by David Ward
The phenomenon of control in prisons has received much attention from philosophers and sociologists. Jeremy Bentham and, more recently, the French philosopher Michel Foucault have portrayed the prison as a machine capable of minutely controlling all aspects of prisoners’ existence. An alternative to the notion of the prison as an omnipotent machine has been provided by sociologist Erving Goffman, whose conception of the “total institution” highlights how inmates work out particular arrangements through a variety of devices and thereby fashion a mode of prison life more in line with their own needs and interests. But Goffman does not concern himself with evasion of rules by inmates or with effective control of inmate resistance.9 To achieve a more complete view of prison life, it is necessary to conceive of the dimensions of control and resistance to control as existing in opposition to one another, always in tension, each shaping and affecting the other.
The reality of prison life at Alcatraz fits this conception. The custodial staff was never completely successful in enforcing rules, and the inmates were never completely successful in developing structured resistance. Attempts to implement a high level of control were met with active inmate resistance; the result could be a softening of control or suppression of the active resistance with a reimposition of control. A good example of this dynamic that was resolved in favor of the inmates was the silent system, which was an attempt to impose an extreme level of control, but inmate resistance to it was so strong and took so many forms, most notably when every convict began talking in the mess hall, that the administration abandoned it as unenforceable.
The push-and-pull nature of the power struggle, however, was not always active and overt. The conflict between the forces of control and resistance found levels of equilibrium that were stable for relatively long periods of time, until new or different challenges arose. The fact that no overt struggle was taking place during these periods did not indicate any diminishment in the inherent, underlying conflict—nor in its power to shape social relations in the prison.
The convict code played an important role in modulating the conflict between inmates and staff. The element of convict culture represented by the maxim Do Your Own Time meant to staff that an inmate should stick to himself and refrain from becoming involved in any organized activities, protests, or plots. An inmate following this directive would not present a custodial problem, but the convicts’ interpretation of this maxim was: do not interfere with any plot or activity involving another convict. In other words, mind your own business and don’t screw anything up for another prisoner.
An aspect of the convict code that tended to reduce overt conflict was the tenet that directed inmates to be tough and courageous—to face stoically the deprivations of prison life. As long as circumstances allowed inmates to see prison life as a test of their manhood, as a challenge to which they could rise, the tendency to engage in active resistance or confrontation was somewhat mitigated.
Other components of the convict code, however, pushed in the opposite direction, encouraging resistance. Maintaining self-respect tended to call for resistance, as did identifying with others as members of a group whose interests were opposed to those of the staff and refusing to accept the values of the regime that legitimized the prison’s existence. For Warden Johnston and the Bureau of Prisons, the explicit purpose of the Alcatraz regime was to counter these attitudes and prevent the misconduct they produced; but the history of Alcatraz is the history of efforts by the prisoners to deny that purpose.
What these differing tendencies in the convict code point to is not so much a fundamental contradiction in the code as the contingent, situation-specific way in which the convict code, and inmate culture generally, played into the interaction between the forces of control and resistance. During the battle of Alcatraz, for example, the code can be seen operating in both directions, depending on the context and the individuals. The shooting of the hostages demonstrates the strength of the feeling that guards were a separate class to be despised and beaten into submission, whereas the decision by inmates loose in the cell house not to participate in the uprising, along with those in the basement under the supervision of Officer Edward Stucker, show the importance of both minding your own business and Being Smart by Not Doing Anything Stupid.
From the point of view of individual motivation, each Alcatraz inmate had a number of reasons for resisting the regime. Some of those motivations were fairly obvious. By engaging in organized resistance with an explicit goal—such as a food or work strike—inmates could collectively hope to extract some sort of concession from the administration that might lead to an easing of restrictions or an increase in the quality of daily life. Because Alcatraz had a long list of onerous restrictions unknown in other penitentiaries, inmates had plenty of targets for their protests, as well as ample motivation for taking the risks inherent in resisting. Taking part in organized resistance also allowed a prisoner to express the solidarity demanded by the convict code. By showing support for fellow convicts, an inmate not only conformed to expectations, he achieved higher social status and the psychological reward of acting according to his own convictions.
Less obvious were the motivations for resistance based on psychological needs. For most men, it was important to assume a posture that would allow them to maintain their integrity and self-respect—this generally meant taking a stand to show first and foremost to themselves, and secondarily to the staff and other inmates, that there were times when they could not, would not, submit to the rules and regulations that were intended to control every aspect of their lives. This response is well founded in the “locus of control” theory in psychology, which explains behavior in terms of the need to be in control of personal environment.10 All penitentiary inmates experience this need, but at Alcatraz—where an inmate’s working and sleeping hours, his meal schedule, his food allotment, when he could take a shower and shave and what clothing he could wear and how it was to be worn were part of a conscious effort to remove any freedom of choice—the need to exercise some degree of personal control over life was particularly strong. Successfully establishing some degree of control through acts of individual resistance was an essential element of psychological well-being for nearly every prisoner. When an inmate refused to obey a rule or an order, he exercised individual initiative and decision making, thus claiming some measure of control over his circumstances. Even prison officers interviewed for this project commented that if they had been prisoners, they would have violated some of the rules from time to time. The chapters ahead will make clear that resistance rather than acquiescence to the regime had important consequences for postrelease survival.
