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Gurleen Gill

Professor Lopez-Aguado

SOCI 161

December 8, 2020
Final Exam
3. As detailed in the BJS Mental Health Problems report, there were numerous reasons

reported that have contributed to the large amount of mentally ill inmates in county jails. By

default, both prisoners and jail inmates are more than five times as likely to have a serious

psychological disorder in comparison to non-criminal U.S. citizens. Those who have committed

a violent crime, such as arson, are more likely to suffer from an extreme psychological disorder

than those who have committed a drug offense, such as the possession of cocaine. The

percentage of inmates incarcerated for a violent crime is over 40 percent. This is most likely due

to the emotional and mental health effects of committing heinous crimes that, no doubt, inflicted

harm on innocent civilians. Gender also plays a role in the frequency of mental health issues in

jail inmates as well. Male inmates are less likely to have a serious mental health problem in

comparison to female inmates. More than 60 percent of females in jails have had a history of a

mental health illness. This is probably due to the lack of accessible public health clinics, which is

connected to the significantly high rate of the incarcerated population. Services, unfortunately,

cannot cover an entire incarceration system. Furthermore, inmates who were divorced/widowed

were reportedly more likely to have a mental health disorder than those who were married. This

is perhaps due to the loneliness and depression that stems from not being in a serious and stable

relationship while living in such a negative environment. According to the report, there were 51

and 58 percent of both divorced and widowed inmates respectively, while married inmates

accounted for 40 percent (Bronson and Berzofsky, 2017). As mentioned before, public health
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services/clinics are limited for jail inmates. This reduces the options for psychiatric help,

prescription medicine, women health care, etc. Most inmates also choose to not get help for their

mental illnesses mostly out of fear of being seen as weak by other inmates and thus being more

prone to getting attacked and assaulted. They also tend to be more disciplined by jail guards

because of the notion that they’re being disruptive when, in actuality, they just have an untreated

disorder. All of this combined can worsen the mental health issues of incarcerated individuals

over time and can lead to severe outcomes, such as suicide. This relates to Gilmore’s dismantling

of welfare state as the defunding of social health services occur, the welfare of inmates declines

as well. This means that as the tax obligations for the wealthy corporations and private

businesses were lessened, the social support services started to lessen as well because these taxes

helped fund such services. These assistances were meant to help the marginalized group of the

U.S. population, i.e., jail and prison inmates. Boosting the economy occurred at the expense of

the mental health care services for incarcerated individuals.

4. Reuben Miller’s “Devolving the Carceral State” depicts how carceral control extends into

the “non-justice system” environments in society. Former inmates and prisoners enter into

programs that reintegrate them back into society but in a controlled and systematic way. For

instance, reentry services in non-governmental spaces, such as churches and hospitals, tend to

establish a criminal justice presence where changes occur to how things normally function. So,

while carceral surveillance is in motion in these centers, the working staff are expected to keep

watch on the former criminals to report and categorize those who exhibit signs of criminal

behavior and those who demonstrate that they’re reformed or in the process of reforming. This

categorization delivers the results on those who deserve to be given the services they requested

and those who will be denied. Also, by doing this, broader populations get pulled into the
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criminalizing process. Those who aren’t a part of the justice system, such as hospital staff, get

immersed into doing the work of the criminal justice system. This expertly represents how

carceral influence exists in non-justice institutions and businesses and echoes the same authority

and control that one would find in prison and jail systems. Furthermore, this severely impacts the

former prisoners/inmate’s ability to access local community services. If an individual does not

show that they are not dedicated enough nor have depicted patterns of reformation, then they

won’t be approved for services, such as adequate housing. For example, programs that involve

residency for ex-offenders assess how dedicated they are in changing themselves and how they

adapt to their social situations. If a former prisoner has a history of being convicted numerous

times and has not served their full incarceration term for most of those convictions, resident

advisors interpret that as someone who is not looking for a program and to learn from their

mistakes but rather acquire basic needs for free, such as room and board. However, if an ex-

prisoner is fully active in reentry services, takes responsibility for the choices they’ve made, and

be willing to undergo a personal transformation, then they will have their service needs met.

Doing so, nonetheless, is not always an easy feat for most ex-convicts. It takes a lot of hard work

and self-reflection to show service providers that they are serious about taking control of their

lives. Evidently, carceral control may follow former inmates and prisoners throughout most of

their lives. Correctional control also extends into the communities of former prisoners. Due to

the fact that most inmates are integrated into some form of community surveillance,

organizations are usually centered in their (inmates) former neighborhoods to better understand

how to address their service needs. This creates a ripple effect in which prisoners are almost

always rehabilitated back into their poverty-stricken neighborhoods (Miller, 2014).

5. Michael Walker’s, “Race Making in a Penal Institution,” illustrates how the justice system

functions as a racializing institution. He conducts his findings from the Golden County jail

system in Southern California. Racial categories are embedded in the prison and jail systems.

Races are divided into separate groups with those who share similar skin tones. For example,

Latinos and other inmates who share similar skin tones and racial backgrounds are lumped

together in one group, and this goes for African Americans and White American inmates as well.

