Reinforcement vs. punishment: prisoners respond to the way they are treated
Jails and prisons ‘reap what they sow’
Earlier this month, I was suddenly transferred from the relatively progressive environment of the D.C. jail to a Virginia county jail, on the way back to my U.S. penitentiary “warehouse.” I now am forced to readjust to what we call “doing time.” That means, in part, adapting to being repeatedly locked down as punishment for acts — or just suspicions of acts — with which I had no knowledge, much less involvement.
The other day, for example, one of the guys was found with a busted lip. He said he got it from playing basketball, but the COs assumed there had been a fight. So, they punished the whole block. They locked everybody down. They didn’t come in here and talk to us to try to find out what happened; they didn’t tell us anything. There was no communication.
This one incident is emblematic of the entire system that we call criminal “justice” in this country. It is entirely based on punishment — often very arbitrarily meted out — either in response to “acting out” or as a convenient way to deal with facility issues like understaffing (and the need for physical distance during the pandemic).
