Post #20

The 2004 hostage crisis at Lewis Prison covered by Phoenix Magazine verifies and reflects many points of Britton’s study.

The first point that is reflected is the violence that correctional officers face in their job, and the fear that comes with facing this violence. Fraley, the female officer taken hostage, was raped by two male inmates and then held hostage in a tower in the prison for 15 days. The assumptions one can make about why Fraley had been chosen as a victim can stem from the inmates believing they could take advantage of her because she was a woman; they could exert their power over her.

The second point that is reflected is how Schriro was doubted from the beginning in how she handled the hostage situation because she was a woman in a leadership position. This reflects Britton’s claim that prisons are gendered organizations. The prison system had previous been run by men, the “keepers” and “turnkeys,” who subscribed to the mantra of “lock [prisoners] up and throw out the key.” Schriro, however, wanted to give prisoners a chance to rehabilitate themselves. Other prison leaders believed that Schriro was not performing her job to the best of her ability, but it is noted in the articles that Schriro was the first prison director to get everyone out of the hostage situation alive.

Britton discusses “keepers” and “turnkeys” as being officers in the earliest prisons whose duties were almost exactly that of keeping prisoners and turning the key on their cell. The Phoenix magazine coverage alludes to the fact that the men who had run the prison prior to Schriro had subscribed to this theory of being “keepers” and “turnkeys” and had not really trained guards on other factors that could come into play in their work. I think that an good example that prisons need to turn away from this though process is shown by the officer held hostage and also by how Schriro used what she knew about prisoner behavior to try and understand and predict what the prisoners would do next. Fraley began to reason with the inmates who were holding her hostage, telling them lies to make her seem more human and relatable. Both of these tactics could be seen as more stereotypically “feminine” because they deal with emotions and intuition, something that is essentially not taught to people wanting to become correctional officers. Training tends to focus more on violent outbreaks and how to deal with them, and this is taught to both men and women. The women in the article, however, used their natural abilities to get through the situation. These tactics are not taught in training.

Britton claims that a prison is a total institution because it lies completely outside of society. Whatever happens inside stays inside and affects all who are associated. This kind of plays of the whole “lock them up and throw out the key” ideology. Schriro is definitely an advocate of the opposite, letting inmates work and offer something to society. Also, the prison can be seen as a total institution just in the way it runs. The inmates and guards only really interact with other inmates and guards, and when a crisis such as the one at the Lewis Prison breaks out it affects everyone within the prison, not just those immediately involved. Plus, inmates are involuntarily part of a prison.

Because of society’s perceptions of prison guards, the job of a prison guard in engendered. Prison guards are thought of as “a hulking man in uniform carrying a nightstick or even a gun… brutal and sadistic… someone who would be able to deal easily with unruly inmates… to meet violence with violence.” Training also works along the lines of engendering the job of a prison guard, especially because it tends to focus mostly on the physical aspect of the job and quelling violence. Like the PowerPoint presentation said, “Even more egalitarian men think women can handle the job unless things become overtly physical.” Britton alludes to the fact that assignments deemed “too dangerous or threatening” for women are assigned to men and that there is this unwritten consensus that women should not be placed in certain assignments, even those in prison leadership.

Britton’s suggestion, or conclusion, is that training should focus on the differences between male and female correctional officers and the differences between male and female inmates as well. I guess that if training focused not solely on physical training for violent outbreaks it would’ve helped with the hostage situation. Shriro’s position in making sure that all officers are up to standards I think is more what needs to happen. Making sure that officers know what standards they are being held to is extremely important, and also making sure these standards are uniform across gender is important.