2005 penitentiary | the other text
penitentiary | the other text
. . . And then there are the prisons that never let you forget; the ones that are designed with an urban sense of scarce and encroaching space. That such prisons are invariably located in no one’s back yard, far out in the countryside where there are too few voters to prevent their construction, is irrelevant. For once you step inside one of these citified institutions, you have entered a rough, hemmed-in tenement block where the natural world is either oddly contorted or simply ceases to exist. Walls, Iike tall buildings, bend the hours of the clay, delaying sunrise until the morning is well under way, and hastening the onset of sunset. Blazing quartz lights block out the night sky. Moon and stars, trees and fields and hills—they quickly become abstract and ungraspable, reference points belonging to others, just stuff convicts see on TV. Even the big exercise yards in prisons such as these tend more towards spit-pocked expanses of mud than to green and fragrant grass.
There are maximum, medium, and minimum security prisons. There are prisons for women and prisons for men. There are prisons for boys and for girls. At some prisons, the convicts march in file to work and chow; at others, they amble from all directions. At some prisons the convicts all wear the same clothes: blue denim pants and drab olive work shirts. At others they get to dress up like bikers or rock stars or fierce, bearded, kerchief-crowned pirates, albeit the scabbardless kind. . . . 1
. . . Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by a supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication. . . .
The Panopticon is polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. . . . In each of its applications, it makes it possible to perfect the exercise of power. . . . Because it is possible to intervene at any moment and because the constant pressure acts even before the offenses, mistakes or crimes have been committed. . . .Because, without any physical instrument other than architecture and geometry, it acts directly on individuals; it gives “power of mind over mind”. . . . 2
The control unit sits alone on the prison grounds, built partly underground and surrounded by its own razor-wire fence. My companion, a quiet man who works in a different section of the prison, leads the way through the double gate in the fence, through a set of heavy metal doors, along a clean, bright hallway, and past several small offices. Finally we emerge into the circular interior. A glassed-in control booth sits in its center, slightly elevated, a row of video monitors visible above the booth officer’s head. Around the perimeter are two tiers of tightly secured cells. Each has a narrow window on its outside wall, frosted to prevent prisoners from seeing out. Looking down a tier one sees rows of cells with their steel doors, small windows and cuffports hinged to open outward. The interior space of the unit is divided into sections of these cells—called “pods”—separated from one another and from the control booth by shatterproof clear walls and locked doors. This clean, shadowless interior, almost devoid of natural light, gives the fleeting impression that it is empty except for the uniformed staff working the booth. 3
Things changed with sudden permanence once I reached the central corridor gate that separated the administrative section from the prison proper. I saw, for the first time, the faces, shapes, and shadows of the men who would become my friends, enemies, and neighbors. They stared at me and I stared back, as scared as I had ever been in my life.
Once inside, I was walked through a gauntlet of desperate men. Their hot smell in the muggy corridor was as foul as their appearance. Most were wearing their “Graterford tan,” an ashen gray pallor. The discoloration of these distorted human forms reflected the prison landscape. At Graterford you work, eat, sleep, and idle indoors. You never have to go out unless you want to risk the sometimes deadly yard. Many inmates served their time like cave dwellers, never leaving Graterford’s concrete-and-steel shelter.
My first impression was that most of these men brandished their scars and deformities like badges of honor. None seemed to have a full set of front teeth. Many displayed tattoos of skulls or demons. They all seemed either too tall or too small, but none seemed right. Eyes were buggy, beady, squinted, or staring. Heads were too big, too small, pointed, swollen, or oblong, some with jutting foreheads, twisted noses, massive jaws. None seemed human.
One could argue whether it was the look of these men that led them to prison or whether it was the prison that gave them their look. What tales of suffering their bodies told seemed to be of no concern to them. They were content to wear their scars openly like a warning, the way farmers use scarecrows to keep menacing birds away. Today I feel pity and compassion for those who have had to suffer so much pain and tragedy. But on that hot June day, all I wanted was to get away from these ugly creatures as quickly as possible.
Now when I watch a new arrival walking “the gauntlet of desperate men,” I can always sense his hopelessness. I know my stare is as horrifying to him as the stares were for me on my first day, and know what I must look like to him. 4
. . . Each morning begins with the noisy rumble of the steel door opening. A guard steps to the bars and slides food through a small sIot. Feeding time. The guard steps back and the door slaps shut with a vengeance. The purpose of a boxcar cell is to gouge the prisoners’ senses by suppressing human sound, putting blinders about our eyes and forbidding touch. Essential human needs are viewed with suspicion. Within the larger context of a control unit prison, the boxcar cell is designed to inflict physical and emotional isolation that wears down a prisoner’s will to resist. When this regimen undermines a prisoner’s health or distorts his/her personality, it’s considered the cost of doing business.
