Introduction

The United States has the largest prison system in the world, with over 1.2 million incarcerated people in 2022 (Carson & Kluckow, 2023). The impact of incarceration extends far beyond only those who are incarcerated. According to the Equal Justice Initiative (2018), almost half of all Americans have family members formerly or currently incarcerated. For the global leading nation in technology and education, one may find it hard to believe that the United States presides over a failing prison system: Recidivism rates soar to 43% within one year after release; within 10 years they reach a staggering 82 percent (Lahdon, 2023). Bloom and Bradshaw (2022) wrote that “incarcerated citizens leave prison more alienated, more traumatized, and less capable of prosocial skills than when they entered prison” (p. 140). In other words, the prison is a failing institution on economic and humanitarian grounds. These alarming statistics draw attention to the design flaws in an ineffective system built to punish rather than rehabilitate.

Beginning in the 1970s, the public advocated for harsher prisons to deter crime and punish individuals, resulting in rising levels of correctional officer abuse. The Human Rights Watch (2000) describes the operation of supermax prisons, a supposed solution to the call for tougher punishment, as a violation of human rights, reflecting a “stunning disregard for the fact that prisoners… are members of the human community” (para. 2). We discuss the presence of negative themes in the media, specifically moral disengagement, their effects on individuals, and proposed solutions to balance media reporting on prisons.

History

The “punishment wave” is an ideological movement that emerged during the 1970s, expanding the U.S. prison system to become the largest in the world. According to Haney (1998), incarceration rates in the U.S. around this time increased exponentially: From a relatively stable rate between 1925 and 1975, it rose to five times that in less than twenty years. The punishment wave can be viewed as the end of the “long-standing rehabilitative ideal” and the beginning of the United States’ punishment-oriented prison system in place today (Cullen, 2013, p. 299).

Beginning in the 1970s, trust in rehabilitation methods for incarcerated individuals steadily declined and a shift toward punitive policies was instituted (Phelps, 2011). Due to the increase in criminal offenses in the 1960s during a time when crime was politicized, the country espoused a tough-on-crime ideology and initiated the “War on Crime” (Mauer, 2001). To what extent crime rates increased is debated among scholars, but increasing urbanization and other factors kindled a perception that crime was rising. As tough-on-crime policies won widespread public support, politicians often used dramatic rhetoric for political gain. In response, the country shifted to crueler forms of punishment, including longer sentences and the rise of maximum-security prisons.

The War on Crime is also closely related to the War on Drugs, as the nation saw increased “law enforcement attention to drug offenses” and rates of arrest related to drugs doubled in the 1980s alone (Mauer, 2001, p. 11). The nation also turned to determinate sentencing after the previous model of rehabilitation and indeterminate sentencing came under attack from both ends of the political spectrum. These policy changes, rather than crime, were mainly responsible for the growth of prison populations. Blumstein and Beck (1999) found that only 12 percent of heightened incarceration can be attributed to changes in crime rates, whereas the rest can be explained by sentencing changes. These policies enabled people to tolerate and even support the need for tougher punishment, especially in a society becoming increasingly polarized, stratified, and individualized.

Another major contributor to the punishment wave was the non-interventionist stance on prison cases and the Eighth Amendment after a departure from the protective Warren Court (Haney, 1998; Haney & Zimbardo, 1998). Political reformists capitalized on public anxiety over crime to promote stricter laws on sentencing, shifting the attention towards punishment as opposed to rehabilitation while courts remained ignorant of these changes (Haney, 1998). As a result, even in recent years, there has been a reluctance among those in power to intervene in prison conditions and develop severe sentencing policies.

The punishment wave affected public perception of the necessity of prisons in society. Previously, humane and ethical values within the prison system were highlighted, reinforced, and advocated for, but “we now celebrate rather than merely tolerate or even lament official cruelty and the infliction of pain in our criminal justice system” (Haney, 1998, p. 32). In the span of merely twenty years, U.S. prison systems have shifted focus from rehabilitation to punishment, stripping incarcerated individuals of their humanity under the guise of retribution. These facilities foster a “culture of harm” that operates to “deprive, diminish, and punish” (Haney, 2008, p. 980).

The punishment wave’s social, legal, and economic implications are far and wide, plunging the nation into a dark correctional crisis. The resulting trend of retribution over rehabilitation has led to a rise in unchecked abuse within the system, and the pervasive “culture of harm” in these institutions has not only dehumanized incarcerated individuals but has also created a space where correctional officer abuse continues unchallenged. These concerning patterns stress the critical importance of addressing the underlying problems and human rights violations plaguing the nation’s prison systems.

