WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO ACCEPT?

One of the subjects we will be discussing in Voices of JOE’s upcoming roundtable is enabling rule breaking and criminal behavior within the prison walls. Specifically, we will be looking at the attempts on the part of some legislators in the Federal Government to remove the use of Special Housing Units as a means of administering consequences for serious and dangerous behavioral infractions. We will also review the need for special management units, along with discussing Pennsylvania’s SB880 and SB881 which are attempts to take away restraint chairs, pepper spray, and special housing confinement.

As a former Vice President of Clinical Treatment in an adolescent drug rehab where I had multiple court ordered teen offenders, I fail to comprehend the rationale for these bills, both Federal and State, which plan to take away effective behavioral management tools. The objective I placed as the highest priority in my inpatient treatment environment was SAFETY, both of patients and staff. This is no different in a BOP facility. The safety of the inmates and the staff should be THE number one priority. Yet, this trend toward leniency and failure to hold offenders accountable has clearly resulted in an increase in inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults.

The belief that we can simply “nurture” a person with criminogenic thinking back to proper functioning is a fallacy. People with a criminal constitution will simply see that as a sign of weakness and immediately take advantage of it. It is a well-known fact that people who are on a destructive path will change direction only when allowed to have the full consequences of their actions and they begin to feel enough discomfort with their behavior that they become willing to change. There are a number of Federal and State legislators who fail to understand this clinical truth. Unfortunately, their erroneous thinking will lead to more violence toward the innocent inmates who wish to do their time and not cause problems, and will place the corrections officers at even greater risk of harm.

There is an old saying, “That amount of violence will happen to you as you are willing to accept.” I urge you not to “accept” these ill-advised changes in behavioral management, and to fight against these bills for the sake of officers and inmates alike.