Ethical Implications of the Effects of Administrative Segregation - Article Example

Ethical Policy Implications of the Effects of Administrative Segregation on Inmates Introduction Despite the insufficiency of current empirical research, two incompatible viewpoints on the effects of administrative segregation on the mental and physical functioning of prisoners have surfaced. Several researchers defined segregation as inhumane and uncommon punishment, and mentally detrimental, while others substantiate that segregation has negligible, if any, harmful effect on inmates (Jackson, 2001). Determining the effect of segregation on prisoners bears essential policy propositions. Apart from the negative effects of administrative segregation on the psychological and physical attributes of prisoners, this practice of punishment carries moral or ethical problems such as punishing criminals for illegal activities they have not as yet carried out; unjustly individualizing castigation; the comparatively low levels of precision related with risk assessment instruments; and reinforced castigation and/or incursion of the state into the personal lives of those assessed to be more dangerous (Champion, 1994). The objective of this paper is to discuss the effects of administrative segregation on the mental and physical wellbeing of inmates as substantiated by various studies on the subject. In addition, the moral or ethical groundwork of administrative segregation will be explored and analyzed with the intention of determining feasible policy proposals for three areas of improvement: (1) the degree and regularity of monitoring and evaluation necessary for inmates in segregation; (2) counseling to alleviate the deterioration of inmates’ mental health; and (3) the accuracy and effectiveness of existing assessment methods. These policy proposals could mitigate the negative effects and resolve the ethical dilemmas inherent to administrative segregation in prisons. Effects of Administrative Segregation on Inmates The evidence of the detrimental impacts of segregation on inmates claimed by various researchers on the subject is quite alarming, and cannot be taken for granted. Due to the quality of the methodology, it is generally indefinite whether the disorders exhibited by several segregated inmates were entirely identifiable to the conditions of detention in segregation or whether these inmates showed parallel disorders in the mainstream inmate population or in the larger community, before the actual segregation (Hollin, 2001). Quite a few researchers take into account the significance of the environment in relation to its effect upon the experience of segregation and the problems related with establishing findings. Conditions of detention and everyday routine differ significantly among correctional institutions that findings obtained from one institutional context may be irrelevant to others. For instance, the quality and regularity of interactions with personnel or other inmates, the physical design of segregation compartments, the availability of leisure items, the size of the activity courtyard, and the access to personal belongings and services could all influence the segregation experience (Phillips & Roberts, 2000). Majority of the experimental studies on the impacts of segregation originate from the sensory deprivation field. Gendreau and associates have produced and reviewed various theories and assumptions on sensory deprivation in the punitive setting. For instance, Gendrau and associates investigated whether segregated inmates exhibit higher arousal capability due to lower arousal intensity provoked by segregation; solitary confinement improves learning; segregated prisoners yearn for a lower level of arousal after an experience of deprivation; and levels of stress can identify whether segregation is damaging (Byrne & Rebovich, 2007). Other researchers have remarked upon or verified assumptions and theories of sensory deprivation in the punitive setting as well. For instance, Benjamin and Lux (1977 as cited in Roberts & Gebotys, 2001) claim that segregation is damaging for the reason that it radically lessens levels of required arousal; Dowker and Good (1993 as cited in Zinger, Wichmann, & Andrews, 2001) think that inmates who are confined for protracted periods of time may be removed from crucial significant human contacts, and, consequently, these inmates have troubles dealing with normal social circumstances again. Some researchers have advocated that the interaction between personnel and inmates is a key factor which could influence how inmates deal with solitary confinement. Inmates could be further affected by the manner they are handled and treated by correctional personnel than by the circumstances of segregation normally found in the confinement divisions of North America. Bonta and Gendreau (1995 as cited in Zinger et al., 2001) maintain that there are a number of proofs, that, when inmates are handled erratically by administrative or correctional personnel, psychological anxiety can develop even in the most benevolent of correctional settings. Physical brutality, harassment, implementation and non-implementation of policies and capricious custody of rights could contribute more substantially than grievances about physical states, the social confinement and the sensory deprivation linked to segregation (Roberts & Gebotys, 2001). Several researchers have discovered that opposite to policy and legislative conditions, the supervision of administrative segregation is founded on a penalizing principle, and that isolated inmates