Prison Guards and Respect: Oxymoron or Reasonable Expectation?

While some of us may already work under hostile conditions, most couldn't imagine facing each day with this kind of hostility. Indeed, there's much more to being a prison correctional officer than merely watching over a cluster of social deviants; the emotional, psychological and physical attributes necessary for enduring hours of barefaced defiance can't help but jade even the strongest mettle. So how does an environment like this breed respect with such a perpetual power struggle?

Journalist Ted Conover wanted to find out firsthand just what it took to command respect from prison inmates; refused entry to capture this unseen community from a literary perspective, Conover takes an alternate route by training for and becoming a prison guard. What he finds on the inside at the nation's second largest maximum security prison is a world unlike anything he's ever read, which ultimately gives life to Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing.

Unexpected Outcome
One of the most surprising lessons he learns is that inmates have the upper hand in most situations regarding everyday tasks; being all but incapacitated by their cell block existence encourages learned helplessness and renders the guards personal servants.

"Instead of feeling like a big, tough guard, the gallery officer at the end of the day often feels like a waiter serving a hundred tables or like the mother of a nightmarishly large brood of sullen, dangerous, and demanding children. When grown men are infantilized, most don't take to it too nicely."

Conover's ability to delve deeply into the soft underbelly of his hardened prison charges speaks to the instinctual response living beings have when treated humanely. By giving inmates the same consideration as everyone else, Conover successfully reaches a level of respect other officers do not achieve. Instead of using his power to coerce a sector of society that already has serious authority issues, he instead applies a very fundamental theory of human nature. "A guard's lack of respect for the law, the title, the uniform, the families, or the prisoners will always and forever breed lack of respect for authority."

Basic Human Needs

As social animals, humans require positive interaction with others in order to develop and maintain a sense of self within the boundaries of a civilized society. When placed in situations where emotional bonding is withheld, power is one-sided or personal identity is stripped, psychologically healthy people become vulnerable to moral abandonment. The controversial Stanford Prison Experiment of the 1970s documents how social forces of power and identity sway otherwise 'normal' people into embodying the Lucifer effect.

The level of deviance and character decline is much more than anyone ever expects; in fact, one doctor who walks into the fifth day of the 6-day experiment is overwhelmed with disgust to the point of having to leave. Even head researcher Philip Zimbardo can only speculate how the experiment will inevitably conclude without the ability to control variables he can't anticipate. When he sees the undesirable transition his "guards" take with "inmate" treatment, he still allows the experiment to continue despite loud objections to the contrary.

Clearly, the human mental condition is part of a more complex interplay that exists between environmental and biological survival factors. The Stanford experiment illustrates how the line between good and evil, which is often thought to be unyielding to external influence, lives along a sliding scale that allows ethically-minded, compassionate individuals to succumb to an evil environment.

Guard patrol photo from Gawker