Correctional Officer Abuse

There is an astonishing rate of abuse and mistreatment in prisons, yet these injustices remain largely hidden from public view. Correctional officer abuse occurs as a result of the oppressive environment of prisons and prevailing, but sometimes unconscious, ideologies held by correctional officers (Haney, 2008). Time and time again, criminal acts are attributed entirely to a person’s internal character. Not only are the actions of incarcerated individuals displaced out of context, but predispositions such as mental illness and trauma are also overlooked (Bloom & Bradshaw, 2022; Haney, 2008; Prins, 2014). Moreover, the “worst of the worst” attribution (Haney, 2008, p. 963) to supermax prisoners and “us-them” ideologies (Higgins et al., 2022) reinforce the idea that incarcerated people are evil, beyond salvation, and that force must be met with force.

However, the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney et al., 1973) seemingly upended the dispositional hypothesis, which attributes adverse conditions in prisons to the inherent characteristics of incarcerated individuals and guards, instead demonstrating how the conditions of a prison environment can even degrade normal individuals. Although the study’s validity has been refuted on the grounds of ethics, demand characteristics, and experimental bias (Le Texier, 2019), the observed phenomena of cruel punishment and mental distress as a result of hostile interactions are largely reflected in real-world prisons on an egregious scale (Madrid v. Gomez, 1995; Ruiz v. Johnson, 1999; Valdes v. Crosby, 2006).

A confrontational atmosphere accompanied by severe power imbalance is by nature inhered in the isolated walls of a prison, risking mistreatment and violence for both incarcerated individuals and correctional officers. Weill and Haney (2017) argue that the harsh ethos of punishment is reflected in the harsh environment of the prison. Within the U.S. prison system, correctional officers wield an outsized degree of authority over those in their charge. In many cases of abuse, incarcerated individuals are even afraid to report abuse out of fear (Naidu, 2017). Coupled with the minimal media reporting on these topics due to inaccessibility, incarcerated people are trapped in a powerless position with little to no chance of receiving justice.

On the other side, correctional officers work a highly stressful job and are at a significantly higher risk of PTSD, heart attacks, and mental illness compared with the general population (Schultz & Ricciardeli, 2024). Despite these health risks, people are drawn to the career because of its steady income and service-oriented nature. However, limited training and weak occupational identity leave officers vulnerable to stress, cynicism, and inmate manipulation (Farkas, 1990). But attempts at the “professionalization” of the career in the past have been short of reducing the challenges of corrections.

Moral Disengagement

The moral disengagement theory explains how people can act in ways that bypass ethical constraints without an accompanying sense of guilt and condemnation due to several cognitive mechanisms (Bandura, 2016). Bandura (2016) identified seven main types of moral disengagement: moral justification, euphemistic language, advantageous comparison, displacement or diffusion of responsibility, distortion and disregard of consequences, dehumanization and depersonalization, and attribution of blame. Others have found evidence supporting the appearance of moral disengagement in hate speech: Moral disengagement desensitizes the perception of hate speech and causes it to be viewed as less harmful or abusive than it is (Soral et al., 2018). Furthermore, forms of moral disengagement such as dehumanization, moral justification, and diffusion of responsibility are used by harmful actors to justify their actions to themselves and those around them (Peters et al., 2018). In the context of prisons, moral disengagement provides a powerful mechanism for correctional officers to mentally reposition their extreme punishments as actions other than a direct maltreatment or violation of human rights, allowing correctional abuse to continue (Weill & Haney, 2017). Over time, correctional officers can become desensitized to the status quo within prisons and see brutality or indifference as part of the job.

We argue that the presence of moral disengagement in the day-to-day interactions between incarcerated individuals and correctional officers is, in certain ways, amplified by government protection. Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that shields government officials from the civil liabilities of accidentally violating constitutional rights while performing required duties (Novak, 2020). This doctrine is often used to defend correctional officers in court, oftentimes allowing them to avoid facing consequences for their abuse within prisons. Such avoidance of repercussions engages multiple moral disengagement mechanisms. In the case of Taylor v. Riojas, an incarcerated individual in a Texas prison claimed to have spent days in cells that were in inhumane conditions in what was an illegal breach of constitutional rights (Ben-Dan, 2021). Yet, the case was dismissed at multiple federal courts based on qualified immunity, and the officer escaped consequences for a prolonged period of time. The unjust usage of qualified immunity is seen in many other correctional officer abuse cases (Allah v. Milling, 2017; Baxter v. Bracey, 2020), providing even more aid for officers to continue their maltreatment of incarcerated people, as the true and whole effects of their mistreatment are often disregarded. The legal doctrine concept of qualified immunity blurs the line between lawful use of force in situations where it is permissible and outright abuse of power, constituting a form of moral disengagement written into the justice system.

