent episode. The men were less likely to admit quitting because of this but it seemed to be the same case none the less. This type of training seems to deter many from joining this career simply because most of these people do not want to be exposed to a job in which their life could potentially be on the line. This seems like a tactic to give the career path of a prison guard more of a manly and masculine outlook, though the job very seldom resorts to violence. Many say that the role of a prison guard can be seen more like the role of a caretaker in which the guard feels obligated to care for these inmates as if they are less than human or as if they require assistance in order to live their life. In men's prisons the prisoners seem to trust in and respect the female guards more than they do the males and many say this could have something to do with the female guards being looked at upon by the prisoners as a motherly or nurturing figure. In female prisons the women seem to disrespect the female officers and rather trust in and respect the male officers because they are looked at as more of an intimidating authority figure. While the training may make the prison guard occupation out to be a gendered career path, it is certainly a position made for both males and females.

Blog #16

Going off of the information learned from Britton's study we can see that the path to becoming a correctional officer differs from person to person and from gender to gender. For women, most often times they were in a clerical position before they were hired on by the prison. Men said for the most part that they were not in office type jobs before they took a job as a correctional officer but many said they were in a field in which they excerted themselves physically in some way. The correctional officer job is not one that children aspire to be as shown by the studies in the PowerPoint and women very rarely said that they wanted to be in that field when they were of age to work. The appealing part about the job is that no previous experiance in that particular field is needed, only a high school diploma or GED is necessary, and, as the lesson described, prisons are often times in rural areas where there are not that many other job opportunities and especially ones that offer a steady salary along with benefits. I believe in this field the pay between white men and women and minority men and women are fairly similar, and this is because they all must pass the exact same test to get into the job. A correctional officer may not be the first choice for many young people in the United States but at the end of the day it provides the employess with neccesary life items. Women and men are both veiwed entirely different by the prisoners depending on whether the prisoner is a man or a women and this comes in handy when hiring both genders for the job.