According to Lombardo, one third of correctional officers consider danger as the most dissatisfying part of their job. Every correctional officer is frightened by the idea of hundreds of inmates attempting to overthrow prison guards with brut force and numbers. How does a facility stop 500 trapped criminals from rampaging through a correctional facility? It would be unethically to let tower guards target random inmates with their lethal rifles and wrong to expect guards to overpower the 50 to one ratio of inmates to officer. The only answer to end such a conflict is the use of less lethal weapons. Chemical agent weapons such as tear gas and pepper balls can incapacitate a crowd of unruly inmates in minutes. In doing so, possibly saving the lives of the dozens of correctional officer.
Additional research by Kauffman has found that guards not only consider danger dissatisfying but they are horrified to the extent of violence in prisons. With this being assumed, would guards be quick to jump on the idea of deploying a less lethal weapon, knowing it will not kill the inmate? My biggest concern about using less lethal weapons in a correctional facility is the over exposed use by guards, in an attempt to display their coercive power over inmates.
What would you do in such a situation?
About Me
- M. Wolf
- Im a 24 year old senior at California State University California, graduating with a B.S. in criminal justice.
1 comment:
As the video showed, less that lethal weapons were initially used but failed to stop the riot. The inmate getting shot in the head was unfortunate, but very necessary to prevent him from murdering someone else. I’m not privy to every prison or jail system but I have worked for the Florida Department of Corrections for the past 12 years and can tell you that we use a “Use of Force Matrix.” If you haven’t heard of one it’s basically a scale designed to tell you what type of force to use depending on the type of behavior or resistance the inmate is exhibiting. I’m sure most other systems use such a scale. The use of lethal weapons is a last resort, but can be a necessary one when dealing with violent criminals. Your statement, “It would be unethically to let tower guards target random inmates with their lethal rifles and wrong to expect guards to overpower the 50 to one ratio of inmates to officer,” overly simplifies most riot situations. I don’t think Correctional Officers would start shooting at random inmates. The inmate(s) would have to be doing something like attacking a Correctional Officer or other inmate, or trying to escape, or set fire to one of the building or something along those lines before getting shot at. Less than lethal weapons are almost always initially used to quell the riot. The use of tear gas and flash grenades are generally used first. If that doesn’t work, and only as a last resort, they send in a “shot gun” squad to return the prison back to order (not every prison has towers from which to fire from). But you have to keep in mind that every situation is different. Can lethal force be used to quell a riot? Well, in the state of Florida it can, it says so in my post orders. The fact that most of the trouble makers in the prison know this has probably prevented an untold number of riots and saved countless lives.
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