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There is violence in prisons, but almost none of it is at the hands of the guards.
And there's a pretty strong difference between jail(which most petty criminals have some stints in) and prison(which petty criminals generally don't go to and are as scared of as a regular person would be).
I wonder whether jails in densely-populated places like Chicago (total inmates 5900, largest single facility designed to hold 1500) are worse than prisons in sparsely-populated places like Wyoming (total inmates 2500, largest single facility holding 700).
As I noted below, it varies wildly by jurisdiction. 100% of clients I've dealt with have found state prison far easier to handle than local jails. One reason is that the inmate population of the local jail changes more frequently, so the rules for behavior (think Eternal September, but with high-impulse, violent, low-IQ, and/or very mentally unstable people) are harder for inmates to enforce among themselves.
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Today I learned: prison and jail are not the same thing. Neat.
Prison houses serious criminals serving long term sentences(in theory). Jail houses everyone else- in a typical American city, this is mostly going to be people who violated the terms of their probation or who will be released on bail shortly, maybe with a small number of people serving month long sentences.
Prisons are generally state or federal institutions. Jails are usually run at the county or city level. ‘Federal prison’ sounds scarier, but state prisons are the really bad ones, because federal prison has a lot of segregation by criminal history that state systems often don’t bother with. Other than Supermax and Alcatraz(both of which were notorious mostly for high security rather than inmate on inmate violence), all the jails or prisons you’re likely to have heard of are non-federal facilities- san Quentin, riker’s Island, Angola, Huntsville detention unit, Folsom prison, etc.
Varies wildly by jurisdiction. I've heard more federal prison horror stories from my clients than state prison ones. Also, 100% of clients I've dealt with have found state prison far easier to handle than local jails.
Well yeah, there's blue collar and white collar federal prisons, and blue collar minimum security in the federal system is still probably really bad. The ones notorious for inmate on inmate violence and harsh conditions are mostly state, though- Angola, San Quentin, etc. Part of this is probably that the federal blue collar population is a pretty selected subset of mostly serious gang members while state houses most of the random ODC's.
Prison is probably handleable for people who belong there. It's just still really terrifying to petty criminals who expect to spend some time in jail.
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You know who really can't handle jails and prisons? People who aren't habitual criminals or low-lifes. Which is much of the point -- you keep a population of discount Torquemadas around to keep the gentry in line. If I hadn't believed that before, being threatened with a stint at Riker's for a bicycling traffic violation would have convinced me.
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