have fewer privileges and access to services and programs than inmates in the overall inmate population. Wormith, Tellier and Gendreau (1988 as cited in Zinger et al., 2001) stated that correctional personnel frequently have unconstructive beliefs towards, and maltreat, segregated inmates. They discovered that inmates under protective custody grieved about the treatment of correctional personnel towards them and the detrimental psychological impacts of being in protective custody, while inmates in the mainstream population were more likely to grieve about the living conditions and policies of the institution. Likewise, Carriere (1989 as cited in Rhodes, 2004) reports that prisoners under protective custody are frequently handled in an undignified way by correctional personnel; in addition, he argues that confined inmates are handled as maximum security prisoners despite of the security threat they create. For the purposes of generalization, the assessment of the impacts of segregation should take into account actual interactions between personnel and inmates, and must not be restricted to well-mannered interactions normally located in laboratory studies. And lastly, the personality or disposition of the inmates could play a role in how they will be influenced by the experience of solitary confinement. A number of personality attributes could lessen tolerance for isolation, whereas other attributes could improve it. Very few studies on the impacts of segregation have put emphasis on personality (Maue, 2006). Personality assessment should be incorporated in segregation research so as to recognize the capabilities and inclinations of prisoners in coping with segregation. Moral/Ethical Problems of Administrative Segregation The process of identifying or classifying prisoners for placement in administrative segregation undergoes rigorous procedure, and the moral or ethical problems of the corrective practice rest on this core classification process. The main criticism of administrative segregation is that particular criminals identified as ‘high-risk’ sooner or later are castigated in advance for offenses they have not yet committed. Numerous scholars have mentioned gross erroneousness of risk assessment occurring from flawed instrumentation. Conrad (1985 as cited in Champion, 1994) claims forcefully for impartial treatment of offenders who commit related offenses and who have related previous records. Nevertheless, he allows for a number of penalty discrepancies to the degree that such discrepancies are reliant upon lessening or exacerbating conditions. Morris (1984 as cited in Hollin, 2001) also recommends against employing dangerousness predictions as the groundwork for differential penalty and treatment. When sentencing for criminals is individualized, the penalty discrepancy issue is raised. Are criminals being penalized for offenses they have just committed, or are they being tremendously penalized for unclear forecasts of their tendency to commit other crimes in the future? Individualized penalties as considered by administrative segregation would appear to run inappropriately to the ‘due process’ and ‘equal protection’ passages of the Fourteenth Amendment (Byrne & Rebovich, 2007, 113). Nonetheless, Tonry (1987 as cited in Brown, 2000) claims that Amendment breaches do not take place as an outcome of making differential penalty judgments with risk mechanisms where a coherent basis for identification has been ascertained. Moreover, critics argue that the differential handling of criminals based on their predicted future behavior is simply unjust and rash, in consideration of existing up to date risk instrumentation (Brown, 2000). A great deal has been made of the reality that the present level of efficiency of risk mechanism leaves a great deal to be aspired for. Even though the diagnoses of psychiatrists of sizable numbers of criminals are regarded in terms of which criminals are most prone to show potential threatening behaviors, at least one investigation has demonstrated an inaccurate forecast rate of forty percent among these specialists (Champion, 1994, 78). Other researchers have questioned the sufficiency of clinical forecasts of disruptive or violent behavior on scientific bases. Whether experimental or actuarial forecast methods are employed for risk prediction, the reality is that current methods are more than a little erroneous (Zinger et al., 2001). And lastly, it has been claimed that the implementation of administrative segregation is an unnecessary incursion by the state into the personal lives of criminals. Nevertheless, a great deal of this incursion is validated on the basis of more successful prisoner administration and institutional strategy. Morris and Miller (1985 as cited in Brown, 2000) recommend, though, that individual penalty dispositions founded upon risk forecast instruments should maintain the harshness of punishment within a sensible range of just penalties. Favoring actuarial forecasts of risk over professional assessments, these critics argue that the application of forecasts of dangerousness to change individual outlooks must be tolerated merely to the extent that such outlooks would be validated as rightful independent of these forecasts (Brown, 2000). Hence, these standards would create a sense of balance between state power and individual independence. Policy Recommendations In view of the discussed effects of administrative segregation on the psychological and physical wellbeing of inmates, as well as the inherent moral or ethical problems within the context of segregation, these