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