Coda: Being in Prison

This concluding chapter looks at a speech conducted at the January graduation ceremony of prisoners who would receive their college degrees at the Fishkill Correctional Institution, in conjunction with programs run by Nyack College in upstate New York. It explains how graduation oratory is all about telling people to apply what they have learned in the world. The graduation speech consists of six key takeaways: the more you know, the more you realize you do not know; recognizing what you do not know is a social tool; education is self- knowledge; education is also about learning to write well; education is self- improvement; and finally, education is a place of its own.

The Technology of Confinement

This chapter considers how prison technology is especially one-sided and imposed because it is not shared. Philosopher Jacques Ellul has argued that technical mastery (technopoly) can narrow thought and make it less sensitive to human dimensions and needs. Criminologists call this level of total technological imposition “a habitus of subjection.” In “total institutions,” prison theorists agree that current modes of technical use have led to “mortification of the self.” The bad aspects of prison technology are indeed bad. The United States has so many people in prison and jail and many more under legal surveillance because technology has made it possible.

Do Americans Like to Punish?

This chapter addresses the question of whether Americans like to punish. The United States clearly punishes more heavily and for longer periods than other countries, with comparable social and political values. One can land in an American prison for life over minor offenses—a punishment not used for serious offenses in Western Europe. The leading comparativist on criminology, James Whitman, argues that a politics of dignity has instilled mercy and mildness in European systems, while leveling impulses, distrust of authority, and too much power in the people is said to have left the United States with a criminal justice system long in degradation and short on mercy.

Introduction: The Need for New Answers

This introductory chapter argues that legally sanctioned theories of retribution have allowed vindictiveness to flourish everywhere in sentencing and penal systems. The established forms of punishment are elemental in two senses of the word. First, they are near reflexes in thought. Second, in their intractability, they explain why a new approach must correct mistreatment in a broken system. Only transformation in the forms themselves, change from the inside out, can answer these problems. The chapter cites and agrees with the Roman poet Ovid's concept of metamorphosis for two reasons. It agrees that punishment must seek a more balanced transformation, and it argues that a better understanding of human nature in its active parts can adjust that balance toward healing instead of hurting.

What Is Punishment For?

This chapter discusses how Gresham Sykes, a pioneer in criminology, recognized most of what was wrong with the language of punishment. Many applauded his insights, and his book The Society of Captives (1958) became a classic on prison culture. Sykes exposed a language of punishment that did not reach the punished. Three glib theoretical terms—retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation—gave a beguiling neatness and simplicity to theories of incarceration. But “this three-pronged aim” existed in such conflict with itself that it could not answer the crucial question of whether the convicted is placed in prison for punishment, or as punishment. Instead of answering that question, the three prongs held the distinction permanently aloft.

The Architectonics of Reform

This chapter demonstrates how replacing a theory of punishment that shuns the transgressor with one that connects with that transgressor may sound plain enough in principle, but many things forestall the prospect of reciprocity between punisher and punished. Incarceration that shuns comes close to an instinct in American society, and it has created beliefs, applications, and institutional structures in its wake. Two reasons, one normative and the other pragmatic, indicate why people today should be concerned about punishment regimes enough to want to do something about them. On normative grounds, one must understand the saying that “if you are to reform a man you must improve him.” While in more pragmatic terms, the spreading net of enforcement and surveillance in American culture should be a general concern.

Sentencing the Disappearing Convict

This chapter looks at how, without rights, people in prison are left to the mercy of a grudging criminal justice system. Too many discussions turn on the length of a sentence assigned and the crime that justifies it. Loss of freedom—how much loss of freedom?—is crucial, but it is not the only issue to be addressed. Other aspects should not be ignored, and judges do not help perception when they withhold or minimize publication of the sentences they hand down. Publicity over sending a person to prison is not the way most judges want to be remembered. The chapter addresses two main issues regarding this problem, the question of what is properly said in the delivered sentence, and what has been left out that might also be useful.

Accounting for Unaccountability

This chapter discusses how much of what Western thought came to feel about the subject of punishment originates in Ovid's artistic treatment of the subject. Punishment, he realized, is more than itself. It provides satisfaction for the punisher and through misery designates a flawed identity for the punished. That synergy also explains why punishment invariably goes up whenever it is not watched closely. To appreciate Ovid's obsession with punishment in his epic poem Metamorphoses, the chapter starts with the precise philosophical problem that drives it. His concern is with the misfortune that comes from punishment as opposed to mere misfortune, a serious distinction.

The Linguistic Tangle in Treatment of the Incarcerated

This chapter talks about how confinements restrict the body and, through it, mental well-being. Right after the decision from a judge, the person destined for confinement is put in handcuffs; it makes no difference if the application is unnecessary to prevent escape or resistance. It makes no difference because the importance of the moment lies elsewhere. The symbolism in handcuffing initiates the continuum in confinement at the same time that the image of it satisfies retributive alignments. This is all most people see of incarceration. The chapter shows that handcuffing represents the basic element in all of punishment: it visualizes one's helplessness in the hands of others.

Rights Talk and the Enabling of Wrongs

This chapter illustrates how the typical court opinion on prisoners' rights proclaims constitutional guarantees in principle while taking them away in practice. Judges say a right is available but not in the decision before them. One of the ironies in prison abuse comes here. The abstractions in rights talk allow many particulars to be ignored even as the stress on individual rights ignores the collective nature of prison problems. The rubrics that protect civil rights depend on balancing tests between particular redress and communal interests, and these tests invariably work against prisoner complaints through security claims. Prejudgment easily dismisses the person complaining through the crime committed, sometimes long ago.