Who’s Been To Prison?

 

shutterstock_86779999I don’t necessarily mean as an inmate (though I’d love to hear about that too if anyone has stories they’d like to share). I’m just curious how many people have visited prisons in whatever capacity, and perhaps have interesting stories to tell about it.

I’ve been working the prison reform beat of late, and along the way have been fostering some interesting contacts in the policy world. It’s an exciting issue. While so many areas of American policy are mired in inefficiency and political gridlock, the justice reform movement is very much on the move. Texas and Georgia have both made great strides in this area, saving millions of dollars and actually closing prisons while still keeping crime rates low.

Talking to the people involved is a little bit surreal, because they’re excited and upbeat and have nothing but nice things to say about one another. That includes the people on the other side of the aisle! It’s actually a little disconcerting. What sort of “through the looking glass” politics is this? Bipartisan policy reform? I’m still in 21st century America, right?

One final amusing bit: if I mention to a friend or acquaintance what I’m working on, people usually say, “Oh, that must be a downer.” Ha! You’d be amazed. If anything I have the opposite problem: as a writer, it’s hard to find a juicy angle when everybody is so gosh-dang happy and cooperative.

Which brings me back to the topic of prisons. I’ve never actually been to one. And of course I understand why people assume that writing about prisons must be a downer: because they’re prisons. The policy people are happy, which they should be because they’re doing great work. I’m a believer! But another piece of this picture involves literally millions of sad stories about broken lives, broken families, and gutted communities where half the men are behind bars.

I care about that element; actually it seems to me like everybody in the justice reform community does. For obvious reasons, their pitch (to conservative politicians) tends to open with the financial upsides, but on a personal level they want to change lives and save money. The beauty of prison reform is that it does both. From the standpoint of increasing reader interest and getting the public eager for criminal justice reform, that’s surely the balance that needs to be struck. Fuse the upbeat policy stuff with some human interest, pulled from that deep well of tragedy that is our justice system.

So that’s my next goal, but I’m still pondering where to start. The system is massive, and has a million sides, from police work, to courts, to actual prisons to a whole extensive landscape of probation and parole. Prison tourism isn’t much of a thing. What’s the best way to get a feel for what the prison system is like? What sorts of people have a bird’s eye view of the whole system, and which can give good advice for what windows to peek through?

Published in Culture, Domestic Policy
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  1. JimGoneWild Coolidge
    JimGoneWild
    @JimGoneWild

    Never been in one, but accidentally rolled up on Rahway State Prison, New Jersey, and it scared the heck (I really said something more substantial) out of me. I never want to be an inmate. Thanks for doing work with them.

    • #1
  2. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    I’ve only been to a prison in the capacity of performing there with my choir, but it was a rather moving experience.  The inmates–males– were so grateful that we came and so enthused about our songs.  I think this is a winning issue for conservatives, especially with minority communities.  Politicians can’t be seen as soft on crime, but on the other hand they now have some stats and programs from conservative states to point to.  Listen up, candidates.  Capture this issue!

    • #2
  3. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Part of my Jesuit novitiate was to work in a local county prison a couple days a week. This only lasted about six months, so I claim no real expertise.

    My job was visitation. The Christian angle was right out of Matthew 25: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” The prison’s angle was that a little human contact helped to ameliorate any simmering problems.

    My impression, from that short experience, was the oppressive dullness of prison. There’s nothing to do. The penalty of prison is time, wasted time, empty time, pointless time. Empty time is empty life. I mean, it’s hard to appreciate the emptiness of looking at years of empty life. It just drains the humanity out of you. At least the visitation brought some humanity. Even if all you did was talk to the guy, or play cards (when they let us play cards), it gave a brief spark of humanity into an otherwise crushingly dull existence.

    If your campaign of prison reform includes making something useful of that time, I’d guess it’ll probably help.

