Mutual Accountability Is the One Thing Control-Based Systems Avoid

Accountability is one of the most repeated words inside corrections. It’s printed in policy language. It’s referenced in disciplinary hearings. It’s used to justify consequences. It’s positioned as the moral backbone of incarceration.

But accountability, as practiced inside Arizona Department of Corrections, flows in one direction.

Down.

Mutual accountability would look very different. It would mean individuals are responsible for their behavior — and the institution is responsible for the conditions it creates. It would mean discipline is paired with evaluation of whether the environment contributed to the behavior being corrected. It would mean when patterns repeat, the system examines itself before defaulting to punishment.

That kind of accountability is destabilizing because it requires power to look inward.

In a control-based structure, authority is rarely conditioned on self-examination. Rules are enforced, not questioned. When misconduct occurs, the individual is scrutinized. When outcomes fail at scale, the explanation shifts outward — to personal choice, to community failure, to inevitable risk. Rarely to design.

Mutual accountability would require acknowledging that environment shapes behavior. That chronic stress alters regulation. That humiliation escalates defensiveness. That abrupt release destabilizes even those who “behaved well” inside. Those realities don’t erase individual responsibility — but they complicate it.

Complication is uncomfortable for systems built on clarity and command.

There’s also a cultural barrier. Mutual accountability demands modeling. Authority would have to demonstrate the regulation it expects from others. Transparency would have to replace insulation. Oversight would need real consequence. That level of reciprocity challenges hierarchical identity.

And yet, without reciprocity, accountability becomes performative.

When only one side carries the burden of examination, growth stalls. Individuals may change. Staff may change. But the structure remains untouched. Real accountability demands feedback loops. It demands metrics that measure system impact, not just rule compliance. It demands humility.

Control-based systems resist humility because humility redistributes power.

But without it, the cycle continues. Individuals are corrected. The institution remains unquestioned. Outcomes stagnate.

Mutual accountability isn’t softness. It’s structural integrity. A system willing to evaluate itself is stronger than one that deflects evaluation. But strength defined by control rarely welcomes that reframing.

Tomorrow, we’re going to examine what structural integrity would actually look like in corrections — and how it differs from the image of strength currently projected.

This isn’t about idealism.
It’s about symmetry.

And systems without symmetry eventually reveal their imbalance.