prisons

It took me forever to write this because this topic has become so extremely interesting to me, and there is so much to say about it.

In college I took two classes where I ended up writing an essay about prisons and/or prisoners--one in a moral reasoning (because they have to call everything by a different name; this is basically philosophy) and another in a literature class on misfits where I wrote about Kafka's The Trial. These were some of my favorite things I wrote about, mainly because I was pushed to think more deeply and in more nuanced ways about things I hadn't considered much, or had only considered in concrete ways. In the philosophy class, I wrote an essay about whether risoners had the moral right to revolt violently when certain rights were being withheld from them. This seems like it could be a straightforward argument, but being forced to use definitions and structured logic makes things both more complex and more streamlined. It made me think of a number of things more carefully. How is the prisoner different than the average citizen? How are civil rights different from human rights? The prisoner retains some baseline rights, but by definition is deprived of others, and also has more obligations to the state than the average citizen. But likewise, the state acquires different obligations to people when they become prisoners.

In literature, which in some ways is on the other end of the spectrum from philosophy, we also thought about prisoners, some more literal than others but the obvious one being in Kafka's The Trial, where a man is arrested for a crime that is never shared to the reader or known to the man himself. I didn't see it then but looking back, clearly there is a connection between the two disciplines in this topic--I opened my essay about the book with a line from the quintessential philosopher, Foucault: “He who is subjected to a field of visibility...inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.” This was written about the Panopticon, which is a building designed to allow prisoners to be observed without them knowing when they are being observed. A guard can stand in the center and have view of all the prisoners around them, but they can't see him. So even if the guard isn't looking at you, you feel like it is and it's your own sense of this that limits you. I became really interested in how this sense of individuality--that things are centered on you, that you have this singular relationship with the guard, that you forget about the many other prisoners around you (because you also can't see them)--is a source of imprisonment. In our society, individuality is the means of establishing identity, but in this case it can be detrimental to your sense of self. It also poses an interesting contrast to the other essay, where prisoners are asserting their individual rights.

Anyway, that's all to say that I thought a lot about these theoretical and written arguments when I started my rotation at San Quentin prison a few weeks ago and then a few days after that when we visited DeLancey Street which is a residential program for ex-convicts and would-be prisoners. Obviously these are two very different structures for a similar population of people, so it made think again of the nuances and complexity of this slice of life (which is the totality of life for some).

Our day at San Quentin started with a brief tour and an orientation on the language, rules, and etiquette of the place. But before that, the day really started with getting into the prison, which wasn't the easiest thing to do as a "regular" person. You aren't allowed to wear a million different things (blue jeans, green in any form, yellow raincoats...), and I wasn't allowed to bring in my gray hoodie which I had only meant to help me ward off rain until inside. So I had to walk around in the rain and it was freezing. Then we needed to attain what looked like something I'd call tokens but they called chits, which are round gold coins that look like they were used from the time of Game of Thrones. There are various definitions and uses of the word chit, but I think the one that might apply here is "a signed voucher of a small debt (as for food)." We turn in our chits for our key cards, which let us into the bathroom and not much else. Then we needed our alarm systems--a device we were to clip somewhere on us and strictly instructed to keep it vertical at all times--because if it leaned at all from 180 degrees it would set off a prison-wide alarm that wouldn't go off until a guard found you and was sure it was a false alarm. This is meant to alert the system if you were to fall down as the result of an attack. This seemed a little scary, but then another new medical provider set it off three times that day, twice while leaning over and once while going to the bathroom, so it became a bit less intimidating and more annoying in how self-aware it made us. At another point during the tour, a guard yelled at my co-resident for not having his driver's license on him at all times and proceeded to remind him about a half dozen times that he needed to have his ID at all times. These sorts of things gave a small, strange sense of what it might be like to live there.

Then we sat down for an orientation to the prison. I'm not sure what I expected to be oriented to, but what happened was that we were oriented to a microcosm. We learned about the different units, who was housed there and why, and the lingo for what they were called. We learned about the leader inmates of the prison, called "shot callers" who will direct the behaviors of their fellow inmates, from what type of exercises they will do in the yard to organizing hunger strikes to drug dealing. We learned about which medications aren't prescribed in prison that we routinely use in the community because they have black market value in prison.

And we learned about the bane of the primary care doctor in prison: chronos. A chrono is a request from an inmate for some type of accommodation: a cane, a back pillow, and the most common and most coveted: the lower bunk bed. At first, doctors felt happy about their ability to give, and gave anyone who asked whatever reasonable equipment they wanted--and the lower bunk. So much so that they ran out of lower bunks, since everyone wanted one and the prison is already housing 400% more than its intended capacity. And so this has become a political issue in the prison, with people vying in any way they can to attain a chrono for a lower bed, and the majority of the visit between a doctor and patient can become about attaining this form. They liken this to pain medications in the community (which are very much limited in prison), where the relationship can become very strained over different agendas. So much so that they have devised a "Chrono Clinic," which sounds a lot like "Chronic Pain Clinic." No matter how we try to structure and shape an environment, common inherent tendencies arise from anyone and everyone.

When I left for the day, I found myself relieved to turn in my alarm system. I'd felt consciously limited by it all day, trying to make sure I didn't move in ways that would set it off and have an army of guards running to me. I actually ended up loving my experience much more than I'd anticipated, but I also felt more "other" than I anticipated and it was also nice to shed that when leaving. I had that freedom.