Brutality in United States Prisons

Roman poet Juvenal once asked, "Who will guard the guards themselves?" A variation on this might ask "Who will enforce the enforcers themselves?" In a prison, the inmates cannot be trusted since they are in the prison for committing a crime. The prison guards give the only trusted testimonies regarding what happens there. So what if they decide to break the law and lie about it? Well that is exactly what many prisoners claim is happening.

Jelpi Picou, an Orleans Parish Prisoner, said that there was a drug circle in the prison he served at. He claimed the guards sold drugs to the inmates. The problem with this is that nobody can report it; the people who are supposed to report it are the ones who are breaking the law. Another way the guards supposedly break the law is by beating the inmates. Estimates are that 85% of prison action is unsupervised. To me, this is insane because the prison is filled with people who need 24/7 supervision.

A very similar scenario unfolded in Bryce Courtenay's The Power Of One. Klipkop brutally beats up one of the black servants in the prison for a theft that he did not commit. You also see that Lieutenant Borman feels the same hatred towards prisoners, like when he boxes with Geel Piet, and kills him. As seen in real-life situations like this, you have to wonder whose job it is to report things like this. You would hope other guards would, but the corrupt ones typically seem to hold a lot of power, and can blackmail the innocent ones into keeping quiet. Prison guards obviously develop a lot of stress due to the nature of their job, but they're currently venting this stress by abusing their inmates. This is horrible because they might feel better after beating the inmate, but the stress will build back up shortly after, and they'll want to beat up another prisoner.

This is analogous to what happened in Ferguson recently. A criminal was shot and killed by a police officer, so the initial assumption is that the respected officer had a good reason to shoot. However, witnesses disagree about what actually happened. This is a tough situation because people expect that the officer is a good man, which, although true most of the time, can never be known for sure. Often it is the officer's word against that of either a criminal or a dead man. This current setup is not fair to the public citizens.

I think that these issues need to be resolved soon or riots like those seen in Ferguson will become more prevalent. The installment of cameras on police officers' bodies and cars could solve that issue, but the prison is a much larger area. They already have cameras, but the guards know how to not be seen on them. A possible solution to this could be having cameras directly on the guards. This way, whatever they looked at or heard, a judge can also look at or hear. I really feel like this would be the least possible necessary change to be made to the prison system.