The second key figure from the black community to have an impact on Stateville is Peggy Smith Martin, a one-term legislator in the Illinois House from the Woodlawn district of Chicago. After her inauguration as a legislator in January 1973, Martin seemed to take over the role that Mason had played during the previous two years.
Dorothy Mason and Ma Houston had already told Martin about the prison (gang) leadership, and she proceeded to contact them immediately upon entering the prison. She saw her role as providing a communication conduit between the rival gangs. She claims also to have attempted to make them more politically aware. “I think that around me I brought a great deal of communication among the organizations, including the Muslims and Black Panthers. We all met in a single room—they realized they needed to cooperate rather than be destroyed.”54
Martin was more difficult to neutralize since there was no danger of her being expelled and excluded from the prison. In addition she was appointed to the Governor’s Visiting Committee, which strengthened the legitimacy of her presence. Antipathy toward Representative Martin reached a peak in the late fall 1974, when she brought news columnist Barbara Reynolds to the prison as her “assistant.” The result was a Chicago Today article (“Fear Rules Stateville a Year after the Riot”) which was bitterly critical of the administration and the lack of rehabilitative programs.55 During this period, Martin was having difficulties with the Cook County Board of Elections (ultimately her name was kept off the November ballot). A circular urging prisoners to support her campaign by canvassing their families and friends was distributed by unknown means throughout the prison.
On 10 January 1975, after two years in office, Peggy Smith Martin released her findings on the state of the Illinois prisons. In an introduction she wrote: “Illinois’ prisons fester with racism; resident development and rehabilitation in the true sense of the word are the exception; extreme disciplinary action was discovered; punishment was found to be more emphasized than return to the community.”56 The report was generally critical of the administration and the guard staff. Martin charged that the administration lacked “meaningful and realistic” goals and “that there are no departmental goals, written and mutually agreed upon; [instead there are] a hodge-podge of thousands of differing and often conflicting personal objectives operative in wardens, guards, staff and residents.”
With respect to the guards, Peggy Smith Martin explained that she found great cooperation among some [of the young black] guards and absolute intransigence among others [the rural whites].57
Illinois is lucky to have hundreds of fine guards and front-line staff. I hope these men and women read this report. . . .
Unfortunately I have also met a large number of not-so-fine front-line personnel. I have dealt with people who are obviously unqualified and unfit to work with inmates. I have met discourteous and uncouth staff; I have been on the receiving end of hate stares, lies, and intentional inconveniences. I have been given the run around and ignored on numerous occasions.
After the newspaper article and the release of the report there was extreme emotional reaction toward Martin at Stateville. In the waning weeks of her term of office in January 1975, the warden and top staff refused her the favors (lunch, pitchers of juice, etc.) or the deference to which she had been accustomed at the prison as a legislator.
The only current group58 with regular contact at the prison is the Citizens Visiting Committee, which was formed under the persistent efforts of the Illinois Prison and Jail Project, a committee of the Alliance to End Repression.59
The Citizens Visiting Committee was formed by nominations made by dozens of community groups. The composition of the visiting committee was chosen by the chairman of the Adult Advisory Board of the Illinois Department of Corrections (then Norval Morris) and representatives of the Urban League, the League of Women Voters, Casa Central, and the Illinois Congress of Ex-offenders. A full-time employee of the Illinois Prison and Jail Project was appointed chairman of the committee which was ultimately composed of prominent establishment figures like the Reverend Victor Obenhaus of the Chicago Theological Seminary as well as self-avowed radicals. The committee began visiting each of the “northern” prisons in May 1974 and issued monthly reports. Mostly they criticized cases of organizational mismanagement, such as improper handling of food, dirty cell houses, and improper handling of inmate medical problems, and asked why the administration had seemingly failed to implement its own rules and policy.
As with the other groups and individuals discussed here, the administration reacted defensively to the Citizens Visiting Committee. The following written report of the committee’s 7 March 1975 visit to Stateville, and the bitter official response by the assistant warden, which once again indicates the strong tendency toward cynicism even among reformers on the staff, evidence the hostility.
Counselors now have their offices in the cellhouse in cells converted for that purpose, providing inmates greater accessibility to counseling services. However, as one inmate remarked, “There are so many guys with serious problems the counselors just can’t get around to them.” Another man observed that some of the counselors are afraid of the inmates.
The cellhouse appeared cleaner than on previous visits, but there was a heavy odor of perspiration in the air, and many men complained that they had not had a shower in two weeks. Regulations called for clean bed linen to be provided for each week, but CVC noted many cells without any sheets and others with very dirty sheets. Some inmates claim that if they turn their sheets in to the prison laundry, they don’t get them back, a situation the Warden said he would look into.
New disciplinary procedures calling for minor infractions to be handled in the cellhouse by a Program Team with more serious violations referred to the Institutional Adjustment Committee, have been operative in Stateville since the middle of January, 1975. The committee was somewhat disappointed to hear the same complaints from men in segregation charging that they were being continued in segregation status due to an accumulation of petty tickets, or had been placed in segregation for a non-violent infraction such as calling an officer a name. Warden Brierton stated that a constant review was being conducted to ensure that inmates were not receiving “harassment” tickets.