It seems endless. Each morning I look at the same gray door and hear the same rumbles followed by long silences. It is endless. . . . 5
. . . Things here remain about the same: chaotic, unpredictable, abusive, and nasty. I had a wake up call last Thursday. They did another cell change. Every 21 days in SHU (in gen.pop. there’s no cell changes- which gives you an idea of the harassment nature of it.) Great opportunity for them to get into your shit- fuck with what little you got, be it a food stash you got squirreled away, or that extra pair of socks you acquired. They vary in intensity—depending on whose on, whose in charge, their mood. Problem last Thursday was the X-Factor. At the same time they did cell changes (all SHU prisoners change cells on the same date) they bought in 20 more prisoners supposed to be held in Seg but who were backed up in one of the gen pop. units. They had to be bought into Seg, and the only way to do that is triple up the two man cells with the third man on the floor. The overcrowding here is insane. Alright, I don’t like it but if me and cellie end up with someone on the floor, nothing to be done about it at that time.
We’re the last cell they deal with, and decide to split me and my cellie up- he goes to a different cell then they return for me and guard tells me- sorry, but because of the situation he’s going to have to put me on the floor of a cell that already has two dudes.
I’m trying, bro, to make this work. To survive this and get something better. To handle the daily indignities, pressures, and miseries. I know I gotta eat a certain amount of shit- and I’m eating it. But there’s got to be a point, a line, beyond which you’ve got to resist being pushed. This was such a moment. To be taken from a bunk and put on the floor in the present situation is to be put in a situation where they feel they can do anything with me. Plus—the SHU is so overcrowded I could’ve been on the floor for a month or more- not an uncommon fate, as I’ve learned from others.
Took me about two seconds to decide: I refused. Refused to cuff up and take my place on the floor. I tried to be reasonable. I spoke to the guard in charge and told him no way I’ll do it. That I’d been on the floor when I got here. That I’m being held in SHU indefinitely. That it wasn’t right to take me out of a bunk and put me on the floor. Told him he can go ahead and run the SORT goons in on me & cart me off to the strip cells. Destroy what little property I got. But I AINT going along with a cell change unless I get a bunk.
They left.
Returned about 5 minutes later.
Guard in charge say’s I’ll get a bunk. I have to read his eyes- is he telling the truth? I take a chance and they move me to an empty cell. Jeez—I got a bottom bunk!
Five seconds later I get a cellie from another cell. But no third prisoner splayed across the floor (and about 2/3 SHU cells are currently tripled up.) Fucked with my head for a couple days, though—I was wired—cuz when they first pressed me ALL of me goes into combat mode, knowing I put ALL of it on the line with my stand. (And the best I can hope for is I don’t become a fatality).
What’s the point? It’s that my situation remains very precarious. It took a lot of years to get this close to gen.pop, and in one moment on Thursday it came very close to shattering. That quickly. That arbitrarily. You know- any serious incident involving me and its an ass whipping and back to ADX. I’m not dramatizing this- it’s the reality at ground zero where I must get through each day. I’m scheduled for another review in two weeks. It’ll be my third. . .
Ray 6
. . . “Place your belongings under your bunk tomorrow. We will be painting your cell.”
I deeply resent the idea of green uniforms invading the only place that provides me any sanctuary and barely restrain myself from screaming, “Stay out of my cell, Lieutenant!”
In my years locked in the box that I call home, I’ve come to know every flaw in the paint, every crevice in the floor and walls. It’s familiar to me, no matter the season, how the light filters through the filthy windows of the cellblock. Don’t change my world, lieutenant. Because on death row, change is usually for the worse.
As the silence lengthens between us, the lieutenant says sharply, “Do you understand me? What’s wrong with you?”
I’m tempted to respond, “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you comprehend that people like me are your job security? Without people like me, people like you couldn’t saunter about in ugly uniforms with an aura of baseless superiority.” But as these thoughts race through my head, I reply in an outwardly calm manner. “I understand you, and I’m just fine, Lieutenant.”
I push away from frustration and sit down, feeling the solidity of the wall at my back. I wonder what an earthquake would do to this wall. Would it fall, allowing me to travel in freedom like the birds above me? I laugh at my thoughts, as I know I wouldn’t know what to do with my freedom. After a decade of guards delivering meals to my cell, I’d starve to death in an apartment, waiting for food to arrive. I’d be incapable of opening the door and walking out. I’d just sit there waiting for a guard to search me, place chains on my body, and escort me into the daylight.