following policy proposals have been formulated. The ethical framework for these policy recommendations is ethics of care. Receptiveness and emotional response to specific circumstances provide essential directions to morally acceptable behavior. This ethical model is useful for this particular endeavor since a care ethic appears to support processes from dispute mediation and conflict resolution as alternative means to resolve an evident ethical conflict, which is recurrent in the correctional setting. The objectivity and the perspective of removed justice supported by liberal theories of fairness, take for granted, for instance, the moral role of socialization and relationship with others (Hollin, 2001). The care model is particularly momentous for roles such as nurse and physician, where in relative response, attention to understated signs, and the enhancing of special relationships are prone to be more meaningful morally than objective treatment normally used for the reinforcement of coping skills of segregated inmates. The degree and regularity of monitoring and evaluation necessary for inmates in segregation The crime versus criminal problem exists in most judgments about the appropriateness of a criminal for a treatment course provided through the correctional system. This problem embodies a problematic conflict in the criminal justice system in which the partiality is normally given to employing the crime that the criminal is indicted of as the standard for eligibility. The crime is generally applied as a classification standard for the reason that it is easily on hand and functions as symbolic marker of the behavior of criminals. The indicted or charged crime is documented in official criminal justice records that make it simply available to the system (Brown, 2000). The crime also typifies the character of the criminal’s behavior; it is assumed that aggressive criminals will have crimes of person-to-person offenses, physical attacks, and others, while addicts will have generally drug use crimes. But, this is not consistently the case. Even if it may be simple for the criminal justice system to make use of the crime to typify criminal attributes, the crime does not give itself to be a determination of behavioral traits (Toch, 1992). In order to enhance outcomes, correctional institutions should make use of an assessment procedure that independently monitors the offender’s threat and need factors. As section of this evaluation, the objective is to identify the extent to which the behavior of the criminal is presently affected by mental or physical functioning, and the extent to which the application contributes to offensive conduct. For instance, for addict crook, the differentiation is whether the criminal is a pusher, user or addict, and the kind of drug that the criminal is most repeatedly likely to use such as marijuana, cocaine, or heroin. The objective of this policy proposal is to identify whether the criminal’s use is significant to criminal conduct or one of the motivating variables. These are not essentially differentiations that can be established by evaluating the crime. A standardized assessment protocol or instrument can help in establishing this determination, and afterwards systems can hand over segregated prisoners to treatment courses that are likely to assist them in coping with the segregation experience. Counseling to alleviate the deterioration of inmates’ mental health Counseling or treatment of segregated prisoners should be promoted from open communication therapy to interventions that are oriented to skill development. The goal of these therapies, which would fall under the category of behavioral or cognitive therapies, is to help the segregated inmate in obtaining new skills in addressing behavioral or psychological difficulties. The focus of these therapies would be on helping segregated prisoners in obtaining new skills in order to build up internal controls and offer alternative techniques for criminal behaviors. The development of these therapies may result in enhanced outcomes from counseling programs, and researchers should keep on verifying that isolated prisoners have a tendency to have improved outcomes from participation in counseling courses that focus on the development of skill through behavioral or cognitive interventions. A particular model that would accompany this policy is the manualized curriculum framework. This model will provide a perspective for criminal change that lightens the capability in delivering the services. This manualized curriculum model has definite advantages (Hollin, 2001): a) it defines the principle about the change mechanism that determines the features of the treatment intervention; b) it presents definite objectives for each therapy session that can be assessed to identify whether the segregated prisoner is making changes as an outcome of acquiring new skills; c) it presents materials that can be used by experienced personnel; d) it offers skill-development instruments that isolated inmates can use as ‘assignment’ or improvements to the formal treatment sessions; e) it puts emphasis on adult-learning approaches in which the counseling programs can be more interactive as an outcome of the inmate learning styles of self-analysis and self-control; and f) it guarantees that the counseling program develops on the capabilities increasingly as the inmate undertakes the change process. The manualized model will function to improve outcomes by presenting a chart of the inmate change process and afterward help the inmate in progressing through these various