Lawful Order: A Case Study of Correctional Crisis and Reform (Current Issues in Criminal Justice)

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Prisons remain a controversial topic for debate in our society. While few doubt the necessity of their existence, there is considerable debate over their purpose, organization, and processes. Do prisons exist to rehabilitate, punish, or simply incarcerate? How do we judge prison conditions? If those conditions are found to be unacceptable, how do we change them? What are a prisoner's rights?
This book charts the history of Rhode Island's Adult Correctional Institutions over the past 40 years. Professor Carroll examines the radical transformation of Rhode Island prisons in response to changes in their external environment, and determines that the transformation can be seen to manisfest five distinct stages: patriarchy, anarchy, restoration, threat, and consolidation.

Lawful Order: A Case Study of Correctional Crisis and Reform (Current Issues in Criminal Justice) Review

In 1971, Rhode Island had what experts agreed was the worst prison system in the country. By 1997, it had among the best.

Rhode Island has one of the smallest prison population, and is one of the very few states with an integrated system, meaning that people awaiting trial and those serving sentences are all under control fo the state prison system. The entire system is in one location--the Adult Correctional Institution (ACI), under a single politically appointed director. This makes Rhode Island an interesting petri dish in which to examine, on a more manageable scale, problems which plague prisons nationwide.

Rhode Island moved from the hard-core disciplinarian system, where prisoners were routinely abused, and favoritism and racism were rampant, conditions were filthy and prisoners sat around in cells with little meaningful work all day--which was the national norm before the prison reform movement took hold in the 60's. By the 90's, that system had been entirely displaced by a rule-based system, which increased safety for both the officers and prisoners.

That Rhode Island accomplished this transformation during a period of skyrocketing prison populations, and economic crisis, is remarkable. Which is not to say that the transformation was easy, or smooth. The system went through a period of chaos, where guards effectively abandoned all attempts at maintaining order, and moved through a period of severe overcrowding as prison populations exploded in the late 70's and 80's, without a matching increase in bed space, or money.

Professor Carroll has provided a fascinating narrative describing that transformation, using as his lens a long running federal class action case challenging the system as unconstitutional. Carroll's perspectives include the courts (particularly court appointed monitors, experts and special masters), lawyers representing prisoners, prison officials, unionized guards, the media (primarily the statewide Providence Journal), and the politicians.

While I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the question of crime and punishment in America, I have two reservations:

First, the voice of the prisoners is largely absent. While Carroll describes the prisoners' involvement in the process in the early years, their voice drops out of his narrative early on. Thus, the reader is left with very little insight into how all of the changes were perceived by--and how they affected the day-to-day lives of--the prisoners themselves. I presume that this limitation reflects a limitation of the available historic record--prisoners are largely voiceless. Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to include interviews with prisoners (and family members) who were incarcerated at various points during the transformation.

Second, there is no discussion of whether any of this "worked." That is, the point of prisons is presumably to reduce crime and thus make citizens safer. Professor Carroll devotes no time at all to this question. Was there any impact on the crime rate in Rhode Island? On the rate of recidivism? On the number of juveniles returning as adults? Since there were periods where large numbers of pre-trial detainees were released (to reduce overcrowding) on bonds paid for by the state itself, did those released commit new crimes in any statistically significant numbers?

These are questions raised not just by Professor Carroll's book, but in most of the academic literature on prisons. Perhaps Professor Carroll (or someone else) can address them in future. In the meantime, I highly recommend this book.

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