The contemporary corrections facilities are experiencing a wide variety of problems. Some of these issues negatively affect the prison inmates while the other ones are likely to create an impact on the population of the country as well.
Among the most commonly discussed subjects concerning the difficulties the prisons of the world are undergoing are violence among the inmates (including such internal criminal activities as gangs, drug dealership, assault, and racism), mental health or health care in general, high density of the imprisoned population, and corruption. The latter issue is the focus of the present paper that reviews and analyzes an article with the corresponding subject matter.
The article selected for this paper was found on a well-known news portal of the National Public Radio (NPR) called “Md. Governor Orders Closure of ‘Deplorable’ Baltimore City Jail” and written by Bill Chappell. It was posted on the 30th of July this year and is less than two months old. The article elaborates on the scandalous shut down of a Detention Center in Baltimore that was the responsibility of the state government (Chappell, 2015).
The facility has been announced as heavily corrupted back in 2013. The author emphasized that the imprisoned population basically was in charge of the Detention Center daily practicing such criminal activities as smuggling, drug dealing, and contraband; besides, the incarceration personnel was found in agreement with the prisoners (Chappell, 2015).
After the Federal probe had revealed this disgraceful state of the Detention Center, twenty-five corrections officers and personnel of the prison were interrogated and indicted (13 of them were female) (Chappell, 2015). Apart from the corrupt incarceration personnel, the Center also had such issues as poor health care (both mental and medical), as well as dangerous physical conditions. The building of the Detention Center dates back to the times of the American Civil War.
Analyzing the information provided in the article one will notice that the corrections facilities rarely have just one issue. Typically, the problems of such facilities are complex, multiple, and interconnected. The utter failure of leadership and management of the Detention Center led to such shocking consequences. First of all, the prison was either underfinanced or the money assigned to the health care needs of the inmates was stolen.
An investigation could address the errors of the Center leadership and the state government. Further, the overtaking of the facility by the incarcerated individuals and gangs is an outcome of the weak internal leadership that did not only overlook the incidents of the cooperation between the prisoners and the corrections personnel, but also failed to address such cases and exclude the corrupt individuals from the Detention Center officer team.
One may say that the criminals and the prison workers might have kept their relations in secrecy, but this was not the case since the 2013 federal probe discovered that an incarcerated gang leader who goes by the name Tavon White, had children with four women employed as the corrections officers at the Center, and two of these females had the name of the criminal tattooed on their bodies (Chappell, 2015).
After the revelation of the latter fact, it becomes harder to protect the personnel of the Detention Center since the connection between the female officers and an imprisoned gang leader should have been quite obvious, yet all of them continued to work at the Center. Unfortunately, the relations and cooperation between the criminals and the corrections officers and prison leaders are not rare in the contemporary world.
The United States of America is not the only country to face this issue. Around two months ago, one of the highest-security prisons in Mexico had experienced a shameful incident when one of the most dangerous convicts, a drug lord called Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán managed to escape (Partlow, 2015).
The most impressive news is that he escaped through a set of tunnels that must have required large excavation equipment, excellent knowledge of the prison building plan, and months of work. The correction officers seem to have completely overlooked all of those operations, and this signifies a high level of corruption of the prison and its leaders.
Leadership failure is the root cause of the corruption issues in the corrections facilities. The federal and state governments could address this problem assigned objective checking procedures on the regular basis. Such measures could target the loyalty of the personnel, the quality of the conditions the inmates live in, the financing of the incarceration organizations among other factors that contribute to the criminal activities help by the convicts during the imprisonment.
Reference List
Chappell, B. (2015). Md. Governor Orders Closure Of ‘Deplorable’ Baltimore City Jail. Web.
Partlow, J. (2015). Prison break shines spotlight on Mexico’s corruption woes. Web.