ABSTRACT

Officers are concerned with what many of them consider to be the Depart­ ment’s overextension of programs and “fringe benefits” to inmates. To the officer, work release, education release and general education programs represent bene­ fits that the inmate receives from the state as a result of the inmate’s participation in criminal activity. Many officers resent “criminals” obtaining work while “lawabiding citizens” are unemployed. Officers often take exception to an inmate receiving a college education at the state’s expense while officers and citizens in general “struggle to send their children to school”:

I can’t condone why they give inmates so much for nothing. We’ve got a welfare state. Now you get rewarded if you’re a bad ass. Inmate X, a rapist, inmate Y a murderer, a cop killer. So they take him out to play football. What makes him so good? You read in the paper about an inmate giving somebody a painting. How about those outside who struggle without the state to help them? Maybe I’d get a master’s degree if I killed somebody. I’d get my picture in the paper.15