In my observations of prisons and prisoners over nearly three decades, one fact constantly has my attention-complexity. …Providing for the offender population is not as simple as it seems. The delivery of services has been made increasingly complex due to massive changes in prison organizational operations and changes within the offender population. A century ago prison systems had two basic kinds of prisons, one for males and one for females. …Today, separate institutions and programs have been created for drug offenders, sex offenders, female offenders with or expecting children, offenders with intellectual impairments, offenders with enemies, offenders who "can't make it" in the general population, so-called geriatric inmates, malcontents, inmates belonging to security threat groups, inmates opting out of a gang lifestyle, inmates with life sentences, young inmates with life sentences, inmates sentenced to death, inmates who self-mutilate, [etc.]….

Prison staff must deliver services and programs to an increasingly diversified inmate population. Staff must be sensitive to the lighting, caloric intake of inmates, food temperature, recreational needs, cell size and population density, racial and ethnic composition of offender living areas and cells, disciplinary requirements and personal security, health care, mail and correspondence needs, hygiene needs, and a host of other issues on a daily and hourly basis. Their job is complex and dangerous; and it is a thankless task within the American occupational structure. In large systems, like California and Texas, hundreds of new admissions are processed every day in reception centers. At the same time, hundreds of "classified" offenders are transferred from the reception centers to their long-term facilities. This process repeats itself everyday in every prison system in the United States twelve months of the year.

Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission