Prisoners or Inmates Go Through a Very

Prisoners or inmates go through a very cataclysmic stage of their life in any juvenile facility. Going through this phase, they may exhibit various anti-social behaviors like mollification, dependence on institutional structure and contingencies, adoption of the exploitation norms of prison culture, lying, manipulating, drug abuse, and violating rules and laws. Behind every such instance, there is always a very strong belief system depicted. That very belief system is a criminal concoction in the sense that it lacks the normal thought process exhibited by a socially healthy person. "Those who have worked with offenders know it is a relatively common experience to find oneself precariously close to agreeing with offenders' rationale for their illegal behavior" (Verdeyen, 1999). Overwhelmingly, they work under the spell of an anti-social belief system.

More recently, Wolff, Blitz, Shi, Siegel, and Bachman (2007), based on a sample of more than 7,000 inmates, reported 6-month inmate-on-inmate physical victimization rates at 21% for both female and male inmates -- a rate 10 times higher than the overall victimization rate in the community. (Wolff, Shi & Siegel, 2009)

Since the implications of this socially-ill belief set are very protruding to the culture of any juvenile facility hence why a well engineered coordinated effort is needed to discourage the inmates of rationalizing their behavior as per se. "The challenge for corrections professionals is to promote positive change in offenders during their incarceration" (Verdeyen, 1999).

Correction Officers specifically work on the task of changing inmates' anti-social belief system to a pro-social belief system thereby endeavoring to change their criminal mindset. In this context, it is very obvious that since inmates show considerably higher rate of committing crimes in the confinement facilities as compared to a normal social setting hence the action of containment is not just enough to mitigate the negative etiquettes of their personality. Following which, different intervention programs which could be of the type of one on one basis or group discussions, could play a vital role to motivate the prisoners to negate or let down their self defeating thoughts and rather create room for constructive and socially amicable traits in their personality. A correctional officer needs to demonstrate empathy to identify the recurring patterns in the behavior of inmates. This may help in segregating the inmates on the basis of level of needful improvements one needs, and hence initiating specialized programs to catapult the sense of social well being across the facility.