Stateville- the Penitentiary in Mass Society

by James B Jacobs

  Donald Clemmer pointed out that Ragen fired a guard for brutality at Menard,8 but many informants also insist that he often turned his back on beatings at Stateville. He would castigate guards for referring to inmates as “sons-of-bitches” but he would do so himself in the next breath. While many of the inmates may have seethed with bitterness, an equal number preferred doing time at Stateville because “you knew where you stood.”

  Ragen maintained “that if you stress the small things, you will never have to worry about the big ones.” Thus, under his fully elaborated system of administration the inmates were subjected to intense supervision under innumerable rules blanketing every aspect of prison life. While many inmates suffered emotionally and psychologically from this intense supervision, they were physically safer, better fed, and provided with more programs than inmates of most other prisons of the period. In comparison with other prisons of the forties and fifties, Stateville had less violence, more industry, and less corruption. When prison riots touched almost every major prison across the country in the early 1950s, Stateville continued to run smoothly.

  Ragen trained a whole generation of employees who for years held leadership positions at Stateville and throughout the Illinois prisons. When he took over management of the entire Illinois prison system as director of public safety in 1961, he appointed Stateville captains and administrators as wardens at Stateville, Pontiac, Vandalia, and Vienna. He made his personal secretary warden of the women’s prison at Dwight. One cannot hope to understand the goals, strains, and conflicts in the Illinois prisons today without assessing the Ragen legacy.

  In place of a system where order was based upon the rule of inmate bosses and gang leaders, Ragen established a patriarchal organization based upon his own charismatic authority. Later the perfection and perpetuation of this organization became a goal in itself.9 Under Ragen, Stateville was transformed from an organization without a stable goal to an institution infused with independent moral value. Stateville was Joseph Ragen’s answer to Walden Two. Every person and every object had its place. From the award-winning gardens to the clocklike regularity of the movement of prisoners in precise formations from assignment to assignment, the prison reflected its warden’s zeal for order and harmony. Indeed, Ragen and the organization’s elite looked on the prison as morally superior to the outside society with its petty politics and debilitating corruption.

  The single most important barrier to the triumph of Ragen’s system of personal dominance was the intrusion of the partisan political system. With respect to the staff this meant that the civil service and a career-oriented professional elite had to prevail over the spoils systems. With respect to the inmates, favoritism based upon outside status or attachments had to be replaced by a status system completely articulated with the closed world of the prison.

  Ragen resigned his position as did all his top assistants in 1941, when a Republican (Dwight Greene) won the governorship.10 But in 1942 the sensational Toughy-Banghart-Darlak escape mobilized public opinion and the press to call for the resignation of the new warden, E. M. Stubblefield. Ragen’s subsequent return under a Republican administration marked a transition in the history of Illinois prisons. A public organization which heretofore existed primarily as a tool of the political party in power was beginning to emerge as an apolitical pre-bureaucratic organization which carried on for the material and moral benefit of a controlling elite.

  One of the conditions Ragen imposed upon Governor Greene upon reassuming the wardenship in 1942 was that political influence on hiring and promotions would have to cease. With each succeeding administration, Ragen renewed this demand and tightened his control. While nominally a Democrat, he tried to establish a politically independent position. Although largely successful, he was never completely able to eliminate all politics from the prison. The position of superintendent of industries, for example, was a political appointment until Ragen put one of his own people in the position in 1957. Ragen acquiesced in hiring guards sent to him by politicians. But, except during the Great Depression and a few periods of recession, guard positions were going begging and political influence was not needed. This was particularly true for southern Illinoisans, those most likely to be recommended by politicians. What Ragen did ensure from the beginning was that, once hired, no one would be forced to resign because of a change in political control in Springfield.

  During the next twenty years Ragen neutralized Illinois’s partisan political structure by building an independent basis of support, in part through calculated public relations. Serving under Republicans and Democrats alike, he became independent of political control much as J. Edgar Hoover did at the FBI. Like Hoover, Ragen, in the eyes of the public and of his staff, came to embody the values of his organization.

  State legislators were invited to the prison regularly for tours and banquets. The Stateville “chicken fry” constituted an institution in Illinois politics. This picnic, served by inmates at the minimum security farm, was regularly attended by 800–1,000 people drawn from all over the state. The annual American Legion banquet and show at Stateville was consistently attended by more than 1,000 legionnaires.

  More important, Ragen satisfied the legislature by military discipline, few escapes, no riots, and by turning back part of his budget each year. The press, which was early critical of Ragen, soon was impressed by his relentless discipline. Over the course of the next twenty-five years Ragen cemented his relationship with the press into a virtual alliance. The support which the conservative Chicago papers (especially the Tribune) gave to the tough law-and-order warden effectively blunted whatever infrequent criticism might come from the ranks of academic specialists and reformers.

