Correcting Corrections

Program for training correctional officers

The rehabilitative nature of incarceration depends to a great extent on the environment that an inmate experiences. If an incoming prisoner enters a world filled with corruption, drugs, and crime the potential for rehabilitation is nonexistent. Given the prevalence of corruption among correctional officers (COs), including ties to organized crime and street/prison gangs, reinstating the goal of rehabilitation in prisons and jails will require a dramatic sea change in how oversight activities are conducted. Official recognition of this problem was codified in the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which mandated additional training for correctional staff to eliminate sexual abuse and misconduct between inmates and staff. One of the standards proposed is the creation or expansion of internal investigations by specially trained personnel. This essay outlines how an undercover internal investigations unit would be recruited and trained, whose primary purpose is to investigate...
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