    • #3
  4. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    One night in county completely changed my entire outlook on law enforcement and imprisonment. The entire thing was so wholly dehumanizing it was indescribable. I cannot imagine our founders walking into any modern prison or jail and seeing how such institutions promote justice or liberty for anyone whether inside or out.

    Having said that, my developing theory is that the dehumanizing quality is necessitated by scale. We have too [expletive] many people behind bars. How could anyone remain human in such a place? But, turning them out is not the answer either because that would simply lower the quality of life for everyone else. So, fixing the problem cannot be done at the policy level. It is a problem of culture, which is upstream of politics. Until we are a people (all of us, both Belmont and Fishtown) who strive for virtue the problems necessitating imprisoning 2.8% of the population and the problems caused by having that many people incarcerated will remain intractable.

    • #4
  5. user_522280 Inactive
    user_522280
    @StevenJones

    I visited a Texas State prison (Micheal Unit) a few times as part of Church prison ministry. I can’t claim to have been personally effective in helping the inmates. On the most memorable visit, we actually went inside and participated in a chapel service. There were a few baptisms that day. Following the service, we shared lunch with the inmates on the chow hall.

    • #5
  6. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    If there is any hope of Republicans winning votes from poor blacks and hispanics, prison reform is a gateway.

    My ideas about how the punitive system should be reformed are scattered around many past Ricochet conversations… including one started by Rachel Lu! But the most important element is probably that prison sentences have wrongly become a one-size-fits-all punishment. It needs to be balanced by alternatives, including corporeal punishment (which is generally more humane).

    Politicians need to go back to square one and identify the fundamental goals of our justice system. Are we only sequestering criminals from society? Or do we hope to reform criminals? Why do we generally prefer life sentences to the death penalty? Why do we eliminate some rights of criminals (the right to vote, for example) but not others? Why do we prefer prolonged confinement to corporeal punishment?

    • #6
  7. user_88846 Inactive
    user_88846
    @MikeHubbard

    I haven’t been to prison, though back in my paralegal days, I did some work with prisoners—mostly child custody matters.  When parents get locked up, I’d wind up talking to lots of broken mothers and figuring out how to find a way for them to sign their children away.

    In order to find out why prison reform isn’t happening, you need to realize that the some of the most formidable defenders of the status quo aren’t the prison guards but the police.  Ask your local police department if you can do some ride alongs with police officers so you can see what the police see.

    • #7
  8. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    I toured a Texas prison facility years ago as part of a college course on government. I don’t recall the exact term for that type of facility, but it included different levels of security.

    The minimum security section involved three or four large rooms per central observation tower. Each room was behind a hard glass which, to my amazement, was covered in kindergarten-like decorations made by inmates earning some sort of credit. These inmates were relatively tame. As I recall, there were perhaps 8-12 per room.

    The maximum security section was viewed from one row of bars in front of a second row, behind which stood and yelled dozens of aggressive inmates gathered outside of their cells. Because there were young ladies in our tour group, many of the inmates were shouting sexual obscenities and pulling down their pants to taunt.

    I’ve considered visiting prisons to talk with inmates occasionally. If prisoners are to be reformed, they need contact with civilized people to counteract the poisonous influences they encounter daily. I’m not sure what the opportunities and hurdles are for that sort of volunteer work.

    • #8
  9. user_519584 Member
    user_519584
    @JWS

    I’ve been to different Max Security prisons  and jails too many times over the last 11 years…my son happens to be in one ATM. The one in Utah was well run and relatively safe (little contraband etc.) while the one in VA is what you’ve seen on TV (gangs, violence, contraband, crooked guards, etc.).

    Both are demoralizing and dehumanizing, for both the inmates and visitors. Prison reform may help some of these folks, but many of the inmates in Max are beyond repair. Don’t know the percentage that could benefit, maybe 25-30%.

    I’m sure that the percentage of savable folks increases when you get to Gen. Population.