Moral disengagement effectively downplays the prevalent and systemic abuse in many prisons across the US. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, researchers argued that the behavior of guards demonstrated moral disengagement, accounting for their aggression and harsh treatment of the incarcerated individuals (Haney et al., 1973). This psychological process can influence people into thinking that the incarcerated are ultimately responsible for their own fate and that guards have participated in no wrongdoing on their part. This image is often misleading because violence in prison and the larger society is rarely ever independent of its context (Haney, 2008). Of course, that is not to rid incarcerated people of guilt or deny that their offense rightfully led to their incarceration. The real harm lies in the use of moral disengagement to distort the image of incarcerated individuals, negatively impacting how people think of them and how prisons treat them.

Media’s Role

Crime and punishment over the last century have continuously evolved and are shaped by media presence. At large, many trends in the nation’s punitive system reflect sentiments portrayed in the media. Rosenberger and Callanan (2011) found that support for punishment instead of rehabilitation is directly proportional to the hours of crime television consumed. The major contributors to change in public perception of prison and criminals are the “interconnections between the media, public opinion, political trends, and legislative changes” (Vasiljevic & Viki, 2013, p. 130).

The media misrepresents reality when it comes to portraying prisons and incarcerated individuals. Crime stories on the news are often framed to meet viewer demand and cave into marketing strategies (Beale, 2006). The overall portrayal of prisons in the media is overwhelmingly negative and often differs from reality, offering a distorted and stereotypical view of incarcerated individuals (Milićević & Drndarević, 2024). News stories are intentionally crafted to instill fear in viewers through repetitive and graphic content and present crime as the result of individual choice. In addition, media crime stories predominantly consist of the most violent and heinous crimes, giving audiences the false impression that all, if not most, crime is violent (O’Hear, 2020). These stories are also sensationalized and stripped of their context, creating difficulty for viewers to humanize the offender.

In addition to local television news, fictional content such as crime dramas and procedural television shows also influences public perception of prisons. Past surveys have found that crime dramas maintain support for retributive policies and reinforce racial stereotypes (Donovan, 2013; Eschholz, 2003). Exposure to fictional and factual content causes viewers to believe crime is increasing, even when the opposite is true (Pfeiffer et al., 2005). During the Punishment Wave, this very belief engendered the notion that punishment and mass incarceration are the only solutions to crime.

Today, the media has an influential role in upholding punitive positions and continuous maltreatment in prisons (Dowler, 2003; O’Hear, 2020). Researchers observed that punitive outlooks on prisons hinder public policy that aims for prison reform. There exists a strong correlation between the portrayal of criminality and attitudes towards prisons, that if “criminals are regarded as non-reforming savages, then public attitudes are likely to be negative and result in highly punitive approaches to criminal justice” (Vasiljevic & Viki, 2013, para. 2). Therefore, the use of moral disengagement in the media reporting on prisons is starkly effective at maintaining support for the current punitive prison system.

Media Reporting on Prisons

Attempts have been undertaken to introduce and normalize prison journalism — writing that comes from incarcerated individuals currently behind bars, and the sharing of their experiences. In this way, transparency can destigmatize the prison system and its notorious processes. However, as noted by Nam-Sonenstein (2023), “prisons don’t want you to know what happens inside” (para. 4). Numerous state and federal efforts sought to prevent incarcerated journalists from putting their work into public view. Established news outlets often cannot contact sources within prisons to elucidate the systemic conditions therein, resulting in inconclusive and biased reporting. Independent researchers are frequently barred from entering prisons to conduct empirical research because prisons fear being portrayed in a negative light (Maring, 2023; Trulson et al., 2004).

