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Prison Environment

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Prison Environment
Dana Garlington
CJS/230
June 29, 2012
Douglas Brinkley

Prison Environment

A prison environment is a place where inmates are physically confined and deprived of a range of personal freedoms (Foster, 2006). The prison environment influences the institutional management and custody by the growing population and the gangs within the facility. Overcrowding aggravates the natural conflicts that rely within the prisons walls which then escalate violence.
When working with criminals on an ongoing basis it may cause corruption to occur with inmates within the institution, allowing drugs and weapons into the facility can degrade performance. The internal environment of a prisons primary influence towards management and custody include the following: the inmate social culture, the prisons physical environment, and prison staff culture. The external environment interacts with the internal environment that influences management and custody by the following: the civil service department, which makes the rules for employees, employee organizations, and unions, which represent their member's interests, rehabilitation advocates, such as those sponsoring particular behavioral science, educational, or religious interventions inside the prison.
Prison environment changes can be in the rational and economic view, in which material rewards controls are provided in the direction people are in need of it. Some secure custody methods include counting inmates to know their whereabouts, having a double gate to control the traffic into the prison, control of contraband, searches of the inmate’s clothes to a full body cavity search, shakedowns of their area and having them on lockdown. The prison environment affects secure custody in many ways. Secure custody can improve by hiring guards who are capable and trained to do their job, the prisons are in need of guards so they will hire under-qualified candidates. They can also make sure they keep prisoners in certain gangs away from each other. They should have different times for recreational activities to prevent riots and violence.

References 1. Foster, B. (2006). Corrections: The fundamentals. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

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