I’ve changed from when I first arrived at San Quentin. Now, when friends want to visit me, I ask them to come one at a time. I find it difficult to converse with more than one person at a time from the outside world unless I know them quite well. To meet more than one person for the first time is almost too much; I feel on edge, panicked.
Looking into the sky, I see the birds have gone; it will soon be time for the guards to lock me into my cell. I worry for a moment that the ghosts will return. But glancing around, I see no sign of them. The ghosts must be off doing whatever ghosts do when they aren’t haunting the damned. . . . 7
These things happen, but they happen quietly, furtively, sullenly. The men do their time with very little comment or conversation. Fighting makes a man lose his time off for good behavior (wherein he can serve as little as three years and nine months on a 5-year sentence). So there are no curses or insults—such as would lead to fistfights on the outside. There are no fistfights. If the issue is worth beefing about, it is done silently and quickly with a knife or a length of pipe. There is a small scuffle, a man lies bleeding; there is the clatter of a shiv or pipe being kicked away. If the weapon is ever found, it is not “on” anyone. There are no fingerprints. That is all.
Everywhere, every minute—like the air you breathe—there is the threat of violence lurking beneath the surface. Unlike the air, it is heavy, massive, as oppressive as molasses. It permeates every second of everyone’s existence the potential threat of sudden, ferocious annihilation. It is as grey and swift and unpredictable as a shark and just as unvocal. There is no letup from it ever. 8
A man is identified as disturbed, and on account of that designation his freedom is constricted and he is denied certain means of self expression. Perhaps he is locked on a ward without company, telephone, or meaningful activity. He acts out, for instance, by throwing a chair through a window in order to express as best he can his dissatisfaction with the deprivation. Then he is locked in even tighter security, for instance a smaller room without windows or furniture, while the staff conclude that his chair throwing proves he was disturbed enough to warrant the kind of deprivations they had earlier forced on him, and congratulate themselves for having correctly assessed the severity of his problem in the first place. Then the man is left in the isolation room with no other way to express himself, so he does something even more bizarre, such as smear feces on the walls. And again his subsequent actions convince his keepers they were wise to throw him into the isolation room. 9
A prison inmate waits until it begins to get dark on the prison yard. As the guards round up the men to return them to their cellblocks, he heads for the outer wall and begins to climb. The guard in the tower commands through the loudspeaker that he drop to the ground and put his hands up. He ignores the command and keeps climbing. The guard fires his rifle, wounding the inmate, who falls to the ground.
The inmate tells the guards who descend on him with rifles drawn that he’s sorry they missed—he’d rather be dead. After treatment for his wounds in the prison hospital, he is placed in solitary confinement in an Administrative Segregation unit. A psychiatrist is called to see this man in his cell. The psychiatrist interviews him briefly, noting in the chart that this inmate is a grave danger to himself and that he will return the next day to see him again. That night the prisoner hangs himself in his cell and dies. 10
. . . My eyes flew open and I quickly sat up in the bunk to survey the small cell. Everything was still. “Damn!” I whispered to myself. “You gotta get a grip, man.” Dreaming is one thing, but this shit is ridiculous. Some would claim this was guilt eating away at my conscience . . . fuck them! I bet that prison shrink would have a field day analyzing my dream. Fuck him, too.
I looked out the small window directly in front of my cell. It was dark outside, making things seem almost peaceful. But that was an illusion. There was nothing peaceful about prison, nothing serene about death row, and at that very moment certain preparations were being carried out that placed me at the center of it all. . . .
In less than twenty-four hours it will be my twenty-fifth birthday, but there will be no celebrating, no party, no happy nothing’. Because I’m not gonna live to see it. . . .
The warden pressed a button this time, and a few seconds later the door popped open. As we walked in, my entire body grew hot and the palms of my hands started to sweat. The first thing I saw was the gas chamber.
Everything became dreamlike and every second was an eternity. My mind went numb, my throat bone dry. This was my first real look at the chamber—I stood there, my eyes transfixed on the cylindrical shape and the chair sitting directly in the middle. The feeling of déjà vu hit me again, this time much stronger. Now don’t get the wrong impression—I didn’t all of a sudden get religion. But when dying is the central theme of your life, your perspective on things can change. I don’t think it’s an issue of whether or not we’re afraid of dying— it’s more like being afraid of not having existed, you know what mean? I guess that’s why people tend to believe in things like reincarnation, heaven, and transmigration, because those things offer a sense of continuity or immortality. Hey, life after death sure beats ashes to ashes.