    Most prisons care about protecting society, not the inmates. Not sure whether that’s entirely a bad thing, knowing some of the things that I’ve been told by my son.

    • #9
  10. Richard O'Shea Coolidge
    Richard O'Shea
    @RichardOShea

    Like Merina, I was asked go be a keyboardist for a worship service in a prison.  It was soon after I moved to Baltimore, about 1990 or so.  I was told it was in the Annex to the Jessup Federal Prison, just south of Baltimore.  I figured the Annex was where they kept the white collar criminals, or petty thieves or something.

    Boy, was I wrong.

    Getting through security was daunting – metal detectors and patdowns.  Playing the worship service was an interesting experience.  It was in the cafeteria, and the one guard pointed out the openings around the top of the room where tear gas could be released in case of a riot.

    The inmates  – pretty much all murderers – seemed to be very involved in the worship.  Though I was glad I went, I never volunteered to go back.  Some experiences are best if they are the Once-In-A Lifetime variety.

    • #10
  11. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Thank you, Rachel, for this wonderful post and for introducing this subject for discussion.

    As others have mentioned, prisons were a big deal to me as a little kid in Sunday school because of the Beatitudes. Prisons remain a big deal to me.

    They are inhumane.

    The number of people in solitary confinement is staggering right now. This is a huge concern to me because I believe in the power of human contact, in and of itself, to prevent the escalation of mental illness in the human mind. A person’s punishment for stealing a car should not be lifelong schizophrenia.

    So, the other night, I was watching an episode of a really delightful show called How the States Got Their Shapes, and the show went to Pennsylvania, to visit the experimental Quaker prisons (penitentiaries) in which prisoners were confined to dark cells by themselves with the only light coming from a slit in the ceiling in their cells. The prisoners were to be left totally alone to contemplate something. The Quakers thought that these people would be “reformed” in solitude in which God would be able to speak to them.

    In yet another episode of humanity’s path to hell being paved with good intentions, the prison discovered the meaning of the word “failure”–they didn’t cure people. They caused massive insanity.

    So, why are we still using isolation as a prisoner reeducation tool?

    It is this kind of inhumanity that keeps me up at night. :)

    • #11
  12. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    Most prisons care about protecting society, not the inmates.

    They are still part of our society, but we treat them as entirely outside of it. This is part of the problem, imo.

    • #12
  13. tabula rasa Inactive
    tabula rasa
    @tabularasa

    I can’t add anything on prison experiences (not saying I don’t deserve to know about it, but I haven’t been apprehended yet).

    However, while Rachel and her mom are too humble to point out yet another of Rachel’s accomplishments, I have no such compunction.  National Review’s book review section (4-6-15 issue) has an excellent review of a book on abortion.  The author of the review is (drum roll) our own Rachel Lu.  It’s excellent.

    Congratulations Rachel!  My fondest prayer is that you will soon become a regular op-ed columnist for the NYT.  It’s the gray lady’s only hope for redemption.

    • #13
  14. user_519584 Member
    user_519584
    @JWS

    MarciN:Thank you, Rachel, for this wonderful post and for introducing this subject for discussion.

    As others have mentioned, prisons were a big deal to me as a little kid in Sunday school because of the Beatitudes. Prisons remain a big deal to me.

    They are inhumane.

    The number of people in solitary confinement is staggering right now. This is a huge concern to me because I believe in the power of human contact, in and of itself, to prevent the escalation of mental illness in the human mind. A person’s punishment for stealing a car should not be lifelong schizophrenia.

    So, the other night, I was watching an episode of a really delightful show called How the States Got Their Shapes, and the show went to Pennsylvania, to visit the experimental Quaker prisons (penitentiaries) in which prisoners were confined to dark cells by themselves with the only light coming from a slit in the ceiling in their cells. The prisoners were to be left totally alone to contemplate something. The Quakers thought that these people would be “reformed” in solitude in which God would be able to speak to them.