  Perhaps the most poignant illustration of the articulation between press and prison is the ten-part series on Ragen and Stateville published by the Chicago Tribune in July 1955 and subsequently reprinted as a pamphlet by the John Howard Association (a comment on the success of Ragen’s cooptation of that “prison reform organization”). The Tribune introduced this series with accolades for Ragen even at a time when reformers, including many liberal prison officials around the country, identified “Ragenism” with repression.

  The remarkable story of Joseph P. Ragen and the two penitentiaries he runs—Stateville and Joliet—will be told in a series of articles starting in tomorrow’s Sunday Tribune. Ragen is known as the outstanding prison administrator in the United States. Stateville and Joliet, among the worst penitentiaries in the country when he took charge twenty years ago, have become models for the nation. The governors of a dozen other states have summoned him to make surveys and recommendations for reorganizing their prisons.

  Ragen’s relationship with the conservative Chicago press was rooted in compatible social and moral philosophies, but was also cultivated by public relations. Scrupulously honest with respect to private gain from his public trust, Ragen was lavish in the use of public funds to embellish the reputation of the institution which he administered. (One is tempted to conclude that Ragen saw this as a moral obligation.) Favorite reporters were often given private tours and sumptuous dinners at Stateville. The Ragens were frequent and extravagant hosts in their suite in the administration building.

  Of the reporters, Gladys Erickson of the Tribune and Charles Finstone of the American (married to each other) were most closely allied to Ragen. The former was allowed free access to the prison (extraordinary at the time for a woman), and was rewarded for her early support of Ragen by being given the scoop on the only escape, as well as some exclusive interviews, and later by being chosen to write the warden’s biography.11 Finstone collaborated with Ragen on an 800-page manual on how to administer “the world’s toughest prison” published toward the end of Ragen’s career.12

  Ragen distrusted “outsiders,” by whom he meant anyone who did not work directly for him. He neutralized those outsiders who worked in one capacity or another at or around the prison by narrowly circumscribing their roles or by completely coopting t
hem. His assistant wardens had, of course, risen through the ranks. Anyone who worked in the “back” wore a uniform. His superintendent of education, one of a handful of college-educated employees, was made to serve an apprenticeship as a guard for six months before assuming his responsibilities. Ragen did not share authority with any subordinates, least of all with “civilians.” The decision-making structure revolved around the morning captains’ meeting attended by three or four captains and two assistant wardens. After Ragen had been briefed, he conducted, accompanied by his two boxer dogs, his personal inspection of Stateville and the other Joliet prisons.

  Professionals in the Division of the Criminologist were neutralized through administrative segmentation and cooptation. Upon commitment, inmates spent six weeks at the Joliet Reception and Diagnostic Depot, where they were given batteries of psychological and sociological tests, presumably so that they could be “classified” and their prison careers rationally planned. Recommendations were then made as to the best “program” for the inmate. This system was pointed to all over the country as a progressive reform in the treatment and classification of offenders. Even Ragen boasted of its operation.13 In practice, Stateville disregarded the sociologists’ and psychologists’ recommendations and substituted its own system of classifying inmates, which served to maximize control and conformity. “Fish” (newly committed inmates) were assigned to the most arduous assignment, the coal pile or the rock quarry. By conformity to rules and regulations and by diligent work they might rise to a better job. The threat of demotion likewise served to reinforce conformity on the good jobs.

  State criminologist Roy Barrick, whose incumbency almost precisely paralleled that of Ragen (1942–61), was in complete agreement with Warden Ragen about the desirability of limiting the criminologist to an advisory role.

  The criminologist and his staff are not delegated with administrative responsibilities in the prisons. They do not have to do with the custody, discipline, treatment, or parole of prisoners. An advisory relationship is maintained with the Director, the Superintendent of Prisons, the Attorney General, the Parole and Pardon Board, and the Wardens and their staffs. Recommendations are offered as to the segregation, assignments, training, and treatment of inmates for the consideration of prison officials, but the Criminologist and his staff do not execute their recommendations, since this is an administrative matter. Experience has demonstrated that an advisory relationship is a sound principle upon which to conduct the professional program, for it gives emphasis to the educational objectives of classification.14

  The only “outsiders” with legitimate access to the prison were the chaplains, doctors, and the two sociologist-actuaries employed by the Parole Board. Hans W. Mattick, one of the sociologist-actuaries who worked at Stateville in the early fifties (Daniel Glaser was the other) recalls that during the entire three years of his employment there, he was “shaken down” (searched) at the gate house every day and made to pass through the electric eye and the gate designated for visitors. By way of contrast, any new guard after a week’s indoctrination was passed through the employee’s gate on the other side, without an electric eye and with only a cursory visual inspection by the gatekeeper.

