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Masculinity In Prison Essay

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In a study completed by the U.S. Department of Justice, jails reported being better able to manage and control inmates with mental illness when they had specific positions responsible for handling crises and treatment, (Steadman and Veysey, 1997). This plays an important role in the reduction of violence within prisons. If jails don’t feel equipped to supervise or control mentally disordered inmates, then they may be less efficient at doing their job, which could lead to violent behavior. One of the types of treatment in this study was short term treatment, through case management services. This is when an inmate is assigned to a case manager, who facilitates the inmates in having access to the resources they need. The other …show more content…

When men are incarcerated, gender issues often become heightened as they seek power or control in the prison. According to Kupers (2005), toxic masculinity involves “the need to aggressively compete and dominate others.” This concept may contribute to certain groups holding more power over others, and leads to the formation of dynamics between sub-communities within the prison. Toxic masculinity frequently results in male offenders resisting mental health treatment or other psychotherapy, since it could be perceived by other inmates as a “vulnerability”. Therefore, male offenders often underreport their emotional issues, and may not reach out for help until they have developed suicidal ideation or psychotic symptoms, (Kupers, 2005). Many prisoners adopt this survival mindset, in which there is no room to express pain or emotion that could in any way lessen their “masculinity”.This can become a major challenge in trying to incorporate treatment programs in prisons, especially if they are constantly being resisted. In a study by Lamb, Weinberger, Marsh, and Gross (2007), they noted that many problems arose when mentally disordered offenders became non-adherent to their psychiatric treatment, which led to even more issues when attempting long-term treatment. They concluded that those inmates with severe mental illnesses who fight their treatment, could present major challenges for any form of treatment while in

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A major demographic of people that are being treated unfairly within the justice system are the mentally ill. Because of the modern lack of empathy within the system, those suffering from mental illness are not receiving the treatment and care that they need, which is limiting the justice that the system is producing. Mental illness is rarely considered when assessing crime, and this has led to large quantities of prisoners being mentally ill. In “Just Mercy”, Stevenson says, “America’s prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill” (Stevenson 186). Because courts have a lack of empathy regarding the mentally ill, these people are being piled up in prisons, making up the majority of the population.

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The shift is attributed to the unexpected clinical needs of this new outpatient population, the inability of community mental health centers to meet these needs, and the changes in mental health laws (Pollack & Feldman, 2003). Thousands of mentally ill people flowing in and out of the nation 's jails and prisons. In many cases, it has placed the mentally ill right back where they started locked up in facilities, but these jail and prison facilities are ill-equipped to properly treat and help them. In 2006 the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that there were; 705,600 mentally ill inmates in state prisons, 78,000 in federal prisons, and

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There are so many mentally ill people in correctional facilities because most families do not know how to help their loves ones who suffer from a mental illness, so the call the police for help. Majority of the police officers do not know what to do or how to handle people with a mental illness disease. Police officers who are not trained to deal with the mentally ill often do not recognize that person is ill. Some police officers do not recognize if the individual should or not go to jail or a treatment center or medical facility. The impact of law enforcement and the judicial system dealing with people with a mental illness is to assist the inmates with the help they need.

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Today there are more mentally ill people in prisons and jails in the United States than any hospital or psych facility in this country. Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois is the largest mental health institution in the country. When a mentally ill person gets arrested for a violent crime they stay three to four times longer than a regular violent offender. “One third of those incarnated in cook county jail suffers from psychological disorders.” According to a 2006 Justice Department study, more than half of prisoners in the United States Suffer from some sort of mental health problem.

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Provide training to all prison staff on mental health issues. Training should reinforce staff understanding of mental disorders, raise awareness on human rights, challenge stigmatizing attitudes and encourage mental health promotion for guards and inmates. In addition, prison health workers need more specialized skills to identify and manage the prisoners’ mental health. According to HM Prison Probation & Service (2018), prison staff ‘keep those sentenced to prison in custody, helping them lead law-abiding and useful lives, both while they are in prison and after they are released.’ It believes that prison staff will play a huge part in the life of an offender, helping them to learn and develop new skills (HM Prison Probation & Service,

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More people get incarcerated for non-violent crimes and crimes caused by mental illnesses or drug abuse (Webb, 2009) and because these people get put in regular prisons, instead of in mental health facilities or facilities to help against drug addiction, where they could be treated to further prevent crimes driven by their illness (Webb, 2009), the prisons get overfilled and cannot hold the more ‘important’ prisoners that needed to be locked away from the public. A strong link of the criminal justice process is that the system tries to keep it fair for everyone. Every defendant has the right to an attorney so they can be defended properly and fairly and “Only judges who are adequately informed about a case can effectively control the proceedings and examine evidence” (Tochilovsky, 2002) It is also important for the criminal justice system that those involved show discretion and although this is not always the case, discretion by the judges, police, etc.

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In order to do this they need to make new centers to help prisoners inside better themselves. In Alabama prisons may soon shut down 14 of its prisons for overcrowding, neglect, and violence in the state’s correction systems. In the prison St. Clair Holman in Alabama the prison system makes prisoners act different. There is no safety, security or supervision. “We have people being killed, sexually assaulted, raped, stabbed on daily basis at St. Clair, Holman, and multiple facilities; it’s a systemwide problem,” said Charlotte Morrison, a senior attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which represents Alabama prisoner.”

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Additionally, in an attempt to foster an increase in professionalism within the correctional community, care and consideration must be taken with the care and housing of inmates both privately operated and those operated by some branch of the government. “The quality of prisons has improved from the past, but there continue to be too many inhumane new prisons. New construction does not always result in a prison conductive to humane incarceration” (Bartollas,

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There has been a growing research that documents the recent changes in the relationship of gender, paid work, and parenting which suggests that most men still emphasize employment as a central aspect of their role in fatherhood (Shows and Gerstel 2009). There are two main models of masculinity when it comes to fatherhood: “neo-traditional,” and “newly constituted;” The former is an example of “public fathering,” while the latter is more involved in “private fathering” (Shows and Gerstel 2009). Class has a large impact on what type of fathering a man is likely to engage in. Using employment as a signifier of class, Shows and Gerstel (2009) suggest that working class men are more likely to engage in “private fathering,” while middle or upper class men are more likely to be involved in “public fathering.” The neo-traditional model of masculinity prioritizes their job before their family in the classic ‘breadwinner’ archetype.

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