What you learn in prison
Kevin Marron spent several years investigating life in Canada's prisons.
What he found is not encouraging.
A semi-recluse in her highrise apartment, tormented by memories of friends who slashed and hanged themselves in prison cells, Theresa Ann Glaremin feels like a refugee from a war zone. Like the displaced Bosnian people whom she has seen on television, Glaremin has lived for years with anger, pain, cruelty and violence. She too has lost her place in the world. Her eight years in Canada's notorious Prison for Women have taught her fear of everyday life, disrespect for authority and a profound distrust in the values that society is supposed to espouse.
'I can't forget the things that happened in there. I'll never be free,' the
46-year-old woman tells me, as she struggles to control a panic attack that
leaves her trembling, sobbing and gasping for breath.
Prisons are supposed to rehabilitate as well as punish. Judges often send offenders
to jail to 'learn a lesson'. But few of the lessons learned in prison are positive,
and most prisoners return to society in worse shape than when they went in.
Not that the majority were in good shape to begin with. My investigation of
Canada's so-called correctional system introduced me to prisoners who had grown
up with family violence, sexual abuse, mental-health problems, alcoholism, drug
dependency, unemployment, and the cultural and social deprivation of aboriginal
communities. Prison perpetuated and entrenched their problems, deepening their
feelings of hopelessness and rage.
'Prison stripped away my culture, my morals and my social class,' says Glaremin,
who maintains she is innocent of the manslaughter of which she was convicted,
a crime that occurred in the context of domestic violence. Now legally free,
but mostly withdrawn into her private world, Glaremin tries to work through
her pain by writing poetry, drama and songs. But, she exclaims, 'I don't know
what I have to do so I can live in this world without fear'.
Many male prisoners are also afraid of the world, but respond with anger and
aggression rather than withdrawal. The lessons they learned in prison have made
them dangerous as well as dysfunctional.
Violence
Prisoners in tense and overcrowded penitentiaries live in an environment
where a knife to the throat or a metal pipe to the back of the head is a
socially appropriate response to an insult or indiscretion. People may be
attacked for looking someone in the eye, glancing into someone else's cell
or, as in one case described to me, taking too long in the shower. Prisoners
must be ready to defend themselves at all times and failure to retaliate
will likely be exploited as a sign of weakness.
This culture of violence and fear very quickly teaches prisoners how to
fashion lethal weapons out of toothbrushes, ball-point pens, chair legs
and other household objects. The best way to earn respect in prison is to
act with extreme violence and get in the first blow. If that blow happens
to be a stab in the back, so much the better, since prisoners will tell
you that there is no such thing as a fair fight in jail. Ex-offenders sometimes
find themselves instinctively reaching for a weapon when jostled on the
street or insulted by someone at a bar.
Prisoners learn intolerance and cruelty in an environment where sex offenders,
informants and prisoners with mental-health problems are persecuted. Some
prisoners learn to enjoy violence and the status that brutality and ruthlessness
can earn in jail. A prisoner at one maximum-security penitentiary recalls
a buzz of eager anticipation in his cellblock whenever a killing was expected.
'I used to look forward to it. We would have a lockdown and the police would
come in. It was entertaining.'
Others learn to look the other way, condoning violence or ignoring it, sinking
into apathy or indifference. One former prisoner confesses that she used
to get mad when there was a fight or another woman slashed herself, because
the noise of people screaming would drown out the soap operas on her television.
Authority
Prison life-skills programs teach prisoners how to deal with conflict in
non-violent ways. But guards do not take these courses. Daily interactions
with guards reinforce many prisoners' belief that violence, intimidation
and force are normal ways of dealing with problems.
When a male riot squad was called into the Prison for Women in Kingston,
Ontario, to quell a group of rebellious women, their actions were recorded
on a videotape that was subsequently shown on television. The Canadian public
was shocked by images of women being stripped, shackled, prodded with batons
and forcibly removed from their cells by men in riot suits and helmets.
But prison insiders view such gross disregard for decency and human rights
as part of a continuum of injustice and abuse that inmates must learn to
accept as a basic condition of their daily lives.
The notion that injustice and hypocrisy are inherent in the system encourages
many prisoners to minimize their own guilt. They see themselves as victims of
a legal system that does not deserve to be respected or obeyed. Some prisoners
also associate the harsh or abusive treatment they receive from guards with
their own past experiences as victims of abuse. Their feelings of humiliation
and helplessness encourage them to respect themselves and other people less.
Theresa Glaremin tells me that she resorted to the same coping mechanisms
she had learned as a child: 'I withdrew and dissociated, as I did when I
was young and being raped by my brothers. I used to have faith in the system,
but once the system treats you like a nothing, all the things that you used
to think were precious aren't any more. I view things so differently now.
I don't trust anyone in uniform.'
From guards, prisoners learn to accept humiliation and respond with docility.
But many of them bottle up a simmering rage that comes out in their other
everyday dealings, both inside the prison and after their release.
