Earlier this week, a story broke about the alleged criminal misconduct of correction officers at the Rikers Island juvenile facility. The C.O.s are accused of forming a gang among the teenage inmates, and using them as enforcers- with deadly results. [SIDEBAR: I'll do an entry about this entry soon.]Here's what author, Christian Parenti, wrote about prison gangs and their relationship to the prison administration in his book, "Lockdown America":
"'Inmates dramatically outnumber guards, so the prison has a vested interest in keeping the inmate population divided against itself rather than against them. Guards need to channel any kind of unrest away from themselves and onto another group.' Former prisoner Johnny Spain agrees: 'When Blacks and Whites fought, guards turned the other way- or worse, provided the White inmates with weapons. I realized that prisoners killing prisoners only made life easier for the guards.'
San Francisco County Deputy Sheriff Michael Marcum, a former prisoner who, quite amazingly, is now a jail warden, tells the same story about the utility of prison gangs: 'It's important to understand that prisons are fearful, dangerous places even for staff. So a staff can- if you're an officer and you've gotta supervise 200 people on a tier, it's a lot easier for you if that tier is split up into five bickering factions rather than having 200 people all looking at you as, 'Gee, why should we comply with the rules and regulations he's putting out?' So there is also that sort of staff encouragement of this kind of thing in many institutions." -From, "Lockdown America" By: Christian Parenti
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