Recently following the stabbing of the former officer Chauvin by fellow inmate John Tursack, the issue about prisoner safety has been brought up again. This is just another event that highlights the weakness of the American prison system, an underfunded, undermanned, and poorly equipped force that can’t stop prisoners from harming each other.
The problem is this issue is not just centralized to this government prison, but to others as well. This is most notably present in the American Prison system. Prisons that are supposed to be funded and run by governments aren’t maintained properly. Guards are unprofessional and few in number. To make matters worse these guards have zero social skills meaning that they can’t effectively disperse without violence.
However, this time around that’s not the only issue. The inmate in question that was stabbed was a police officer that was formerly accused of violence against George Flyod. He had been jailed for violence and since he was a former police officer inmates would have viewed him differently.
This highlights another shortcoming of the prison system, sorting of prisoners. Another issue was that the guards weren’t able to effectively intervene until it was too late due to a lack of proper training dealing with these “rare” situations.The justice system should have reviewed the prisoner’s background and at the very least have him isolated from other inmates. The important thing is that this is a reported case because the people involved had participated in some very controversial events. What many don’t realize is this kind of violence is a commonality in American prisons.
American criminal justice officials should take this event as an opportunity to reform the US prison system. Prisoner wellbeing as well as prison security should not be regulated to secondary goals of importance and instead have more attention fixed on it. Police officers guarding prisons should be trained more extensively to deal with the above situation. Finally prisoners should not just be thrown into prisons without consideration of their crimes or sentences. Instead, prisoners should be carefully arranged into holding cells and prison environments that are best suited to the crime they have committed, putting a criminal accused of murder and one accused of robbery together won’t do. With enough effort and funding on the part of the US government, this change can be made.
