From Prison Policy Initiative:
Every prison system has a lengthy disciplinary policy laying out the rules incarcerated people must follow, as well as the procedures and punishments they’ll face if they don’t. If we think of prisons as miniature walled-off cities, then disciplinary systems can be understood as the quasi-legal system within them, governing the daily lives of incarcerated people. These policies are supposed to ensure safety, security, and order by deterring and punishing misconduct. In practice, however, prison discipline is a system of petty tyranny with devastating, long-term consequences. Corrections officers enforce rules arbitrarily, often doling out punishments for mundane behaviors and survival strategies while interrupting access to programming and services that can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Harsh sanctions are handed down following unfair and unaccountable proceedings wherein it is nearly impossible to defend oneself from the charges.
The end result is a disciplinary system that plays a key role in keeping people in prison longer. Misconduct records discredit incarcerated people in parole and clemency proceedings, while traumatizing disciplinary punishments like solitary confinement increase the chances they’ll be arrested again someday in the future. These outcomes are never seen as failures of disciplinary systems; instead, they are interpreted as personal failures to live up to the system’s expectations. This unquestioning belief in disciplinary systems makes it a foregone conclusion that corrections departments just need more leeway, more money, and “tools” like solitary confinement to force people into compliance.
In this report, we examine the landscape of disciplinary rules and punishments in all 50 state prison systems to get a “big picture” view of how they are designed and how they function as a central aspect of prison life — one that has been overlooked for too long. Using our collection of state prison disciplinary policies and building off our past work analyzing data on these systems and the impact of punishments like fines and fees, we explore the rules, procedures, and sanctions common to most systems. We also surveyed nearly four dozen incarcerated people to get their firsthand experiences because these systems are so opaque and cannot be well understood by reading policy alone. Throughout this report, we’ve included their insights in blockquotes like this:
Discipline is inconsistent, random, not transparent, capricious, and heavily driven by the egos of staff. Issues of inmate safety are typically ignored. Continue reading >>>
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