“Let’s go, Walker,” the warden said, taking hold of my arm. We walked to the door of the chamber. One of the guards pulled open the door and, as I stepped in, the air was stale and oppressive. I swear I could sense the men who had gone before me—that somehow I could feel them still in that room. If my mind was playing a trick on me, it was a damn good one.
I sat down hypnotically. The chair was hard and cold. The two guards began immediately to strap me in, wrists first, then my waist and legs. My eyes were wide, alert, as if trying to suck in the last images of life. They darted around the chamber seeking anything . . . everything. The cubicle was spotless, almost as if all trace of reality itself had been vacuumed out. It was the only place I had ever been inside prison where there was absolutely no graffiti . . . no “Kilroy was here,” no “Jesus loves you,” no gang writing, not so much as a scratch. I guess anyone coming in here ain’t in a position to do nothing but die —and the only thing that will ever deface these walls will be the souls of dead men. The warden double-checked the straps after the guards had finished. Then in a well-practiced monotone, he asked, “Do you have any last words, Walker?”
Ignoring his question, I swallowed the large lump that had l formed in my throat and stared straight ahead at the dark glass window in front of me. I knew there would be people sitting on the other side, waiting to watch my death. Well, enjoy the show, folks, I said! to myself. The warden asked me again if I had any last words. I said nothing, still staring at the window. He then proceeded to tell me in the same flat voice how the sentence of death was being carried out by order of the court. When he had finished, he and the two guards left without looking back. I heard the latch locking the door, and except for my breathing, there was absolute silence. I pulled against the strap— nothing.
I knew it was useless at this point, but still . . .
I could feel my muscles tightening, as my pulse vibrated throughout my entire body. An eternity seemed to pass as I sat there, waiting for something to happen. I kept thinking that they were going to come through the door at any second. My eyes were frantically searching the window for any movement. Finally, I closed them and let my head fall back. I felt some sweat or a tear rolling off my cheek. I opened my eyes just in time to catch it falling from my face, and as I watched it fall in slow motion, I suddenly tasted something bitter and acidic in my mouth, and my lungs seemed to ignite into flames. Without even thinking about it, I quickly held my breath and, at that very moment, I knew that once I let it go, it would all be over.
With each second, the pain in my chest grew more unbearable—inside I was on fire. I began spinning and tumbling, my head falling backward and forward. I could fee] the explosion in my chest heaving upward, as the pain began to burst into a billion pieces of light . . . and then I was falling, falling toward the sky, higher and higher, until I could no longer see beneath the clouds, until] darkness began to engulf me. It was almost over. “C‘mon, Nat, warp speed, man.” Yeah, I thought, I do have something to say . . . then I felt the rush of warm wind, and I breathed out. 11
. . . After the Attica Rebellion, more than five hundred prisoners were transferred to Greenhaven, including some of the leaders who continued to press for educational programs. As a direct result of their demands, Marist College, a New York state college near Greenhaven, began to offer college-level courses in 1973 and eventually established the infrastructure for an on-site four-year college program. The program thrived for twenty-two years. Some of the many prisoners who earned their degrees at Greenhaven pursued postgraduate studies after their release. . . . The program produced dedicated men who left prison and offered their newly acquired knowledge and skills to their communities on the outside.
