Security and Control

Melvina Sumter

The primary two missions of any correctional agency are to protect the public and to maintain a safe and orderly environment within the prison itself. Correctional administrators have a variety of security techniques at their disposal to help them attain both goals. Even so, prisons are becoming more difficult to manage because, in response to the demise of rehabilitation and the advent of the “Get tough” movement, inmates serve longer sentences with few incentives to maintain good behavior. One of the primary means by which prisons try to maintain order is through a system of classification. Correctional classification uses risk assessment to assign inmates to an appropriate security level and custody grade. Their security level indicates the physical design of the institution to which they will be sent and thus how protected the community will be from them. Institutions vary across a number of parameters, including types of perimeter barriers ...

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