Inmates were also motivated to engage in resistance because it could liven up the extraordinarily dull routine of prison life. This too was a psychological need. The changes and events that provide interest and emotional and intellectual engagement for those in the outside world—war, recession and economic boom, scandals, politics, marriage, births, the sickness or death of a family member, new jobs, disasters of both natural and human origin, and so on—had a different meaning to the residents of Alcatraz. Worldly events were largely irrelevant, and personal and family matters tended to fade into the dim outside world. Men felt bad that a mother died, that a wife filed for divorce, or that a brother or a son was in some kind of trouble, but they knew that they could do nothing about any situation or problem away from the island. In their small world there were few events to look forward to, beyond occasional special meals, weekend recreation in the yard, and movies on holidays. Only strikes, disruptions, occasional fights, escape attempts, new arrivals, and perhaps a better job assignment or cell location could lighten the monotony of a daily routine that stretched ahead for endless months and years.
Resistance manifested itself in a variety of ways at Alcatraz. Some forms of organized resistance, such as strikes, protests, and escapes, have already been described in detail in chapters 4 through 9. The other category—individualized resistance—itself to
ok many forms and varied along a continuum, ranging from small acts of disobedience to open rebellion, with lesser rule violations the most common form of resistance.
At Alcatraz, because there were many rules to disobey, there were ample opportunities for not conforming to the “letter of the law” while at the same time not engaging in the overt insolence or gross misconduct that might result in disciplinary action. Many inmates chose this route of resisting, bending the rules governing conversation, food, clothing, mail, or the authorized contents of a man’s cell. By limiting resistance to small acts that remained under the guards’ radar or could be tolerated by them, an inmate could satisfy the psychological need of maintaining his self-respect without landing in solitary or sacrificing days of good time. When inmates practiced this form of resistance en masse in regard to a particular rule or part of the regimen, it morphed into a kind of organized resistance that could be very powerful.
A relative minority of inmates practiced individual resistance that was not tolerated by the custodial staff. These men refused to work or eat, demanded medical treatment or access to law books or other restricted material, disobeyed direct orders, or insulted or threatened guards. These acts of rebellion and rule violations did not in themselves constitute serious threats to order and security in the penitentiary, but they did earn the perpetrators the enmity of the custodial force, as well as disciplinary sanctions that often meant time in solitary and loss of good time. Many individual protesters were among active participants in collective protests, but both individual and organized protesters were men who were very experienced in doing penitentiary time and were well integrated into the inmate community. These men were respected for standing up to all levels of authority and for their ability to endure, without flinching, the punishment that followed their protests. Even when these resisters ultimately gave up their hunger strikes, work strikes, and refusals to obey orders, they were accorded respect and admiration by the general population, most of whom had been unwilling to carry their own protests so far. The exceptions to these cases were a small number of inmates who were seen as fighting the regime for no good group or individual purpose; the most notable and persistent of these individual resisters, and their many and varied acts of resistance, are described in the next chapter.
MEANS OF COPING PSYCHOLOGICALLY
The prospect of spending an unknown number of years on the island, isolated from the outside world, with every detail of existence rigidly controlled by the regime, required inmates to develop coping strategies.11 These strategies were numerous and as varied as the individual personalities of the inmates.
John Irwin, a sociologist and former prisoner, has written extensively about the experience of doing time and identified several different coping strategies, all of which were in evidence at Alcatraz.12 One important strategy, especially among prisoners with long sentences, is to focus on maintaining personal integrity, often through self-improvement. Another common strategy is “doing time.” “This form of adjustment,” according to Irwin, “involves passing through the prison in the least amount of time, with the least amount of pain, and with the maximum amount of luxury. It often involves some subterfuge and rule-breaking, but these are done covertly.” A third strategy—withdrawal—is for most prisoners the least effective, often leading to negative psychological consequences. Irwin also cites individual and group resistance.
At Alcatraz, resistance was an important element of many prisoners’ coping strategies. Resisting the regime by participating in organized protests or refusing to obey all the rules satisfied the psychological need to maintain personal integrity and locus of control and thus contributed to inmates’ psychological well-being. For many inmates, pushing the rules just far enough to derive this psychological benefit without drawing the disciplinary actions that would add to the psychological burdens of incarceration at Alcatraz was the preferred strategy.