Given the limited amount of information originating from official sources or news reporting on prisons, people may turn to social media to seek out stories from incarcerated individuals. However, as DeTiberiis (2024) points out, the use of social media as a form of data collection is relatively rare within criminal justice studies even as the world increasingly relies on social media as a primary information outlet. Despite this, incarcerated people with access to technology often engage in social reclamation, a term coined by Schlosser and Feldman (2022) to describe the use of social media by incarcerated people to achieve three goals: to keep up to date with societal happenings, to share the experience behind bars, and to expose the distressing realities of the prison system. Social media accounts run by incarcerated individuals, directly from the source, bypass themes of moral disengagement and other harmful misconceptions that are present in the current media. While prisons seek to shield themselves from the outside peering in, prisoner-run accounts serve as an unfettered window of honesty (Schlosser & Feldman, 2022).

Present Research

The punishment wave demonstrated the capacity of the media to profoundly influence the views of a person, and more broadly, a society. Indeed, the punishment wave was “driven by political steam and fueled by media-induced fears of crime” (Haney & Zimbardo, 1998, p. 712). As crime and punishment in this nation are poorly understood, increased media reporting on the immoralities of the prison system must be achieved through the removal of barriers to open and honest journalism. The rampant abuse and hateful rhetoric both in and out of prisons can be partially attributed to moral disengagement. Thus, reducing moral disengagement in these spheres may assist more widespread prison reform efforts. These changes can alter how the prison system is viewed and boost a fair public perception of incarcerated individuals, as well as inform more people in a conscious, non-biased way.

Some proposed ways of reducing moral disengagement begin with simple awareness of the subject. Understanding the different types and witnessing real-world examples brings the mechanism to light. Through education and intervention aimed at bringing critical thinking to the forefront of questionable ethical situations, people can make well-informed decisions when thrust into those situations themselves. Instead of resorting to moral disengagement mechanisms to cope with ethical difficulties, our minds can learn to face uncomfortable experiences through self-reflective processes, such as accountability and considering moral engagement alternatives (Bustamante & Chaux, 2014; Maguire, 2023).

Similarly, moral disengagement can be mitigated through elevating the previous method to a group level. By creating ethical workspaces led by ethical leaders, reasons to participate in moral engagement are identified, and a healthy, encouraging group mindset is fostered (Maguire, 2023). Even explaining case studies of moral disengagement and its negative outcomes, while working together to find positive alternatives, can be helpful as the activity displays the benefits of such alternatives to both parties (Bustamante & Chaux, 2014).

Recognizing moral disengagement as a social driving force throughout society and flagging it online and in current media reporting is an important step in reducing the generally negative, critical perspective on prison reform. The identification of moral disengagement in the media is a technical challenge, but recent developments in machine learning have demonstrated early success in recognizing moral justification and displacement of responsibility (Friedman et al., 2021). Through awareness of people’s moral mechanisms, the barriers to ethical and transparent reporting on the prison system can be broken down.

Conclusion

It is undeniable that abuse runs rampant in prisons. In the U.S., correctional institutions are hardly “correctional” given their high recidivism rates. Now, we are “in the midst of arguably the worst corrections crisis in U.S. history, with every indication that it will get worse before it can possibly get better” (Haney & Zimbardo, 1998, p. 712). Scholars have argued that nothing short of a drastic reform can ameliorate present-day prison conditions. The reality is, incarcerated people are sorely unprepared to re-enter society, where they face challenges finding employment and housing while suffering from persistent mental issues, lack of family and community support, a staggering criminal record, and lack of real-world skills (Davis et al., 2013). At the fundamental level, the prison as we know it should be changed or even eliminated.

A vast amount of existing literature points to the need for evidence-based solutions to bring down recidivism rates and abuse. Ending solitary confinement and implementing more complete correctional officer training programs with a focus on identifying mental illnesses in incarcerated individuals can greatly reduce violent conflict in supermax prisons (Haney, 2008). Visher and Eason (2021) recommend the need for government legislation for beneficial social programs, decarceration, increased use of community sanctions, and increased communication between correctional agencies and researchers. Weill and Haney (2017) call for plans to restructure the prison environment, changes in the treatment of correctional officers and incarcerated individuals, and the elimination of moral disengagement mechanisms.

Although efforts have already been taken to implement these solutions, “the prison system continues its relentless rise, seemingly unrelated to crime rates or any rational calculation of its benefits to society” (Mauer, 2001, p. 15). In addition to these necessary changes, we as people need to move away from the decades-old, inflammatory rhetoric of punishment and control, advocating instead for support and rehabilitation towards a positive, safer future.