Manners are what distinguish professionals from brutes, the civil from the savage. Dear Secretary of Corrections: You have a problem. Why are the guards at the Frackville state prison in Eastcentral Pennsylvania universally reviled? Why are they universally judged as boors? They have no manners. The dangerous tension between the prisoners and staff at Frackville stems from the guards' ignorances of the most fundamental ways of dealing with others. Frackville guards are, as a group, rude, crude, self-important, arrogant, abrasive, abusive and neurotic. They are sadly unprofessional and unable to cope with their jobs. They treat persons badly. They talk to persons badly. Recognizing their personal inferiority, the guards try to compensate by pretending they're important. Their manners (or lack of manners) are worse than any other force of prison guards in the state. Some persons of the lower classes have never had the benefit of social education. Their parents failed to teach them manners, failed to show them how to interact with others. Certainly, some Frackville guards are from the worst kind of families, the drunken dregs of society. They simply never had the opportunity to behave in a civilized way. Most Frackville guards, however came from decent families. Most of them were given at least a smattering of manners and decorum. They aren't naturally clods. That majority has actually been taught to be uncouth boors. The administrators of the prison system and especially Frackville prison administrators have actually trained guards to behave badly. Persons who become prison guards generally have serious ego problems. If they didn't, they wouldn't become guards. To compensate for their defects, those sorts of persons need to be educated in simple manners. They need to be taught how to cope and how to deal with other people in constructive ways. The lack of manners is why the Frackville prison staff has so many problems coping with everyday problems. They provoke resentment and hostility in the prisoners. Dear Secretary of Corrections: Don't you get it? Don't you realize that prisoners, like everyone else, respond to their environment, they react to their treatment, they learn from their experiences. What's done to them while they're imprisoned colors the way they'll behave when they're released. Your prison system is an utter failure. You are training prisoners to behave badly, to be worse than when they went in. The principal instrument of that deterioration is the guards and the way they behave toward the prisoners. Admittedly, Frackville succeeds in tormenting and degrading prisoners, in making them angry and resentful. Is that your aim? If there can be any justification for prison, it must be that prison would improve persons; that it would help them obey the law. Frackville has exactly the opposite effect! Treating prisoners badly teaches them to treat others badly. We urge you to take steps to teach the Frackville prison guards a few elementary manners. "Yes, please" and "no thank you," aren't signs of weakness. They are elements of social health. We were going to name a few dozen Frackville guards as examples of boorish rudeness; as examples of persons lacking manners. Such a limited listing would hardly scratch the surface. All but a few Frackville guards behave badly. All but a few need to be re-educated with basic social skills. Perhaps you must first learn manners yourself. You are welcome to use or republish any of our material. Please give www.prisoners.com credit as the source. Return to the New and Interesting Items Menu Return to the Frackville Prison Menu Return to the Main Menu Go to our site's Search Engine Send us Your Comments or Input