Reflections on Visiting the Kaohsiung Second Prison: What Does "Friendly" Mean?

This is a very beautiful and visitor-friendly prison, or so I thought. Traditionally, prisons evoke images of cold, rigid concrete high walls, but this facility features exquisite and picturesque landscaping. Upon entering the controlled zone, one is greeted by garden streams and a slowly turning waterwheel. Walking further, there are wooden pavilions nestled in greenery, stocked with refreshing drinks to beat the heat. The accompanying correctional officers were also very patient and kind in answering our various questions.

A prison that is friendly to visitors is truly rare, but during the visit, I could not help but wonder: for the inmates living here and the people working here, is this place friendly enough? Within this prison, many inmates entered due to drug-related offenses, and this group is often perceived as lazy and unmotivated to improve.

I inquired about why newly admitted inmates and those in disciplinary cells are subjected to five sessions of meditation a day, each lasting forty minutes, and why such lengthy meditation periods are scheduled. Do the prison authorities teach inmates how to meditate, or do they believe meditation has specific effects? The accompanying correctional officer smiled awkwardly and said that meditation simply allows inmates to sit quietly and reflect, and it also makes them easier to manage. However, he added further that even if they were taught how to meditate, the inmates wouldn't want to learn. As for reforming this group of inmates, he held a rather passive view: "We only hope they stay emotionally stable and finish serving their time smoothly..."

This prison runs a culinary skills training class, and the nougat produced by its self-run workshop is delicious and sells well. I asked how many people apply to join the culinary training class and how many are actually accepted. Furthermore, is making nougat a popular job, with many inmates applying to transfer to nougat production? The accompanying correctional officer frowned and told me with a helpless tone that reality is different from what I imagined. Most of the people locked up in this prison are drug offenders who only want to "eat well and do light work," and have no desire to learn a specialized skill at all. Moreover, they sometimes suffer drug withdrawal symptoms in the workshops, disrupting the work of others.

So, if this prison has so many drug offenders, are there any methods to help them quit their drug addictions? This was my follow-up question. "Physical addiction is easy to break, psychological addiction is hard to cure!" This was the most concise answer I received. There are no drugs inside the prison; if drug users are placed in prison for a few weeks, their bodies gradually adapt to a state free of drugs, and withdrawal symptoms eventually stop recurring. However, as soon as they are released back into society, because they still heavily rely on drugs psychologically, they use again and end up back inside. To be honest, this explanation sounds like there are no actual measures to assist with rehabilitation; people are simply locked up and incidentally prevented from using drugs.

From the correctional officers' answers to the above questions, it is evident that this group of drug-addicted inmates is like a group of "others" who have given up on themselves and have been simultaneously abandoned by society. Society demands that the prison transform these individuals into a diligent and useful labor force, yet these individuals simply do not meet such societal expectations. Under these circumstances, the prison merely becomes a facility for temporarily storing these "others," where the core focus is simply to execute this temporary "storage job" well, with the objective of maintaining prison order and management. From the perspective of the inmates, what is the actual meaning of staying here? Are they simply placed here to pass each day of their lives, where the sole meaning of these days is their own absence from society? I truly do not feel that being viewed in this manner makes anyone feel "friendly"...

On the other hand, I feel that this way of viewing inmates actually reflects the sense of powerlessness accumulated in the work of correctional officers. Society has assigned prisons a task: to discipline inmates and turn them into a useful labor force. Yet while assigning this task, society provides extremely meager resources: 2,844 inmates paired with only 6 moral instruction officers (educators). This mission seems destined to fail. Under such circumstances, I truly do not feel that this can be considered a friendly working environment for the people working in the correctional institution.

If we want to make this entire environment slightly friendlier for the two groups of people living in the prison, I believe the most fundamental requirement is to invest more resources. Beyond that, I think a certain shift in perspective is also needed. Prisons view inmates either from a disciplinary perspective, or—when discipline fails—from a managerial perspective. But I wonder if we could incorporate more of an assistance or "empowerment" perspective? That is: rather than forcibly imposing a model role onto others, it is about helping individuals gradually acquire the ability to cope with society's various standardized demands and live well. The inclusion of this perspective could perhaps be realized through a feasible practice: incorporating more professionally trained social workers or counselors into the prison establishment. Allowing these individuals to interact with inmates from an assistive perspective could also stimulate existing correctional officers to think: can we view inmates using a perspective different from discipline and management? Both existing perspectives cause suffering to others and powerlessness to oneself; can we adopt slightly different practices?