Drugs
For a drug dealer, a prison sentence is a business opportunity. In a society
that puts more drug abusers in jail than in treatment centres there will
always be a demand for dope in prison. There will always be visitors, staff
or tradespeople to smuggle drugs in. Prison life encourages people to use
drugs more. Prisoners resort to drugs to relieve tensions and boredom. Even
non-users feel pressured to indulge, so that their peers do not suspect
them of being informants.
People learn to use hard drugs in prison, since urinalysis tests are more
likely to detect marijuana or Valium than heroin, which metabolizes faster.
Unfortunately, prison drug users learn to disregard warnings about using
dirty needles. Heroin is relatively plentiful in jail, but needles are scarce
and may be shared by as many as 15 prisoners on the same range.
Prisoners often return to the community with a heroin habit and a high risk
of hiv infection. Their prison contacts will ensure that they have ready
access to drug dealers on the street.
Sex
All prisoners must learn to deal with sex in prison. Those who try to form
or maintain relationships with partners on the outside face myriad difficulties
and may learn to relate in dysfunctional ways. Conjugal visits provide brief
periods of intimacy, emotionally charged with tremendous pressures and expectations,
but divorced from the everyday concerns of a normal relationship.
Some prisoners are victims of rape or find themselves drawn into abusive,
manipulative relationships. Others choose same-sex relationships, but not
necessarily for the same reasons that people might on the street. Homosexuality
in jail often involves male/female role-playing by people who insist that
they are heterosexuals by preference. Some prisoners learn a way of relating
to others in jail that they can never find on the street. For example, Joe,
a prison drag queen, explains that he found love and happiness in prison,
but: 'It's hard to go out on the street and say: "I'm married. My husband's
in jail. Here's my ring."'
Apathy
Many people believe that tough prison sentences teach inmates discipline.
But they usually have the opposite effect, making prisoners passive and
lazy. In a maximum-security prison, inmates are told when to leave their
cells in the morning, when to go to work and when to go to bed. Meals are
served on trays. More securely controlled prisoners have the trays brought
to their cells. Prisoners forget how to shop, cook, look for work and generally
fend for themselves. 'Sometimes I wish I was back in that cell. It was so
easy,' confides one former prisoner.
On the street, ex-offenders sometimes stand in front of doors from force
of habit, forgetting that they no longer have to wait for guards to let
them through. They are confused at fast-food restaurant counters because
they are not used to making any choices. When confronted with a complicated
form or an awkward question at an employment office, they are likely to
cover their embarrassment with anger.
Some of the angriest and most dangerous prisoners spend years in super-maximum-security
prisons, watched by armed guards and shackled whenever they are moved. They
learn to look for security lapses and take advantage of the slightest opportunity
to exchange drugs, make weapons or settle scores. Often, they feel comfortable
relying on guards to keep them under control. Back on the street, they have
no self-control and see countless opportunities for crime. As one heavily
tattooed muscular young man explains: 'I've got a sawed-off shot gun within
half an hour of getting out. I pass a bank. I see money changing hands.
I say: "That's not protected. I own all that."'
Selfishness
Prison teaches you to be selfish and suspicious of other people. Helen,
a former inmate at the Prison for Women, realized this change in herself
when a neighbour knocked at her door asking if she could spare some milk.
Before her long sentence, Helen lived communally, espousing ideals of peace
and co-operation. Now she was asking herself: 'What's in it for me? What's
her angle? Is she trying to con me?' One has to ask such questions in prison,
because people are continually trying to con one another and it is dangerous
to be perceived as an easy mark.
Cut off from any real community, their family ties often severed or strained,
prisoners turn in on themselves, preoccupied with their own problems, grievances
and plans. Deprived of real opportunities for growth and change, they remain
in a state of arrested development. When Helen emerged from prison, a woman
in her late thirties, she wanted to 'party', and drive fast cars. She still
had the interests and desires of the younger woman she used to be. It was
hard for her to relate to her contemporaries, who had careers and families,
growing up in the real world.
Conclusion
It is perhaps somewhat paranoid to believe, as does Theresa Glaremin, that
guards expect that inmates will commit more crimes and return to jail in
future. Jail guards do not need to drum up more business in a world where
crime is rigorously prosecuted, but poverty and other social ills ignored.
It is probably more reasonable to conclude that it is in spite of the best
efforts of most staff members to create a rehabilitative environment that
prisons teach people to be more violent, angry, helpless and hopeless.
Whatever the motives and rationales of the jailers, the results are the
same: Theresa, trembling when she sees someone in uniform, even if it is
only a traffic warden; Joe, the prison drag queen, carrying a knife because
he's afraid of everyone he meets on the street; Helen, suspicious of her
neighbours, trying to resist the temptation to use heroin as an escape.
What they learned in prison and what they forgot, the habits and attitudes
they acquired, may hold them captive for the rest of their lives. Nothing
will change until society learns that our system of punishment only serves
to demean, impoverish and endanger us all.
Kevin Marron's exposé of
Canadian prisons, The Slammer, was published by Doubleday this spring.
©Copyright: New Internationalist 1996
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