    In yet another episode of humanity’s path to hell being paved with good intentions, the prison discovered the meaning of the word “failure”–they didn’t cure people. They caused massive insanity.

    So, why are we still using isolation as a prisoner reeducation tool?

    It is this kind of inhumanity that keeps me up at night. :)

    MarciN:

    While your intentions are good, some of the people put in solitary earned it because of the harm they’ve inflicted on other inmates. What do you do with somebody who stabbed a fellow inmate many times or almost beat another to death in a drunken rage? Both incidents happened recently in my son’s cell block.

    Not all of these folks are nice people I’m afraid.

    • #14
  15. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    What do you do with somebody who stabbed a fellow inmate many times or almost beat another to death in a drunken rage? Both incidents happened recently in my son’s cell block.

    Not all of these folks are nice people I’m afraid.

    That’s the conundrum, isn’t it? There is a negative feedback loop at work here, and I don’t know what the solution could possibly be.

    • #15
  16. Richard O'Shea Coolidge
    Richard O'Shea
    @RichardOShea

    JWS:

    MarciN:Thank you, Rachel, for this wonderful post and for introducing this subject for discussion.

    As others have mentioned, prisons were a big deal to me as a little kid in Sunday school because of the Beatitudes. Prisons remain a big deal to me.

    They are inhumane.

    So, why are we still using isolation as a prisoner reeducation tool?It is this kind of inhumanity that keeps me up at night. :)

    MarciN:

    While your intentions are good, some of the people put in solitary earned it because of the harm they’ve inflicted on other inmates. What do you do with somebody who stabbed a fellow inmate many times or almost beat another to death in a drunken rage? Both incidents happened recently in my son’s cell block.

    Not all of these folks are nice people I’m afraid.

    I spent time after the service talking to clean cut kid, who looked to be about eighteen or so.  He looked really out of place.  I asked about him on the way out – it turns out he had beat both his grandparents to death with a baseball bat while they were sleeping.  It had been big news in Baltimore.

    He was in the right place.

    • #16
  17. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Really enjoying all of these comments but since I’m on a phone it occurs to me I should post a few links to the stuff I’ve written on the policy reforms underway. I think the policy can help, though clearly it’s. A multi-faceted problem. http://thefederalist.com/2015/02/03/how-conservatives-are-getting-right-on-crime/ http://thefederalist.com/2015/02/24/seven-reasons-conservatives-are-leading-criminal-justice-reform/
    http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/26/justice-reform-georgias-bipartisan-cinderella-story/

    • #17
  18. user_519584 Member
    user_519584
    @JWS

    The King Prawn:

    Most prisons care about protecting society, not the inmates.

    They are still part of our society, but we treat them as entirely outside of it. This is part of the problem, imo.

    Yes and no. Prison officials view them as convicts, and we parents are just parents of convicts. I’m not arguing whether this is right or wrong, it’s just the way things are. I have mixed emotions about many of these things giving my experiences.

    Most people in most states have decided that society’s safety outweighs the concerns/treatment of the inmates. Again, I’m mostly talking about those convicts in Max Security, not general population.

    Many are the inmates in maximum security are very screwed up  and dangerous people.

    • #18
  19. Look Away Inactive
    Look Away
    @LookAway

    Great podcast this week on the Sociology of US Prison Gangs hosted by Russ Robert’s EconTalk.com sponsored by the Hoover Institution. Absolutely fascinating insight into the evolution of these gangs, the underground economy of prison, how certain tough rules of the prison contribute to gang members becoming millionaires. One example pointed out is the CA prison system confiscated 15,000 cell phones in 2012(?) even though cell phones are forbidden to inmates. 15,000! You can imagine the traffic in tobacco, drugs, sex, etc. I urge everyone to listen to this podcast.

    • #19
  20. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    JWS:

    MarciN:

    While your intentions are good, some of the people put in solitary earned it because of the harm they’ve inflicted on other inmates. What do you do with somebody who stabbed a fellow inmate many times or almost beat another to death in a drunken rage? Both incidents happened recently in my son’s cell block.

