DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF PRISON INMATE DISCHARGE SYSTEM

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF PRISON INMATE DISCHARGE SYSTEM
ABSTRACT

Prison management has long been a neglected area and has only recently been included in the 20-20 vision document under the e-governance head. Currently, prisoner records are maintained in a very rudimentary way in the form of manual files and registers. There is no single system which can provide the required information about a current or a former prisoner. In view of the current volatile security situation, the above manual system results in delays in retrieving valuable information.

Our project titled Prison inmate discharge System takes all these deficiencies into account and aims to provide a single system which integrates all the information about a prisoner in a single profile using system analysis and design. The programming language adopted for this project is PHP. The application was developed using Adobe Dreamweaver. MYSQL was used for the database design. So, the system has three-tier architecture.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

A prisoner, also known as an inmate, is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or by forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to those on trial or serving a prison sentence. (Webster Dictionary).

"Prisoner" is a legal term for a person who is imprisoned.

"Prisoner" means any person for the time being in a prison as a result of any requirement imposed by a court or otherwise that he be detained in legal custody. The Prison Security Act 1992, section 1(6)

 "Prisoner" was a legal term for a person prosecuted for felony. It was not applicable to a person prosecuted for misdemeanor (,Hood Phillips 1960 ). The abolition of the distinction between felony and misdemeanor by section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 has rendered this distinction obsolete.

The earliest evidence of the existence of the prisoner dates back to 8,000 BC from prehistoric graves in Lower Egypt. This evidence suggests that people from Libya enslaved a San-like tribe.Encyclopædia Britannica,(2006, Thomas 1997)

Psychological effects

In solitary confinement

Among the most extreme adverse effects suffered by prisoners, appear to be caused by solitary confinement for long durations. When held in "Special Housing Units" (SHU), prisoners are subject to sensory deprivation and lack of social contact that can have a severe negative impact on their mental health.

Long durations may lead to depression and changes to brain physiology. In the absence of a social context that is needed to validate perceptions of their environment, prisoners become highly malleable, abnormally sensitive, and exhibit increased vulnerability to the influence of those controlling their environment. Social connection and the support provided from social interaction are prerequisite to long-term social adjustment as a prisoner.

Prisoners exhibit the paradoxical effect of social withdrawal after long periods of solitary confinement. A shift takes place from a craving for greater social contact, to a fear of it. They may grow lethargic and apathetic, and no longer be able to control their own conduct when released from solitary confinement. They can come to depend upon the prison structure to control and limit their conduct.

Long-term stays in solitary confinement can cause prisoners to develop clinical depression, and long-term impulse control disorder. Those with pre-existing mental illnesses are at a higher risk for developing psychiatric symptoms. Some common behaviouris self-mutilation, suicidal tendencies, and psychosis.

A psychopathological condition identified as "SHU syndrome" has been observed among such prisoners. Symptoms are characterized as problems with concentration and memory, distortions of perception, and hallucinations. Most convicts suffering from SHU syndrome exhibit extreme generalized anxiety and panic disorder, with some suffering amnesia. (Bruce,and Jennifer 2007)

Stockholm syndrome

The psychological syndrome known as Stockholm syndrome, describes a paradoxical phenomenon where, over time, hostages have positive feelings towards their captors.

Inmate culture

The founding of ethnographic prison sociology as a discipline, from which most of the meaningful knowledge of prison life and culture stems, is commonly credited to the publication of two key texts: (Simon 2000). Don aldClemmer'sThe Prison Community, (Clemmer 1940, 1958), which was first published in 1940 and republished in 1958; and Gresham Sykes classic study The Society of Captives, which was also published in 1958. Clemmer's text, based on his study of 2,400 convicts over three years at the Menard Branch of the Illinois State Penitentiary where he worked as a clinical sociologist, propagated the notion of the existence of a distinct inmate culture and society with values and norms antithetical to both the prison authority and the wider society.

In this world, for Clemmer, these values, formalized as the "inmate code", provided behavioural precepts that unified prisoners and fostered antagonism to prison officers and the prison institution as a whole. The process whereby inmates acquired this set of values and behavioural guidelines as they adapted to prison life he termed "prisonization", which he defined as the "taking on, in greater or lesser degree, the folkways, mores, customs and general culture of the penitentiary'. However, while Clemmer argued that all prisoners experienced some degree of prisonization this was not a uniform process and factors such as the extent to which a prisoner involved himself in primary group relations in the prison and the degree to which he identified with the external society all had a considerable impact. (Faine, 1973)

Prisonization as the inculcation of a convict culture was defined by identification with primary groups in prison, the use of prison slang and argot, the adoption of specified rituals and a hostility to prison authority in contrast to inmate solidarity and was asserted by Clemmer to create individuals who were acculturated into a criminal and deviant way of life that stymied all attempts to reform their behaviour.

Opposed to these theories, several European sociologists have shown that inmates were often fragmented and the links they have with society are often stronger than those forged in prison, particularly through the action of work on time perception. The convict code was theorized as a set of tacit behavioural norms which exercised a pervasive impact on the conduct of prisoners. Competency in following the routines demanded by the code partly determined the inmate’s identity as a convict. As a set of values and behavioural guidelines, the convict code referred to the behaviour of inmates in antagonising staff members and to the mutual solidarity between inmates as well as the tendency to the non-disclosure to prison authorities of prisoner activities and to resistance to rehabilitation programmes. Thus, it was seen as providing an expression and form of communal resistance and allowed for the psychological survival of the individual under extremely repressive and regimented systems of carceral control .Don't interfere with inmate interests.

1.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Detecting, Preventing and having Records for Crime offenders in our society is a serious problem thereby leading to more crime being committed due:

•   Prison officials lack the modern technological handling of inmates

•   Inmates are kept unnecessary than there should stay

•   Lack of information about inmates

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objective of this study is to conduct and analyse the existing system by highlighting the loopholes and possible develop computer software that solve the following:

1. Create a model for inmates record keeping

2. Train the prison officials by proving data to train the model

3. Develop and create Database to warehouse the inmate records dynamically

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF PRISON INMATE DISCHARGE SYSTEM

Chapters: 1 - 5
Delivery: Email

Number of Pages: 75

Price: 3000 NGN

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