Abstract
The search for correctional reform is ubiquitous. One particularly timely and necessary approach put forth by J. D. Jeffreys focuses on the mistreatment of jail inmates. Jeffreys’s book, America’s Jails: The Search for Human Dignity in an Age of Mass Incarceration draws readers into the reality of many American jails by providing unique insight into an essentially ingrained feature of them—man’s inhumanity. Jeffreys analyzes how jail personnel engage in microaggressions by verbally and physically abusing inmates confined within them. Jeffreys builds his case recognizing the absence of human dignity in American jails through a methodological framework that describes the negative affective responses correctional personnel develop toward socially marginalized inmates. These negative affective responses are conditioned by the concepts of disgust, contempt, and fear, which in turn contribute to “value blindness.” These negative emotions stigmatize and devalue inmates as flawed individuals, robbing them of their imputed dignity, thereby adding to inmate violence, indignation, dehumanization, and degrading conditions that flourish within America’s jails. Jeffreys reveals how correctional personnel, operating under the color of law, through free will can embrace a level of consciousness to disavow negative affective responses, thus overcoming a moral blindness that pervades our jails and prisons, and impedes effective interpersonal relationships between staff and the inmates.
Jails are violent and demeaning places not designed to adequately deal with the comorbid problems exhibited by the sheer volume of predominately involuntary pretrial detainees. Jails have failed to address the needs of this challenging inmate population, particularly in areas related to drug issues, to mental and medical treatment services, and to other peripheral health services. Jeffreys further argues that far too many jail inmates are constrained within an inhumane correctional system and are unable to post bail requirements while awaiting adjudication. Jail detainees disproportionately represent the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill, and other undesirable social outcasts. These marginalized and financially impoverished jail detainees are forced into abysmal living conditions, where they are subjected to constant threats by jail personnel or inmate-on-inmate violence, are prone to sexual exploitation, and receive little needed services. This indifference to the overall well-being of inmates can lead to long-term psychological and medical complications or even death. Jeffreys provides a descriptive narrative of horrific events that occurred at Orleans Parish Prison (identified by Jeffreys as a jail, not a prison) where abandoned inmates were locked up and traumatized in their flooded jail cells without proper sanitation, food, and water for days during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This draconian aberration, belonging to a distant past, is egregious and indefensible and is far beyond the contours of acceptable inmate control.
Jeffreys argues that America’s jails are not morally legitimate institutions; they often inflict unnecessary pain and punishment. Jeffreys notes that only 25–30% of all pretrial detainees are accused of violent crimes, while the remaining segment of the inmate population is detained for minor social order violations, in legal parlance, simple misdemeanors (e.g., trespassing and shoplifting). As Jeffreys informs us, between 2006 and 2012, 8 of 10 criminal cases against the marginalized inmate population at the Cook County Jail were dismissed by prosecutors leaving in its wake untold human and economic costs.
Jeffreys’s book is a welcome departure from the existing correctional scholarship dominated by criminologists and sociologists. As a scholar of religion and philosophy, Jeffreys allows for a unique interdisciplinary perspective in understanding American jails. Jeffreys’s broader contribution brings to the fore an awareness of institutional infringements on human decency that damage the appreciation of the human condition bestowed on jail inmates. This is manifested in recent news media events that depict the inhumanity of caging the families of illegal Mexican immigrants, thus devaluing their integrity, human dignity, and self-worth. Jeffreys sets out in his introductory chapter giving readers a firsthand perspective that frames the extent of inhumanity within America’s jails. Jeffreys’s central argument, utilizing his understanding of phenomenology, rests on the fundamentals of the inherent human value and self-worth of the inmate population that is overlooked within jail environments. The appeal of Jeffreys’s work is enhanced with the culmination of his teachings within various jail and prison settings and countless inmate and staff interactions. This genre of intellectual inquiry creates a correctional exceptionalism that sets Jeffreys’s book apart from similar texts. Jeffreys provides empirically based correctional insight that eclipses the superficial glimpse that many scholars experience when herded through the carefully choreographed and supervised “class tours.”
Jails have become de facto mental institutions, human depositories that are necessary to protect the community from violent, dangerous, and mentally compromised individuals. However, to counteract institutional abuses such as devaluing inmates’ human dignity and causing them unjust pain, jails need to be transparent. Jeffreys maintains that jail officials must be held accountable and their practices closely monitored. This assumption, on its face, assumes that jails are esoteric institutions and that the public is unaware of what goes on inside its jails. This argument is hard to follow. Community members of all stripes have themselves been detained within a jail environment or have relatives and friends who have personally experienced the hazards and inconveniences of jail life. My solution to the twin problems of the lack of jail accountability and rampant inmate abuse goes beyond Jeffreys’s call for outside jail monitors and investigative journalists; it lies in the appointment of competent nonpartisan jail administrators—their leadership and legitimacy bring forth policies and practices that ensure inmate dignity and self-respect.
Working most of my adult life as a correction officer in zoo-like jail environments, I can state unequivocally that there is a linkage between competent jail administration and the preservation of inmates’ human dignity. Jeffreys is quite familiar with the Cook County Jail. It has a reputation as one of the most intimidating and dangerous jails in the country. The Cook County Jail, along with its surrounding prisons, shares a common denominator—the absence of a meritocracy among its politically appointed correctional administrators. In Illinois, correctional institutions have been run for decades by incompetent gubernatorially appointed administrators under the tutelage of the corrupt consecutive reigns of Governors Ryan and Blagojevich.
In sum, Jeffreys’s passion for jail reform defines his work, making his thought-provoking text a valuable read. Simply put, I enjoyed reading it. The primary audience would be correctional administrators, jail, and prison staff along with treatment personnel and other caregivers working within correctional institutions.