    Not all of these folks are nice people I’m afraid.

    I understand that. But pulling out their fingernails one by one would also punish them, but I don’t think we would advocate doing so on humanitarian grounds.

    We have bottom lines in western civilization: I can really hate my neighbor, but unless he tries to shoot me first, I can’t shoot him. There are bottom lines we don’t cross.

    • #20
  21. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    The King Prawn:Having said that, my developing theory is that the dehumanizing quality is necessitated by scale. We have too [expletive] many people behind bars. How could anyone remain human in such a place? But, turning them out is not the answer either because that would simply lower the quality of life for everyone else. So, fixing the problem cannot be done at the policy level. It is a problem of culture, which is upstream of politics.

    It’s a problem of culture in more ways than one.

    We are, as Aaron points out, weirdly averse to corporal punishment, even though intense but temporary injury to the body wastes far less of the punished person’s life than prison does, and also avoids having to lock up a wrongdoer with other wrongdoers, where they can all pool their criminal knowledge and turn the prison facility into a university of crime.

    We no longer have an Australia to ship criminals to, no territory that leaves the criminals relatively free to build new lives for themselves while keeping the rest of us safe from them via geographic isolation. Even if we did have another Australia, we wouldn’t want to use it on the grounds that it would be immensely unjust to the native population (which it is) and would also cause ecological damage.

    As far as I know, we no longer consider making restitution to the one you wronged through a period of servitude to them an appropriate punishment for anyone but children (informally) and debtors (in the form of garnishment). And no wonder! These days, how safe would you feel with the criminal who had wronged you working for you to pay you for the damage he caused? Demanding that a criminal make restitution to his victim means trusting the criminal to do so, and that trust is no longer there.

    • #21
  22. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Thanks, Tabula! It was pretty exciting to do my first-ever piece for NR.

    • #22
  23. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    Many are the inmates in maximum security are very screwed up  and dangerous people.

    If they’ve removed from themselves all vestiges of humanity, then why do we maintain respect for their right to life? Why cage them like animals? Why not just put them down like rabid animals?

    Again, I ask a lot of questions to which I don’t know the answers, especially in this area where what was once to me common sense is now nonsense.

    • #23
  24. Richard O'Shea Coolidge
    Richard O'Shea
    @RichardOShea

    The King Prawn:

    Many are the inmates in maximum security are very screwed up and dangerous people.

    If they’ve removed from themselves all vestiges of humanity, then why do we maintain respect for their right to life? Why cage them like animals? Why not just put them down like rabid animals?

    Many states exercise this option as a just punishment for the most severe crimes.  Not Maryland, though.

    I suppose this is one reason Baltimore is a crime free paradise….

    • #24
  25. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    This is just an idea for prison reform. Try Work.  No prisoner should have time on his or her hands.  Some kind of productive work should be found for every inmate, preferably making or assembling something.

    • #25
  26. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    tabula rasa:

    Congratulations Rachel! My fondest prayer is that you will soon become a regular op-ed columnist for the NYT. It’s the gray lady’s only hope for redemption.

    I think an attractive and really nice young conservative blonde Mom would be just the thing to reinvigorate the fallen-on-hard-times gray lady.