In 1994, consistent with the general pattern of creating more prisons and more repression within all prisons, Congress took up the question of withdrawing college funding for inmates. The congressional debate concluded with a decision to add an amendment to the 1994 crime bill that eliminated all Pell Grants for prisoners, thus effectively defunding all higher educational programs. After twenty-two years, Marist College was compelled to terminate its program at Greenhaven Prison. . . . Not long after educational programs were disestablished, weights and bodybuilding equipment were also removed from most U.S. prisons. . . . 12
Statistics
In the late 1980s, the National Institute of Criminal Justice (the research arm of the federal Justice Department) conducted a comprehensive study pertaining to recidivism. The study tracked 105,000 state prisoners throughout the nation during the first few years after their release. The study found that among members of the general prison population, 66 percent were charged with a felony or a serious misdemeanor within three years of their release. However, recidivism rates for those prisoners who voluntarily completed a high school education while incarcerated dropped to 45 percent. For those who completed a two-year college degree while locked up, the rate dropped to 27.5 percent. And convicts who acquired a four-year college degree while in prison reoffended at a rate of 12.5 percent. 13
America has over 2 million prisoners in jail. More than one for every 142 residents. There have been almost 1000 executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. 14
The number of people incarcerated in private prisons or jails increased in 2004 by 3.3%. Approximately 1 in 12 Black men in their late 20’s (ages 25-29) are in state or federal prison, a stark contrast to the approximately 1 in 100 White men of the same age group who are in prison, and the 1 in 40 Hispanic males in that age group in prison. 15
Women are making up an increasing number of the people in prison. Women made up 7% of the prison and jail population in 2004, growing at a rate about double that of male prisoners. Women also represented one out of every four people arrested in 2004. Since 1995, the total number of women prisoners grew by 53%. The total number of men in prison grew by 32% during that same ten-year period. 16
Califomia spent 3 percent of its state budget on prisons in 1980 and 18 percent on higher education. In 1994, the state spent 8 percent of its budget on prisons and 8 percent on higher education, and since 1994 spending on prisons has far exceeded spending on higher education. Nationwide spending on state prisons has risen faster than any other spending category in the last twenty years. In the same period, spending on elementary education, highways, welfare, and public health care have all diminished. The U.S. Department of Justice admits that for every $100 million state legislatures spend on new prison construction, they are committing the taxpayers to spend $6 billion over the next three decades to operate the new facilities. 17
This trend is replicated across the country. In fact, between 1968 and 2000 the percentage increase in state spending on prisons was 6 times the percentage increase of spending on higher education. The total change in spending on higher education by states was 24%, compared with 166% for corrections. 18
[C]ompanies that service the criminal justice system need sufficient quantities of raw materials to guarantee long-term growth . . . In the criminal justice field, the raw material is prisoners, and industry will do what is necessary to guarantee a steady supply. For the supply of prisoners to grow, criminal justice policies must ensure a sufficient number of incarcerated Americans regardless of whether crime is rising or the incarceration is necessary. 19
For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No unemployment insurance or workers’ compensation to pay. No language problem, as in a foreign country. New leviathan prisons are being built with thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria’s Secret. All at a fraction of the cost of “free labor.” 20
The cost of a halfway house in the community is approximately $6,800 per year, the cost of semimonthly supportive outpatient psychotherapy is approximately $2,000 per year, and the cost of methadone maintenance is approximately $3,900 per year. The cost of incarceration far exceeds $30,000 per year if any kind of high-security housing or psychiatric care is needed. 21
With the exception of the US and the United Kingdom, most other western countries have softened their penalties (or decriminalized them completely) for drug possession and other victimless crimes. In addition, these countries are attempting to find other means of dealing with persons convicted of crime that do not involve incarceration. 22
. . . We condemn crime; we punish offenders for it; but we need it. The crime and punishment ritual is a part of our lives. We need crimes to wonder at, to enjoy vicariously, to discuss and speculate about, and to publicly deplore. We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy, and to stoutly punish. Criminals represent our alter egos—our “bad” selves —rejected and projected. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do . . . they bear the burdens of our displaced guilt ancl punishment—”the iniquities of us all.”
Them we can punish! At them we can all cry “stone her” or “crucify him.” We can throw mud at the fellow in the stocks; he has been caught; he has been identified; he has been labeled, and he has been proven guilty of the dreadful thing. Now he is eligible for punishment and will be getting only what he deserves.
. . . The internal economics of our own morality, our submerged hates and suppressecl aggressions, our fantasied crimes, our feeling of need for punishment—all these can be managed . . . To do so requires this little maneuver of displacement, but displacement and projection are easier to manage than confession or sublimation.
Hence, crowds of people will always join in the cry for punishment. . . . “He, not I, is the purveyor of evil, the agent of violence. Crucify him! Burn him! Hang him! Punish him!”
Crime in the news is often a kind of sermon; it is a warning, a reminder of the existence of evil and the necessity for good to conquer it. And are not the forces of good gradually overwhelming the forces of evil? We want to think so. It is the perennial hope of and for our civilization. Hence the wretched handling of the offender, from beginning to end, is part of a daily morality play—a publicly supported, moralistic ritual enactment, without benefit of clergy. 23
What purpose does a national park play when it once served as an institution of confinement? Monuments, national parks and tourist spaces are meaning-making machines that are produced not only by material means but also historical processes and symbolic gestures. Their function—undoubtedly instrumental and ideological—cannot be hidden; they make visible those histories that are appropriate to the political project. (It is an act that also produces its opposite: a repressed history, a state of amnesia, a marginalized population, a contest of meaning. But how to access it—?) [T]he available, official resources provide the tourist a specific ideological lens and historical memory. Rather than activating an interrogation of historical circumstance, the institutional memory of [the prison] is deployed as self-evident because the site is open to public inspection. The interpretative discourse insulates the visitor from the lifespace represented [t]here, while controlling its representation and lodging it firmly within the official historical record. 24
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