Confronting Confinement A Report of the commission on safety and abuse in America’s prisons

Most Americans feel that life in prison and jail does not affect them. it takes an awful event to remind people that the dangers inside can endanger them: a large-scale riot that threatens to spill over into the community; a corrections officer who is killed on the job leaving a family behind; the spread of infectious disease from cell block to neighborhood block. When the emotional reaction to the awful headline fades, however, we are left only with the sinking feeling that prison is a problem with no solution. The temptation is always to look away, hoping the troubles inside the walls will not affect us.

Every day judges send thousands of men and women to jail or prison, but the public knows very little about the conditions of confinement and whether they are punishing in ways that no judge or jury ever intended; marked by the experience of rape, gang violence, abuse by officers, infectious disease, and never-ending solitary confinement. Unless the experience of incarceration becomes real through the confinement of a loved one or through a family member who works day-to-day in a correctional facility, jails and prisons and the people inside them are far removed from our daily concerns
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Americans share concerns about struggling schools, dangerous hospitals, and corrupt corporations. We now talk openly about domestic violence and child abuse because we know there are terrible consequences for our loved ones, our families, and our communities if we remain silent. Yet there is a shame and a stigma about incarceration that makes it very difficult to have honest, productive conversations about what we are doing and the results.

Over the course of a year, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons tried to change that by bringing life behind bars fully, vividly into focus and by connecting what happens inside with the health and safety of our communities. Our inquiry and this report reveal both grave problems and also good work that fills us with hope. A year ago, a group of individuals with little in common promised to recommend strategies for operating correctional facilities that serve our country’s best interests and reflect our highest values.

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http://www.prisoncommission.org/pdfs/Confronting_Confinement.pdf