After living the monastic existence of an Alcatraz inmate, many prisoners developed a coping strategy that involved focusing on the here and now. Because there were so few distractions, especially after men were locked up in their individual cells for the night at 4:45 P.M., there was plenty of time to sit and think about what a man was missing in the outside world. It was natural for an inmate to wonder what his wife or girlfriend was doing that night, and with whom; if his sick or dying mother could forgive her son’s absence; if his children would remember their father. An inmate pictured his old friends living it up in their favorite bars and clubs and imagined what it would be like to drive the new cars, travel by airplane, and see real women dressed in the latest clothing styles he could see only in magazines. At the same time, limitations on visits and mail made it extremely difficult to maintain satisfying emotional connections with anyone in the outside world. At some point, many inmates recognized that focusing on the past and what one was missing in the present—called “doing hard time”—was too painful emotionally. They realized that serving time, especially big time, was easier if a man forgot about the free world, to limit or even cut off communication with his loved ones (few inmates wanted or expected visits) and focus instead on personalities, relationships, and small events on the island.
Tracking unusual events, such as escape plots, protests, strikes, changes in the staff, and the arrival of new prisoners as well as the immediate realities of prison social life helped create a feeling of intensity in daily activity that would otherwise be absent. For some men, this concentration of the senses on the here and now evolved in an introspective direction, leading to the solitary contemplation mentioned in chapter 4.
COPING BY PLOTTING ESCAPE
Planning an escape was for a certain group of Alcatraz convicts an important means of psychologically adjusting to the deprivations of maximum-security confinement, and the prospect that those deprivations would continue for many years. Escape plotters were less likely to be depressed or discouraged about the years of imprisonment ahead compared to their fellow convicts because they believed they would not be staying around that long. But escape plotting can also be seen as a form of resistance that, like other forms of resistance, provided the psychological benefit of sustaining self-respect. When an inmate took part in an escape scheme, he declared his determination not to succumb to the mind-deadening effects of long-term confinement. In addition, for those men who found it difficult to deal with the intense boredom of everyday prison life, plotting and participating in an escape attempt was certain to generate excitement and emotional intensity.
In view of the attention given to escape attempts in previous chapters, it is important to emphasize that plotting an escape was a special adaptation practiced by a small minority of Alcatraz inmates. To contemplate escaping from the island, an inmate had to have patience, iron nerves, a quick and decisive mind, and the ability to plan. Most important, he had to be willing to risk his life—or feel that he had nothing to lose.
The men committed to escape sought to attract as little attention from staff as possible. They worked at being quiet, courteous, and obeying the rules; they were careful not to attract attention to the contents of their cell or their workplaces because they did not want guards to shake them down and detect escape paraphernalia. With the exception of Dock Barker and Floyd Hamilton, the most successful escape attempts at Alcatraz were engineered by convicts who were not celebrities, were not the leaders of the work strikes or the food protests, and were not combative with other prisoners or staff; in short, they were regarded by guards as among those convicts who quietly “did their own time.” A man could not be locating escape routes, sawing away on bars, or accumulating escape paraphernalia if he was locked up in the disciplinary segregation unit. Rebelling against prison rules or staff instructions meant that an inmate could not earn a work assignment that would routinely bring him down to the industries building next to the waters of the San Francisco Bay or to other locations on the island that eliminated the problem of getting out of a cell and the main cell house. Most of
the men bent on escape, therefore, could not have been identified beforehand by scrutiny of their misconduct records.
Experienced officers at Alcatraz understood the inclination of prisoners to dwell on escape and, given their escape records at other prisons, expected some to study and then test the security system. Several groups of convicts who tried to escape were recipients of grudging admiration on the part of prison staff. That admiration, naturally denied to inmates who injured or killed employees in the course of an escape, was reserved for those men whose breakout attempts demonstrated daring and ingenuity, coupled with painstaking long-term planning and organization.
REACTING WITH VIOLENCE
In any penitentiary setting, coping and adjustment are never complete or constant, leaving room for violence to erupt. Violent behavior has many social and psychological causes, but in a prison context it has a direct relation to the interplay between inmate personalities, convict culture, and imposed confinement. Violence can be conceptualized as a consequence of the failure to find other adaptations or coping mechanisms in cases of inmate-on-inmate violence, or resistance carried to an extreme level, in the case of assaults on guards.
Since there is violence in most cities and towns, it might be expected to be epidemic in the closed world of a penitentiary that combined the outstanding histories of violence of the Alcatraz prisoners with the most punitive regime in the federal system. Yet this expectation was not realized during the gangster era, 1934 to 1948—there were only ten inmate-on-inmate assaults. Apart from the officers who were assaulted and the two killed by inmates during escape attempts, only four other prisoner assaults on staff members were recorded. And, as reported by our inmate interviewees, there were very few unprovoked assaults on prisoners by guards.13 Not included in these figures are fights such as that between Al Capone and Harmon Waley that never came to the attention of the staff.
