INCARCERATION AND PRIVACY IN THE MODERN WORLD

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Prisons and jails are not immune from providing safe, dignified and respectful environments. Perhaps some of the occupants may behave differently, but that should not change the practice of the facility in keeping order.

Safety, human dignity and respect for the person are central rights owed to each person in the modern world. Tending The Peace encourages people to practice living safe, dignified and respectful lives, and treat other people the same. In order to get to that point, people must be afforded these rights to begin with.

Some prisons and jails offer little safety or privacy. The more privacy a person is afforded from the actions of others, also brings greater safety. The first objection would be that the budget does not provide for this. There are two problems with that objection. First, educating the public on the national standards American Correctional Association (ACA) & American Bar Association (ABA) and true cost of incarceration and the costs of alternatives to incarceration, places the responsibility on the taxpayer to decide the size of the prison population. Second, incarceration is over utilized and unnecessarily prolonged in many cases.

Modern prisons will become Correctional Behavioral Health Centers. Priority will be placed on rapid and efficient rehabilitation to drive cost down. Corrections officers will become cognitive behavioral coaches as correctional behavioral health officers and will require a minimum of an associates degree for entry level positions. That means higher pay for corrections officers in the future.

Modern correctional behavioral health centers will have to be built. The design of those buildings will require providing each prisoner more privacy from other prisoners. The trade off is the use of electronic surveillance and artificial intelligence which will become more invasive and constant. 

Currently, when a virus enters a prison, it spreads rapidly due to the beehive living of mass incarceration. The centers in the future will allow all activities to occur in a single isolated housing unit. That means sleeping, eating, laundry, recreation and electronic services such as phone and library will be available in the unit. During lock downs for various reasons, the centers would not miss a beat of activity. This would allow a more open facility during normal conditions, and restrictive when necessary.

The current thinking of placing cohorts together in the same beehives, is the old archaic way of thinking inhumanely. Privacy is a premium that has a behavioral formation quality to it. The more privacy, the calmer the facility. The smaller the unit, the calmer the unit.

Tending The Peace supports greater privacy in jails and prisons. This is not privacy from being randomly monitored in a cell or room by a cameras, but from the sight and sound of other prisoners. This will give a prisoner the ability to think, breath, reflect, study and pray or discern. This is also not isolation, but an environment where the prisoners can come and go from common areas. Privacy may cost, but the cost is worth the future. Come walk with Tending The Peace today!