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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
The structures of our thinking and ethics are deeply influenced by our social, economic and political environment. One of my concerns as a poor graduate student was how my theology and ethics would be affected by a Ph.D. and a comfortable job as a professor. After teaching graduate students about social ethics for several years I became alarmed at my own insularity from the experience of people at the bottom rungs of our society. In 1986 I began weekly visits to San Quentin Prison.
Entering the maximum security “holes” of the prison, I was amazed and appalled. Strong men, mostly minorities, are locked in small cages with very little privacy, minimal community, loneliness without silence and regimentation without security. They can touch opposite walls and the ceiling of their cells from a standing position; I saw cells with peeling paint where people may stay 23 or more hours per day for years on end. I heard that up to 1,000 of them are likely never again to see the outside world.
1. The specific situation at San Quentin is now changing since most prisoners who have “life without” (possibility of parole), are being transferred to other prisons. San Quentin appears to be a much less violent place than it was quite recently. Some elements of my description are no longer true, or less true of San Quentin prison since it is undergoing transformation into a predominantly medium security prison. Male pronouns are used throughout this paper since all the convicts I know are men. I suspect, though I do not know, that the social, structural forces in women's prisons have significant similarities with, and differences from what I describe.
2. For the first year I visited the prison weekly, often meeting the same prisoners for several weeks before they were transferred. I walked the tiers, going cell to cell and speaking with anyone who called out to me. Most two and a half hour visits included two or three long conversations and several short ones through the steel mesh doors of the cells. The second year I met weekly with a group of medium security prisoners for a Bible study.
3. This article is a response to my experience of a specific situation rather than to prisons in general, or criminal justice in America. Nevertheless, my experience has been supplemented with other published accounts, many of them by prisoners in other institutions.
4. Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977)Google Scholar. See especially pp. 264-68 for a convenient summary.
5. Prison slang for normal life outside the prison.
6. The institutional values of the prison are an extreme caricature of the values of the American state.
7. In fact, I believe this sphere exists in everyone, whether or not they have religious faith. Some might call it the sphere of conscience, but this would be misleading since the other two spheres claim their share of a person's conscience.
8. Ramsey Clark repeats the common charge that criminality is caused by slums and poverty. Clark, R., Crime in America 59 (1970)Google Scholar.
9. Wilson, J.Q., Thinking about Crime xiii–xiv (1975)Google ScholarPubMed.
10. In this article I use the word alienation in the dual sense of structural alienation from the goods and legal opportunities of the mainstream of American life and psychological alienation from the community and the powers and laws that govern it.
11. Van Ness, D.W., Crime and its Victims 44 (1986)Google Scholar.
12. Mitford, J., Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business 46–57 (1973)Google Scholar.
13. Id. at 52. The study was by Wallerstein, J. and Wylie, C.J., Our Law-abiding Law Breakers, Probation (1947)Google Scholar, and is also quoted in Struggle for Justice, A Report on Crime in America 107 (1971)Google Scholar, prepared for the American Friends Service Committee.
14. Determinate Sentence laws are attempting to address this problem. In California there are now only three time frames for any one crime. But many factors, such as plea bargaining and effective legal defense, affect the total amount of time served behind bars.
15. Foucault, supra note 4, at 275.
16. Foucault, supra note 4, at 276.
17. Rodriguez, C., Cookie 57 (1983), with Nancy AndersonGoogle Scholar.
18. Hollands, E., Hooked 87 (1983), with Doug BrendelGoogle Scholar.
19. Quoted by Ray, Chaplain and Call, Max in Three Losers Became Winners 213 (1987)Google Scholar.
20. Hollands, supra note 18, at 109-10.
21. “Connected” in San Quentin means gang related. The majority of prisoners at San Quentin are not gang related. Some are loners who trust no one. Many have a small circle of friends or allies.
22. “Mainline” prisoners are not confined to their cells at all times, receive meals in the cafeteria, and may work at a job. They may still be maximum security prisoners.
23. Of course, rationalizations are common among prisoners for the crimes that sent them to prison. Chaplain Harry Howard, of San Quentin, once commented to me ironically that it was hard to find a guilty man in San Quentin. One study classified typical rationalizations of prisoners into five groups: 1) denial of responsibility, 2) denial of injury, 3) denial of victim, 4) condemnation of the condemners, and 5) appeal to higher loyalties. Sykes, G.M. and Matza, D., Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency, 22 American Sociological Review 664 (1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Van Ness, supra note 11, at 144-45, suggests that these forms of rationalization are reinforced by our criminal justice system which ignores the victim.
24. These observations were made by Theodore Alstott, a volunteer at Devel Vocational Institution (DVI), a prison in Tracy, California. They are contained in a paper he wrote for a class I taught at New College Berkeley, Fall 1987.
25. Id. at 5. The geographical markers of northern and southern Hispanics are different at San Quentin.
26. Abbott, infra note 31, at 15-16.
27. Jackson, G., Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson 235 (1970)Google Scholar.
28. A “write-up” for bad behavior may result in the prisoner being sent to the “hole,” losing privileges or additional time in prison by delay of parole.
29. “Write-ups” may be appealed in writing. One prisoner I know had an unfair “write-up” reversed. But decisions of the parole board may not be appealed or even reviewed.
30. On this see Schoonmaker, P.D., The Prison Connection 53–55 (1978)Google Scholar. This paper can only lightly touch on these issues. Ultimately, I do not believe rehabilitation can take place without reconciliation to the victim of the crime. True reconciliation begins with restitution by the criminal to the victim. Restitution is a fundamental form of justice. Prison sentences do virtually nothing about restitution. For more on this see Van Ness, supra note 11, and Campbell, R.F., Justice Through Restitution (1977)Google Scholar.
31. Abbott, J.H., In the Belly of the Beast 14 (1982)Google Scholar.
32. Foucault, supra note 4, at 279.
33. Foucault, supra note 4, at 281-82.
34. Baulch, L., Return to the World 185–87 (1968)Google Scholar.
35. Niebuhr, H.R., Christ and Culture (1951)Google Scholar.
36. “Frog” is not his real nickname. Most prisoners in San Quentin seem to go by a nickname. Some prefer not to give their real name. Others hide their nicknames from outsiders.
37. Foucault, supra note 4, at 308.
38. Foucault, supra note 4, at 277.
39. Mailer, Introduction to Abbott, supra note 31, at xiii.
40. Cf. 1 Corinthians 7:22: “For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord.” Tolstoy makes much of this dynamic of inner freedom in outer chains in War and Peace.