What does a psychologist know about prison?

Most people would assume the psychology department at a prison would run the show. Who better to treat the behavioral problems of humans than the expert on human behavior? Unfortunately, this is not the case. The psychology department is mostly an appendix to the prison system established on punishment and deprivation (proven by most schools of psychology to deter rather than aid rehabilitation). In my decade + years in prison, I've seen the psychology department mostly ignored when they aren't outright and openly mocked by the rest of the staff. A run-of-the-mill guard has more say than any psychologist. A turn-key can choose to mace or assault or lock up an inmate against the word of any psychologist under any circumstance. This is a perfect display of what is so wrong with the prison system: the ignorant have more authority over the educated, the lay people over the experts.

For most of us in prison, the psychology department is an escape from the tyrants and madness of the day to day here. ITs a safe(-ish) place where the people actually seem to care and, limited though their help and ability can be, a sympathetic ear can be the difference of barely holding on and... not. They try to help as they can, offering advice and even books. I had one print books off the internet (thanks Sylvia) because there was no library. One in Victorville went around passing out little puzzles on printed paper just so we had something to pass our time over a month long lockdown.

You may imagine, the rest of the staff don't like this. For those dead set on tormenting the locals, any kindness throws their sadism into a stark relief when compared against human acts. unabashed, the guards and wardens stand by their conviction and carry on the firm tradition of prison being a place of punishment and pain. Any rehabilitation isn't their concern. Just ask them. They actually say the words "that isn't my job."

Even the smallest intermission from our debasement and punishment (from a good meal to a friendly greeting to nice weather) is seen by the staff as a personal affront to their sovereignty and privilege to be our tormentors and they often include the psych staff in their sneers. The psych staff will greet us and acknowledge a human being and the guards will usually pull some awful face at the least. Sometimes they jeer "have you hugged an inmate today?" I hear them tell little anecdotes to the psych staff about a guards best friends cousins former roommate who knew someone that worked at a maximum security prison somewhere(you don't know them, they go to different schools) and an inmate attacked the warden without provocation.*** the horror!! Their conclusion is something like, "therefore, we should treat everyone of the millions of inmates exactly as if they are capable and ready act as that one guy did. Dahmer too. "

Reasonable, right?

Our torturers detest the group of educated and caring people who inform the guards with word and deed that the prisons torments are, in the words of Foucault, "harmful when not being useless". The psych department is only here out of congressional order and is seen by the rest of staff as an infringement upon their right(and job) to punish and degrade us. So many of the psych staff will take us under their wing too. It's that little oasis in a desert of the inhumanity of the guards and wardens.

For someone who is caring by nature, to work here to be like a daily reopening of wounds to see them treat us the way they do. I imagine it is hard to hold their standard of care when it weighs them down every day, letting the system grind on as it does. It's not a wonder most of them quit or worse, work so long that they become as insensitive as the rest.

The solution is simple: just like a doctor cures diseases and a physicist... physicizes, the psychologists show how their expertise in human behavior is put into practice. Let them, in the words of warden Osborne of Sing Sing, "turn this scrap yard into a repair shop."

As long as this system is allowed and encouraged to ignore the advice and admonitions of experts and doctors, as long as terrorizing and torment are the tools for rehabilitation for drug addicts, psychotics, and schizophrenics(yes, you read that right), the psych department will continue to be impotent bystanders. Every day, the revolving door will kick out more people who statistics show will commit further and more serious crimes before they come back.

***that is, if you don't count being the leader of a small army of tormentors whose job is literally predicated upon our pain and deprivation and keeping us from families and medical treatment. I think that qualifies as provocation and can't fault someone even in these obviously fictitious stories from guards about the wild one-in-a-million inmates.