Life Without Parole
Living and Dying in Prison Today

Seth Grant
1/29/2015
Corrections
Dr. Ward

In the book Life Without Parole, Living and Dying in Prison Today, Victor Hassine tells of the many struggles and problems with the prison systems he was in. He demonstrated many problems through his stories and analogies. One problem he mentioned was the kingdom ran by the prisoners. One problem he mentioned that I thought was completely uncalled for was how the guards handled a situation involving an elderly man on crutches. The man slipped in the rain and missed breakfast. As a result of this he had to go talk to a certain guard to get permission to have a late breakfast. The guard then told him to go to a different employee at the prison. This required him to walk up a flight of stairs. When he got there he was told to talk to a different employee, making him walk up another flight of stairs. Finally, he was allowed to get a late breakfast, but this required him to walk down several flights of stairs. The actions of the guards in this situation were completely uncalled for. Another huge problem with the prison system that Hassine mentioned was the rapings which seemed to have occurred somewhat regularly. Men would be attacked by a group of inmates and beaten and raped multiple times, and there was nothing the guards would do about it. The guards knew it was happening, and they knew where it was happening, but they never did anything to stop them from occurring. He also mentioned that one night while standing in his cell awaiting count, a fellow prisoner rushed into his cell and threw a prison made acid at him. The man had a shank and probably would have killed him. Hassine fought the man for a couple of minutes and wrestled the shank out of his hands. Hassine then took the acid on his head and put on the attackers face. The guards then showed up and stopped the fight. The problem I have with the prison in this story is how they handled the situation. Victor Hassine was given more punishment then the man that tried to blink him and possibly kill him. He told of how one gang would become stronger than the others, and would control everything. He also told how the end result for that particular gang leader resulted in him being transferred. He told of how everyone was either a buyer or a seller. Inmates would steal items, and then they would sell them to the other inmates. The main problem that Hassine told of in the book was overcrowding. All the other problems were caused by overcrowding. He told how two men would be crammed into a single person cell. He told how at one point inmates could not admit themselves into solitary confinement because they had no room for the inmates there. All these problems could have been erased if the prisons were not overcrowded. That one simple problem caused so much strife in the prison system. As a result of the overcrowding, a very complex schedule had to be created telling prisoners where and when to take a shower, and telling them where they would be eating and at what time. They also had to devise a schedule to tell inmates what times they could go into the yard, and if there was more than one yard then they had to tell them which yard to go to. All the struggles and catastrophes could have been erased or lessened if the prison was not so overcrowded. Hassine illustrated several of the policies and procedures that the prison systems used. Most of them were uncalled for and useless. For example the stories mentioned earlier in this paper about making the old man on crutches climb several flights of stairs, and the story about the man throwing acid a Hassine, but Hassine was given the bigger punishment. In both of these stories, the guards acted irresponsibly. Another procedure that Hassine mentioned that was the wrong way to handle the situation was when Hassine filled against the prison for inhuman living conditions, and from then on out he was labeled as a troublemaker. The