A study revealed how the New York correctional system’s disciplinary process manipulates incarcerated people. 

Brian Nam-Sonenstein, senior editor and researcher for the Prison Policy Initiative, has surveyed more than 48 incarcerated people in the New York state correctional system, according to North County Public Radio.

“Distrust and stigmatization feeds into a treatment of incarcerated people that reproduces this image of them as rule-breaking, unruly, and violent,” Nam-Sonenstein said. 

He asked prison residents about their experiences with the state’s disciplinary process. The residents said that prison officials have hopes that “something is going to stick,” so they layer residents with multiple charges. 

Additionally, the NCPR article noted that some incarcerated people are coerced into  pleading guilty with the expectation of leniency. 

This embodies what the article describes as a “correctional disciplinary system”— a process that enforces subjective rules over powerless incarcerated men and women.

“So the [disciplinary] hearing officer might say, ‘Well, I don’t know about disrupting the orderly operation of the institution, but they did disobey an order,’” Nam-Sonenstein said.

The outcomes of these rule violations charges depend on the whims of certain correctional officers; the same applies when a resident exercises their right to due process. If a person challenges a disciplinary infraction and gets lucky, the result still lies in the hands of a prison official.

The report reveals how prisons manufacture negative images through the disciplinary processes. This type of system has traumatized incarcerated people, has exacerbated mental illnesses, and discourages rehabilitation behind bars noted the news radio.

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country. It is often said that prisoners are prone to violence, which makes the residents dangerous.

A disciplinary process that exposes people to an arbitrary fact-finding is equivalent to traumatizing residents by not being able to telephone their families or being placed in segregated living quarters, the report said.

“These are both unjust, and again prisons do nothing to make us safer. In fact, they make us much less safe,” Nam-Sonenstein said.