The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Just this week, a guard at a minimum security pre-release center in Framingham was indicted by a Middlesex grand jury on six counts of having sex with two inmates in 2003 and 2004.

The guard, Moises Ballista of Springfield, is suspended with pay while the charges are investigated. He could face up to five years in prison for each count and/or a $10,000 fine.
Ballista's is exactly the face state officials don't want attached to the department.

In an interview with Daily News editors last month, DOC Commissioner Kathleen Dennehy called improving the culture of the department a priority, and pledged to square off against the minority of guards accused of bad behavior.

"We are committed to dealing with the small percentage of the work force that causes problems," said Dennehy, who took over the department nearly a year ago.
"We are trying to break their culture," said Ron Duval, DOC associate commissioner for administration. "Their culture is it's all right to turn a blind eye when there's something wrong."
Dennehy's efforts, however, haven't won her many fans among guards.
"That is bulls---," Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, said this week, of claims that the culture among guards needs to be changed. "That's the commissioner's fairy tale.
"She wants everybody to believe there's this culture of viciousness among the staff," he said. "We recognize in a department of 5,000 people you are going to have people who break the rules...however, that doesn't translate into a culture of abuse."
DOC disciplinary records reveal scores of incidents involving guards found to be insubordinate or engaging in fights with other guards.
The DOC records show evidence of numerous incidents similar to the report of a Framingham guard who received a two-day suspension for making verbal threats to other staff members, or the Walpole guard who was suspended for five days for assaulting a superior officer.
Other reports include correction officers reporting to work with alcohol on their breath, sending explicit e-mails to female staff members, submitting false reports, lying or refusing to cooperate with investigators, sleeping on duty and even leaving posts to go to Dunkin' Donuts.
In recent years, guards have been cited for having improper relationships with inmates. One guard in Framingham was cited -- and later fired -- after he was seen driving an inmate's car around town.
The guard's name was not made public. For privacy reasons, the names of all the guards involved in disciplinary hearings were redacted from state records.
Several guards also have had serious run-ins with police, on charges that include drunken driving, attempting to buy drugs while in uniform and kidnapping and intimidating a witness.
For prison advocates including Leslie Walker, such stories are hardly news.
"It does not surprise me," said Walker, the executive director of Boston-based prison advocacy group Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services. "It confirms what we have heard anecdotally and learned about in our work for years.
"It highlights the fact that the department has chosen to close their doors and exclude the media and the public, and until very recently has refused to reveal the dirty secrets that have been part of corrections for years."
Although she applauded Dennehy for her willingness to challenge the union to sweep problem officers from its ranks, Walker seemed doubtful about the commissioner's chances of success.
"She's plenty squared off (against them)," Walker said. "But the lack of respect for her...it's palpable.
"It's very difficult to figure out how this culture is ever going to change with this open contempt for the hand that feeds them. The union leadership does not represent the rank and file who want to put in their hours, do a decent job and then go home. They create an atmosphere of this blue wall of silence."
Prison researcher Kelsey Kauffman, however, warned against simply assuming all guards are sadists bent on terrorizing prisoners.
"It's important to understand the officers in my study ascribe to the very values we want to promote," said Kauffman, who authored a study of Massachusetts prisons, titled "Prison Officers and Their World," in 1988.
"What happens is they get into a situation that's untenable. Without having an officer subculture that supports them...they feel they can't survive."
Add into the mix that officers have total control over a segment of the population most people despise, Kauffman said, and the "Think about (pedophile priest John) Geoghan," she said. "Give somebody absolute power over him, and you just can't be surprised when things go wrong. The only brake you can put on this is to provide oversight."
Geoghan was transferred from a medium-security prison to a unit in a maximum-security facility after complaining of harassment by guards. Following his transfer, the former priest was beaten to death by another inmate.
Although Kauffman points to oversight as a key element, too often, that doesn't happen.
Too often, Kauffman said, for the public, the media and even administrators, prisons remain inscrutable, monolithic structures, and what goes on behind their closed doors remains hidden.
"The lack of oversight, and people not knowing what's going on is, The solution, Walker, Kauffman, and other prison advocates believe, is to attack the problem from many different angles.
First and foremost, Walker said, the department will need a tough-minded leader who's willing to take on the difficult job of creating change, something she believes they finally have in Dennehy.

The department must also submit to outside oversight on everything from budgets to contracts, and should allow for the creation of citizen oversight boards and/or the creation of an inspector general, both of which would ensure the public has a better understanding of what goes on inside prison walls.
"There is a culture in every organization," DOC Deputy Commissioner James Bender said this week. "Where it's negative, we need to address it. We're trying to work very closely with the union, we recognize that role and we respect that role, but, at the same time, there are incidents that need to be addressed."
Walker, however, insisted it will take wider changes before the department sees any real measure of change.
"It's the way these prisons are run," she said. "If you know there are not going to be serious repercussions...that sets up a culture of why not do it? It creates an atmosphere of, 'I can do whatever I want.' It's not a few rotten apples, it's the barrel itself that's rotten."
( (Peter Reuell can be reached at 508-626-4428 or at preuell@cnc.com) )

Today's Metro West Daily News (April 3, 2005) details 1200 Mass. Prison Guards having been disciplined in the past 5 years, and "culture of viciousness" within prisons.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=94790
(In CJPC's Report of the Governor's Commission on Corrections Reform: A Digest and Commentary, Sept. 2004, http://www.cjpc.org/doc_harshbarger_commentary.htm , the lack of an assessment of the existing culture was a major criticism. The Report provided no context for the change in culture that was urged by the Commission. From Commentary section of the CJPC review: "The current prison culture is nowhere specifically defined, nor is the culture towards which the DOC should move.")