  The “shakedown” invariably included the requirement that Mattick remove his outer sport coat and empty his briefcase. He was then “patted down,” the contents of his brief case were inspected, and a thorough search of the pockets and linings of his sport coat was conducted.15 On several occasions Mattick learned that his office itself was “shaken down” and that the officers conducting the search strenuously objected when they found the files and desk locked. When Mattick told Ragen that the records of the office were the property of the Parole Board and the board’s authorization was required before the shakedown squad would be permitted to search the desks and files, Ragen was “displeased.” In such an atmosphere of distrust and disapproval, Mattick reports that he was constantly concerned with being “set up” by having contraband “planted” in his office or briefcase or on his person by the agents of Ragen. The painstaking care with which he documented the date and source of every piece of paper he handled and carried into or out of Stateville testifies to the hostile climate under which such “outsiders” worked. Distrust engendered distrust and few professionals could tolerate more than a year or two in the Office of the Sociologist-Actuary at Stateville. Mattick lasted three years before he left to become the assistant warden of the Cook County Jail.16

  Until Ragen’s departure in 1961, there was almost no interaction between outside groups concerned about prison conditions and Stateville. Ragen turned down a federal grant in 1956 for guard training because he did not want anyone inside the prison who did not work for him. University people were most certainly not welcome other than to make an occasional tour or infrequent survey. The John Howard Association, under weak leadership, was allowed infrequent access to the prison in exchange for regular support of Ragen policies. The cordiality of Ragen’s relationship with the John Howard Association was revealed in a May 1955 prison bulletin wherein Ragen recalled “the efforts John Howard has made on behalf of inmates” and asked for blood donations for the ailing president of that organization. The TV College, started in 1956 in cooperation with a nearby junior college, necessarily brought a small number of teachers to the prison but only when it was necessary to administer examinations. The only outside group consistently given the “privilege” of coming inside with a program for the convicts was Alcoholics Anonymous, itself headed by a Stateville sergeant designated by Ragen.

  Ragen’s Stateville was an autonomous institution accountable neither to other public agencies nor to the public at large.17 Although the Joliet prisons which Ragen administered were nominally under the control of the Department of Public Safety (organized in 1941), in reality Ragen had absolute autonomy in directing every detail of the Stateville routine. The director of public safety was Ragen’s boss in name only. This position remained a political plum until Ragen himself took the job in 1961, and the directors rarely, if ever, even visited Stateville. When they did, it was merely a social occasion.

  Nor was Ragen accountable for his actions before the courts. His only defeat in this area occurred shortly after he returned to Stateville in 1942. Judge Barnes of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Illinois admonished Ragen in open court that he could not interfere with prisoners who wanted to send habeas corpus petitions to the federal courts “even if they are written on toilet paper.”18 Other than this single decision, Ragen never lost an important case before the courts, which granted the broadest discretion to prison administration.

  Where previously those inmates skilled in drawing up habeas corpus petitions served as jailhouse lawyers for hundreds of clients within the prison, upon assuming the position of Stateville warden Ragen announced that no inmate could aid in the preparation of another’s legal work and subsequently threw several of the leading “lawyers” into segregation. Inmates were almost completely shut off from the courts. Records are not available for the number of lawsuits filed against the Stateville administration prior to 1954, but between 1954 and 1961 only twenty-one law suits were filed against Ragen as warden of Stateville and only four were ever carried to the point of a written court decision (see table 3). Of these four, three were pro se actions indicating the lack of outside legal help then available to inmate writ writers. The only suit with outside legal assistance was brought in 1949 by several former jailhouse lawyers complaining of wide abuses throughout the administration of the prison.19 In affirming the lower court’s dismissal of the inmates’ action, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that “the government of the United States is not concerned with, nor has it power to control or regulate the internal discipline of penal institutions of its constituent states.” In the three later decisions complaining of brutality,20 interference with the mails,21 and destruction of property,22 the federal courts ruled against the inmates and reiterated their commitment to maintainin
g a “hands off” approach to matters of penal administration.

  By neutralizing the outside forces that threatened interference in internal administration, Ragen was free to construct an authoritarian system encompassing both staff and inmates. While to the outsider Stateville appeared to be a smooth-running paramilitary organization which ran according to the comprehensive system of rules and regulations, the insider experienced a highly authoritarian system where informal influence was rooted in ethnic ties, religious affiliations, and particularistic relationships. There was constant competition to gain greater proximity to the charismatic leader. Paralleling the formal system of comprehensive rules, regulations, and sanctions was an informal system resting upon gossip, rumor, friendship, backbiting, and informing.

  The captains maintained fiefdoms held together by personal loyalties and commitments. The rivalry among the captains for Ragen’s approval spilled over to the lieutenants, who, like the captains, cultivated informers among the inmates in the intense competition to supply more extensive and more detailed information up the chain of command. The relentless pursuit of information was the means by which even potential threats to the system could be squelched. The goal was always to be one step ahead of the inmates, thereby perpetuating the myth of the administration’s omniscience. Informers were the backbone of the system. Ragen’s most oft-quoted maxim was, “Whenever you see three inmates standing together, two of them are mine.”