This “identity” stays with each inmate throughout their incarceration term(s). The justification

for a such categorization stems from the perceived notion that separating races decreases the

chances of racial wars between inmates. However, the author found that other systems, such as

pre-housing cells, put inmates from different racial backgrounds together and experience little to

no racial attacks between the individuals (Walker, 2016). Inmates are also expected to follow

certain rules in jails that dictate who they can and cannot speak to, where they can hang-out,

which services they are allowed to use, etc. This reflects the Jim Crow era where Black people

were forced to use certain facilities and banned from using spaces that were designated for White

people. Racial politics exist in every corner of the prison institution. All inmates are expected to

adhere to each of their group’s rules on staying away from certain areas, avoid provoking other

inmates from other racial groups, etc. If an inmate were to violate any of these things, a fight

would most likely ensue, and this fight could ripple across the entire prison and thus create a

racial war between different groups. This linkage between two inmates of a similar race/skin ton

exists throughout criminal justice system history. In Loïc Wacquant’s “Deadly Symbiosis: When

Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,” he explains how the prison institution becomes another form

of the Jim Crow era, slavery, and the urban ghetto. All of these versions seek to, on some level,

contain and exploit people of color, specifically African Americans. This occurs by making them
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slaves to a nation where they toil for a life that will almost always be governed by the system.

Back in the Jim Crow era, White and Black people had separate spaces set by law. However,

Black people would often be given to the worst and economically poor sections in society

whereas White people occupied facilities that were rich in nature and well-functioning. This was

echoed in places such as bathrooms, schools, buses, etc. Due to the extreme consequences of the

Jim Crow laws, most African Americans abandoned the South and moved towards the North.

While moving from such traumatic environments gave Black people some sort of relief, it also

introduced a new way of segregation and racial domination: the ghetto. At the time, most of the

upper-class White people viewed Black people as disgusting and unsanitary neighbors, and so

they were forced to live in marginalized neighborhoods that defined their racial status but also

formed a sort of kinship between one another. All of this reflects the racial domination in prison

systems. For instance, Black incarcerated individuals are kept under the surveillance of White

authorities. Similar to the slavery time period, Black people are kept under the constant

supervision of white employers, landlords, police officers, social workers, prison guards, etc.

(Wacquant, 2001). Similar to the formation of the ghetto, when African American inmates get

released back into society, they are usually reinstated in their former marginalized communities

rather than in economically better neighborhoods. While the main reason for this might be

financial difficulties, this also is most likely due to the disgust, fear, and rejection that White

people exhibit towards former prisoners. In both the time prior to Emancipation and the modern-

day prison institution, most Black people have been casted as inferior and/or lesser than White

people.

6. Heather Schoenfeld’s, “Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions

Litigation,” breaks down the deficiency of criminal justice reform and how reform improvements
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make mass incarceration worse. Reforms aim to lessen prison and jail populations. However, the

results tend to be different than the intended effects. For instance, court orders on funding prison

institutions in order to solve issues, such as overcrowding, had the opposite effect. Rather than

decrease mass incarceration, these funds were distributed to build larger prison buildings which

increased inmate capacity. As the criminal justice budget increased, so did the prison growth

rate. This was a direct result of law makers perceiving the issue as the danger of too many

prisoners being released back into society from prisons rather than understanding that the real

issue was centered on overpopulation in prisons. Legislators feared the early release of prisoners

back into society so deeply that they kept on giving funds for more prison beds, which produced

more difficulties. For instance, problems such as suicide rates, violence, and sexual assaults

would still run rampant in prison and jail institutions. The expansion of the justice system would

not minimize such troubling issues but would rather increase the occurrence of these factors. The

long-time mindset that incarceration should be served as a punishment for inmates has most

likely been an obstacle in establishing efficient reform solutions. Furthermore, reforms to create

additional beds prompted the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) to construct temporary

wooden housing that were considered highly unsafe and prone to fire hazards, thus endangering

the lives of inmates (Schoenfled, 2010). While the early release program solved some of the

overcrowding issues in the 1990s, things took a turn for the worst yet again when the public

started to retaliate against the program. Legislators decided to fund over 10,000 beds for inmates

in order to shut down the early release program. The public raged at the thought of criminals not

serving their full terms. Evidently, whenever there was a positive reform for prisoners, it would

get immediately taken away or shut down due to some issue or another. Meanwhile,

incarceration continued to grow. Even if the system was reduced in some way in the past, the
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same complications still existed in some form, such as racial disparities, violence between

inmates and from prison guards, health and safety issues, etc. As reforms contribute to mass

incarceration instead of minimizing it, prison abolitionists argue that criminal justice reforms in

general should be completely abolished.

Sources

Bronson, Jennifer, and Marcus Berzofsky. “Indicators of Mental Health Problems Reported by

Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011-12.” BJS Report, 2017.

Gilmore, Ruth. “The California Political Economy.” Golden Gulag Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and

Opposition in Globalizing California, University of California Press, 2007, pp. 30–86.

Miller, Reuben Jonathan. “Devolving the Carceral State: Race, Prisoner Reentry, and the Micro-

Politics of Urban Poverty Management.” Punishment & Society, vol. 16, no. 3, 2014, pp.

305-335.

Schoenfeld, Heather. “Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation.” Law

& Society Review, vol. 44, no. 3-4, 2010, pp. 731-768.

Wacquant, Loïc. “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh.” Mass

Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences, 2001, pp. 82-120.

Walker, Michael L. “Race Making in a Penal Institution.” American Journal of Sociology, vol.

121, no. 4, 2016, pp. 1051-1078.