Corrections_Today_September_October_2023_Vol.85_No.5

A s a discipline, criminal justice scholars have not yet advanced far enough in their correctional research to achieve the discipline’s curative potential in proposing meaningful policy initiatives to inform justice decision-makers (Blomberg, 2019; Lee and Stohr, 2012). Without a comprehensive footing in the inner sphere of jails and prisons, legions of scholars that are stuck in a subliminal threshold within their pedagogical boundaries (Umamaheswar, 2014), wade into a misunderstanding of the carceral environments about which they write. In the theory of the field, writings based on weak etic foundations and compromised by the “rhetorical situation” do not augur well for inadequately attuned scholars. Given this disjuncture, with fault lines that run through their research, scholars fail to reify their grasp on penal realities. These theoretical blind spots detract from generating meaningful and benevolent interventions. In other words, poorly positioned and subjected to epistemic thresholds, convoluted scholarly research pursuits strained by the limits of penal acuity cause more harm than good (Tittle, 2004). Their lack of knowledge about prison environments presents an intellectual roadblock inmates labeled “at best, speculative: at worst, a sham” (Angolite,1991:2). There are three distinct and independent states that comprise the social climates within carceral institutions: instability, order and stability. Further compromising the penal insularity of aca demics in correctional affairs are their dependencies on glimpses of penal life through a prism of carefully choreographed scripted class tours. Another complicating and misleading factor that inhibits academic research ers, is a reliance upon the assumed veracity of convicted offenders. This phenomenon is particularly relevant for inmate responses to carefully prepared questionnaires that

are vital requisites in obtaining the critical data needed to fulfill their research goals. Simply put, researchers go to extremes to convince readers of the validity, integ rity and empirical significance of their work despite its questionable source. In a Foucauldian (2009:20) sense, academics without empirical observation within jails and prisons operate in an imaginary black box. The “bowels” of the prison that lie outside of their reach contribute to their academic oversight. As a palpable barrier, this black box becomes their Achilles’ heel that has a measurable impact in understanding the true nature of criminal justice institutions. The sociology of the prison is cloudy within academic circles There are three distinct and independent states that comprise the social climates within carceral institutions: instability, order and stability. These unique states deter mine, in large measure, the alchemy that prevails within our correctional institutions (Cerrato, 2014). Seldom acknowledged and barely understood within the academic community is the notion that inmate appeasement prac tices become an administrative panacea for the ills within chaotic correctional institutions (i.e., institutions run by inexperienced administrators). For example, within the parameters of this inclusive correctional taxonomy, instability — the breakdown of both administrative and institutional pathologies results in prison riots/collective inmate unrest — is remedied by informal administrative prescriptions to regain some semblance of institutional or der. One notable example, negotiations to end a protracted prison insurrection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution hinged upon the inmates’ demand for a dinner of “steak and ice cream” (Fox, 1984). Inmate appeasements separate order from instability in chaotic institutions by achieving involuntary inmate compliance aligned with institutional rules and regula tions. Order is a conceptual middle ground and becomes a tenuous and fragile fault line that teeters between two mutually exclusive states: instability and stability. On the other hand, stability, or voluntary inmate conformity, is a formal, collaborative arrangement contingent upon staff and inmates’ willful assent to be governed through offi cial parameters consistent with prison aims for safety and security. A goal that is realized through democratic and

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