    • #26
  27. Rachel Lu Member
    Rachel Lu
    @RachelLu

    Criminal justice reform efforts are mostly focused on the lower-hanging fruit… which is lower-security prisoners. Especially non-violent drug addicts, many of whom really don’t need to be in prison at all. Accountability courts offer much cheaper, more effective and also more humane ways of handling those cases. Violent criminals are obviously a harder issue; no one wants to roll the dice with public safety by letting a lot of those people out. Thus far reformers have basically made the progress they’ve made in large part because they can assure the public that “look, we closed three state prisons, but crime isn’t rising.” And just on a level of policy/politics, I think it makes sense to keep your focus there at least until that low-hanging fruit has been picked. Locking away non-violent people for years because they used crack a few times doesn’t make sense. Locking up teenagers for skipping school too many times doesn’t make sense either. Yes, accountability is important, but we can find ways to hold people accountable that don’t involve putting them at *greater* risk of leading a life of crime and cycling in and out of prison for the next several decades (which is what tends to happen when we get too aggressive about locking up juveniles for relatively minor offenses). I do also care about the humanity of the truly evil and depraved (like Marci, I’m disturbed by our heavy use of solitary confinement) but that’s much harder to address, both politically and morally.

    • #27
  28. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake:

    As far as I know, we no longer consider making restitution to the one you wronged through a period of servitude to them an appropriate punishment for anyone but children (informally) and debtors (in the form of garnishment). And no wonder! These days, how safe would you feel with the criminal who had wronged you working for you to pay you for the damage he caused? Demanding that a criminal make restitution to his victim means trusting the criminal to do so, and that trust is no longer there.

    It’s interesting to consider this in relation to slavery.

    Historically, it has been common for debtors (of financial debts or debts of injury) to make restitution by serving their victims full-time for a prescripted duration. In modern Western societies, inmates are often forced to labor for the state or at least permitted to buy time off their sentences through good deeds.

    In one example, the convicted criminal works for the individual he wronged. In the other, the convict works for government. Is it odd that the former is considered a type of slavery but the latter is not?

    As I have argued before, modern Westerners tend to oversimplify the concept of slavery. It exists not as an easily identified absolute, but rather by degrees between slavery and freedom. Slavery can take many forms, many of which take from a person only particular kinds of freedom (ex: of speech, of movement, of labor management, etc).

    • #28
  29. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    Many states exercise this option as a just punishment for the most severe crimes.

    I don’t know that a 10-20 prison term finished at long last by execution really meets the spirit of the practice.

    • #29
  30. captainpower Inactive
    captainpower
    @captainpower

    I’m a little unclear on what “reform” you support. Seems like some reformers want fewer incarcerations, and others want more humane prisons.

    I am in favor of more humane prisons. When the inmates are in charge of the asylum, when murders and rapes and guard bribes happen in prison, that’s intolerable. I don’t know how common these things really are, but prison rape has become a cultural joke with people laughing at the horrific “don’t drop the soap” line. People balk at the death penalty but are ok with what I would consider “cruel and unusual” punishment? Lawyers sue about health care in prison but this kind of stuff still goes on?

    I’m less clear on how to think about the increasing rate of incarceration.

    Crime is down (I’m not sure how trustworthy the statistics are on this though) but incarceration is up. Does that mean that we are properly locking up the most dangerous people? If that’s the case, then regardless of personal and community devastation surrounding the lockup of these dangerous people, we should continue to lock them up because the alternative is worse devastation and crime.

    The late Chuck Colson’s Christian service organization Prison Fellowship did a lot of work inside prisons. You might do a prison visit with them.

    You mentioned Texas and Georgia. Dennis Prager had an interview with the warden at Angola State prison in Louisiana and apparently they have decreased their murder rate inside the prison dramatically.

    And here’s an organization Prager plugged on one of his shows:

    The entire parole system is an example of how poorly government does of taking successful ideas and running with them. My understanding is that the father of parole (this guy?) was a private citizen who petitioned a judge to release an offender into his care and put him on the hook for any crimes they committed while there. He used his own discretion and only picked offenders who looked like they were penitent and had a chance of actually reforming. It worked really well, so the government implemented it across the board, removing the discretionary principle that gave it such success.

    That said, while I don’t have much faith in government to implement bold new programs, I do have hope for more modest gains such as incremental improvements spearheaded by reformers such as the story of the Angola state prison warden.

    I for one, have an appetite for prison reform news and look forward to reading any informative articles you write on the topic.

    • #30
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