skill development factors in order to attain the most favorable outcomes. The accuracy and effectiveness of existing assessment methods The instruments employed for security and inmate needs assessment should be more focused and should result in more sophisticated security identification programs. Correctional facilities that house young and adult criminals depend greatly upon risk assessment records to identify appropriate security level assignments for arriving prisoners. Moreover, these instruments are depended upon to guide prisoners in receiving particular treatments or services. Relying upon the array of treatment programs and services provided in a certain institution, risk/needs instruments should continuously be reformulated to suggest a wider array or recommended treatment programs and services. Current security level identifications are somewhat generalized in several jurisdictions (Brown, 2000). Hence, the classification systems of the level of security should be more sophisticated, and the tools employed for successful security placements of inmates should reveal these changes. Instrumentation should be complemented by the input of correctional personnel, in which staff who interact closely and frequently with prisoners will be asked to provide useful advice about classification value which otherwise would be unidentified by depending upon entirely on statistical figures. Correctional staffs who oversee prisoners regularly are in the most favorable positions to assess their institutional conduct. Paper-pencil process does not consistently aim at behavioral difficulties or recognize those most troublesome prisoners who would not be specifically successful at adjusting to various, less protected, detention levels. Hence, reclassifications of prisoners should be increasingly complemented by oral and written descriptions given by corrections personnel who are purposefully positioned in the inmate context. Several states presently have overruled terms integrated into their preliminary classification and reclassification tools (Byrne & Rebovich, 2007). More successful decision making that are overruled can be made through more substantial involvement of correctional personnel in the risk and detention-level classification mechanism. Conclusions Even though administrative segregation will constantly remain a justifiable management instrument to manage effectively problematic individuals and circumstances, its present application is possibly indicative of correctional officers’ failure to resolve conflicts and reduce anxieties and tensions in the prison setting. Administrative segregation has obviously turns out to be the most acceptable way of dealing with prisoners. Putting into effect appropriate dispute resolution tools extensively is the most potential scheme to reduce conflicts in the correctional system. Presenting the instruments to resolve disputes and conflicts and cultivating a correctional setting considerate of human rights is the sole means to weaken this overdependence on administrative segregation for dealing with inmates. References Primary References Brown, S. (2000). Into the Millennium with Comprehensive Objective Prison Classification Systems. Corrections Today , 138. Byrne, J. & Rebovich, D.J. (2007). The New Technology of Crime, Law and Social Control. New York: Sean Patrick Byrne & G & H Soho, Inc. Champion, D. J. (1994). Measuring Offender Risk: A Criminal Justice Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hollin, C. (Ed.). (2001). Handbook of Offender Assessment and Treatment. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Jackson, M. (2001). The Psychological Effects of Administrative Segregation. Canadian Journal of Criminology , 109. Maue, F. (2006). Management of the Mentally Ill in Administrative Segregation: Legal and Management Challenges. Corrections Today , 46+. Phillips, R. & Roberts, J.W. (2000). Correctional Administration. Jones & Bartleyy Publishers. Rhodes, L. (2004). Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Roberts, J. & Gebotys, R.J. (2001). Prisoners of Isolation: Research on the Effects of Administrative Segregation. Canadian Journal of Criminology , 85. Russell, M. & Newman, M.A. (2001). Disablement, Prison and Historical Segregation. Monthly Review , 61. Shearer, R. A. & Ogan, D.G. (2002). Measuring Treatment Resistance in Offender Counseling. Journal of Addictions & Offender Counseling , 72+. Toch, H. (1992). Mosaic of Despair: Human Breakdowns in Prison. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Secondary References Benjamin, T. & Lux, K. (1977). Solitary confinement as punishment. California Western Law Review , 265-296. Bonta, J. & Gendreau, P. (1995). Reexamining the cruel and unusual punishment of prison life. In T. Flanagan, Long-Term Imprisonment: Policy, Science and Correctional Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Carriere, K. (1989). Protective custody in Canada: A review of research and policy responses. Canadian Criminology Forum , 17-25. Conrad, J. (1985). The Dangerous and the Endangered. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Dowker, F. & Good, G. (1993). The proliferation of control unit prisons in the United States. Journal of Prisoners on Prison , 95-110. Morris, M., Norval, & Miller, M. (1985). Predictions of Dangerousness. In M. Tonry & Norval Morris, Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wormith, J., Tellier, M.C. & Gendreau, P. (1988). Characteristics of protective custody prisoners in a provincial correctional centre. Canadian Journal of Criminology , 3958. Read More