Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Prison

(Explicit time/Explicit Space)

Industry
Prisons are not made for profit making; however it is an interesting industry where a lot of people stay for a defined amout of time (a 10-year sentence for example) in a defined space (a cell). There are exceptions of course - some criminals can be imprisoned for life, in which case the time is implicit, and some prisons have less than maximum or medium security levels, in which case the space could be implicit. A lot of the times these depend on the level of crimes that the sentenced people have committed; however different prisons are configured/set up differently for slightly different purposes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison


1) Canadian Forces Detention Barracks (Known as Club Ed) - Military Prison
In Canada's only military prison, all members who are convicted by military and civilian courts and sentenced to more than 14 days will be incarcerated. Women, although in the same prison, are kept separate from men, this prison is maintained and controlled by the Canadian Forces Military Police. More serious offenders with longer sentences are transfered to the Canadian federal prison system, after 729 days. Any service members serving time of 14 days or under, are held in the local base Military Police Detachment cells.

2) Statesville Prison in Illinois - Maximum Security prison
A custody level in which both design/construction as well as inmate classification reflect the need to provide maximum external and internal control and supervision of inmates primarily through the use of high security parameters and extensive use of internal physical barriers and check points.

3) Cayuga Correctional Facility - Medium Security Prison

In this type of prisons, inmates are still directly and constantly supervised by there is a possiblity of taking up a part-time job and joining other recreational programs if an inmate is willing to comply with institutional rules and regulations. In which case, although the time that an inmate spent at the facility may be pre-defined, the space is implicit.

4) Rochester Correctional Facility - Minimum Security Prison

A custody level in which both the design/construction as well as inmate classification reflect the goal of returning to the inmate a greater sense of personal responsibility and autonomy while still providing for supervision and monitoring of behavior and activity. Program participation is mandated and geared toward their potential reintegration into the community. Access to the community is limited.

In this type of prisons, an inmate's performance is generally related to their release date as they are considered to not pose significant risk to the public. Therefore not only space is implicit, time is implicit as well.

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting Claire!!! This reminds me of a project that some students did back when I was teaching in New Mexico. I think they did some sort of queuing analysis for prisoner arrival.

    Although the time is explicit, there's a fair amount of variation in it don't you think? In the US at least, many prisoners don't serve their entire time and are instead let out early. How do you think they manage this?

    And, this is a huge issue because in many parts of the US, the prisons are overcrowded. If you don't know when exactly people will get out, it makes it much more complicated.

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