[CP]

What on earth are prison guards doing while prisoners are being attacked, raped, forming gangs, etc. in the facility? Why can this not be prevented? Prisoners are there to suffer the penalty of loss of freedom, not to undergo physical harm. Are there too few guards, or is it that they just don’t care?

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Name : CP, Gender : F, Age : 22, City : Montreal, Quebec, State : NA, Country : Canada, 

[Seamus28258]

In most prisons, in fact all but high-security federal institutions (except for Marion and Leavenworth, etc.), prisoners outnumber the guards 10 to 1. Guards are NOT, as some would have you think, armed with nightsticks, while most prisoners have shanks, clubs, brass knuckles, pipes, etc. Not to mention that prison guards don’t get paid enough to intervene during every situation. After a while, they are bent on survival – just like prisoners.

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Name : Seamus28258, Gender : M, Age : 20, City : Charlestown, State : MA, Country : United States, 

[ACC24066]

My friends who have done time say it is often some of the guards themselves who instigate much of the violence. They deliberately set up these ‘gladiator fights,’ as they call them, to break the will of new prisoners, to set up prisoners they believe to be ‘troublemakers,’ to get at prisoners who were convicted of certain crimes such as child molesting, or just for their own entertainment. Some of the guards are also just plain crooked and paid by the prison gangs to look the other way. Of course no one does anything about this because some would complain that to do so would be ‘getting soft on crime’. Most people just plain don’t care about people in prison except to give them even more time. Believe me, there is no shortage of guards. Look at how much money is being spent on prisons and prison building. Not every last guard is corrupt or brutal of course. But just like police on the outside, the good cover up for the bad out of a misguided ‘code of silence’. I’m certainly not letting the gangs off the hook for everything they do. But all the violence and drugs in prisons would be far less without the tacit consent or even eagerness of some of the worser guards to take part in it. It also will continue as long as most people on the ouside have a simple-minded ‘just lock ’em up and throw away the key’ attitude.

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Name : ACC24066, City : W. Lafayette, State : IN, Country : United States, 

[Dan27307]

Being a prison guard isn’t that great a job. They don’t get paid very well, they work long hours and they are under extremely stressful conditions. Usually they’re not all that willing to stick their necks out to protect criminals from other criminals. And after they’ve been on the job for a while, many shed any idealism they may have had and become bitter and cynical. That’s why they won’t stop rapes or anything like that. Also, in more extreme cases, the guards are corrupt and collaborate with prison gangs in the drug trade and other operations. Sometimes, such as in the case of Corcoran State Penitentiary, the proverbial old boy network demands an ongoing show of cruelty and a gang mentality. Many an ex-con has told me that the guards are meaner than the inmates.

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Name : Dan27307, Gender : M, Race : Hispanic/Latino (may be any race), Religion : Pentecostal, Age : 21, City : Los Angeles area, State : CA, Country : United States, Education level : 2 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class, 

[Scott Colson]

I am qualified to answer this question. I am a Corrections Officer at a Federal Prison. I have 8 years experience in corrections and a total of 12 in law enforcement. The answer to your question is simple. The inmates who go to prison and prey on other criminals are thugs. Just as a common crook on the ‘outside’, he does the crime not intending to be seen and/or caught. How many muggers have you heard of that assaulted someone while the ‘cop’ was standing right down the street watching? How many police officers catch criminals in the act? Very few. It is the same on the inside as the outside. A police officer can only be in one place at a time. We are severely outnumbered and are often times ‘given’ a small crime so our attention is diverted from the larger one. I supervise 136 inmates by myself. I try my best but I cannot watch them all at the same time. Plus we have other duties which diverts our attention. I can list many assaults and incidents which occured because the inmates know we cannot watch them constantly. Even if we could, they would then wait as long as it took until the guard was not watching to commit the crime. Some inmates wait years to get revenge on another inmate. I can only emphasize that you compare it to the outside world. Criminals do not do stuff when the police are watching. I hope I have helped you understand.

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Name : Scott Colson, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 29, City : Mt. Jewett, State : PA, Country : United States, Occupation : corrections officer, Education level : High School Diploma, Social class : Middle class, 

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