Use of Force

In today's prison system, there is a real issue with unnecessary uses of force andSociety-First seeks to identify the common denominators to this unacceptable practice. We seek to shine a light on why these abuses are so common and why there is a lack of accountability.

We seek to identify how an officer can have 25 counts of use of force and yet the Inspector General's Office (the department responsible for holding FDC staff accountable) has not reviewed a single one of those videos to ensure there was no abuse. How can the very people who are there to investigate these matters, fail to investigate a single video of 25 incidents?

This type of practiced culture is directly responsible for the unjust abuses that have sucked the breath right out of change. It is how officers can jump on an un-resisting inmate who is handcuffed and lying face down. How these officers, more than not, are the ones that get promoted. It is how we find officers going into a cell and beating an inmate to death. How we find officers placing a man into a boiling hot shower and laughing while he begs for his life while being boiled to death, and these are all factual documented situations that have occurred in Florida's current prison system.

There are policies like that of a main FDC insurance provider that offers a rebate of 200 dollars every time (up to 8 times a year) an officer gets pepper spray on them during a use of force. Policies like this only promulgate a culture of officers creating uses of force anytime they need some extra cash. Eight times per year is equal to 1,600 dollars a year which is better than most Christmas bonuses.

These types of abuses only create resentment for authority in the incarcerated population and many times that resentment will block the path to change. It can take an incarcerated person who is not truly criminal-minded and turn them into an angry broken individual who during one of these uncalled for beats downs was permanently disfigured (i.e., loss of teeth, paralyzed or back injury to the point of being unable to work) by guards within the system.

That inmate is then released back out to us and we become an unsuspecting victim once again. It is these issues that lead to further declining issues within our society and until we establish professional integrity back into our criminal justice system we can expect nothing less.

Society-First seeks to help establish that professional integrity by giving society ownership of the truth and the understanding that they are the solution to the problems. The need to change today's criminal justice system is so vital, it goes hand and hand with ending the repetitive cycle of society's victimization.