Mr. Brierton spoke with some enthusiasm about the decorating design and color scheme planned in the repainting of B House. Nothing can make B House a pleasant place to be, but Mr. Brierton feels that redoing the drab interior with bright colors provides a more livable environment for the residents housed there. The committee agrees, looks toward the time when official thinking and public consciousness will demand that such buildings be razed and more humane solutions be found to cope with antisocial behavior.
And the assistant warden’s reply:
There is a special sort of tension that develops when one has to respond to a report that is essentially inane in its content. The Committee fails to provide a coherent and relevant perspective regarding administrative operation of the Stateville Correctional Center. They prefer to discuss procedure without providing a perspective as to where particular procedures fit into the overall operation of the institution. They prefer to rely on the statement of a few inmates who they apparently treat as spokesmen for all the residents at the Stateville Correctional Center. An example is that of counselling; they talk about greater accessibility, then relying on the statement of one inmate, they conclude that counsellors are afraid of inmates or they just don’t get around. Such statements do not provide a total picture of the counselling activities and certainly can mislead readers of their reports.
We find pathos when they refer to the operation of the “B” House Segregation Unit. They fail to understand that behavior in segregation is a worthwhile indicator to be used in evaluating a man’s return to general population. I take issue with the statement that there are harassment tickets. I don’t agree with their pathos that nothing can be done to change “B” House. Such thinking is reminiscent of the late 60s and early 70s when pe
ople decried that large maximum security institutions would have to be razed. They fail to understand that construction of prisons is expensive and that we have no alternative but to improve the conditions of our present maximum securities. Is the CVC prepared to donate millions of dollars to build new institutions? Perhaps my pathos is showing, but I doubt it.
The Press
Stateville’s current warden, unlike Ragen, does not regard the press as a potential ally. There is little attempt to draw the press’s attention to positive achievements at Stateville. The basic feeling is that the more invisible the prison is, the better.60 Most of the staff have defined the press as an adversary. This feeling has led to bitterness against the Springfield administrations of both Bensinger and Sielaff, which declared an open relationship with the press.61
The newspapers themselves have become more professionalized and bureaucratized. News stories are less colored by the views of the publisher. On the other hand, the media is still dependent upon the top administrative officials for most of their prison news.62 Aside from a very few special features on the prison, there has been little media coverage of Stateville except for disturbances, the appointment of new wardens, and the termination of the United States Army’s Malaria Project, which had been conducting research at Stateville since World War II.
The large Chicago dailies assign no regular reporters to cover the prisons and rarely report prison news. The Chicago Defender, a major black Chicago newspaper, gives greater and more critical attention to the prison. Lu Palmer, a black news commentator who wrote first for the Daily News and then for his own newspaper, the Black Express, as well as anchoring a radio program on WVON, has probably been the most significant media critic of the prison in recent years. During the summer of 1972, Palmer produced a column or radio program almost daily on the “inhumane and racist conditions at Stateville.”
The radical press was, of course, barred from Stateville. To get subscriptions to the inmates numerous court battles had to be fought. The most popular radical papers are Rising up Angry, Up against the Bench, and On Ice.63 Whether the inmates subscribe to them because the administration has tried to keep them out or because of a considerable radical sympathy—or both—is unclear.
Every time that censorship of the underground press has become a point of dispute, the administration has lost. The administrative staff cannot understand the rationale behind the courts’ approval of militant literature (including white racist hate literature), since the literature is believed to heighten tensions in what they regard as an already volatile prison situation. The most important dispute to date over radical literature involves two issues of On Ice published by the Illinois Congress of Ex-offenders, an affiliate of Chicago Connections. The lead article in volume 3, number 2 (undated), issued shortly after inmates seized cell house B (fall 1973), was entitled “Stateville Penitentiary—Incubation of Disease.” It began:
To those of us on the outside who are familiar with the oppressive environment of Stateville Penitentiary and with the brutality which occurs within its walls, the uprising of September 6th was not a surprise. We were continuously amazed throughout the summer at the patience and endurance of the men inside. In this series of articles, we attempt to show the bases for our amazement and our perspective.
The issue went on to portray the various “inhumane conditions” at Stateville—no showers, dirty food, cold cell houses, etc. The Cannon administration decided to stop the issue from being distributed, but it did not follow the clear censorship procedure that had been prescribed by consent decree in Judge Frank McGarr’s federal courtroom. When the issue was excluded summarily, without written notice to the inmates and without a written decision having been made by the literary committee, On Ice went back to court to ask for a citation of contempt. Almost a year later, a federal court ordered Stateville to distribute the paper to the prisoners and to reimburse Chicago Connections for its mailing costs, and withheld a decision on whether to hold Sielaff, Brierton, Cannon, and several lesser administrators in contempt and liable to jail sentences. Cannon was removed from office shortly after the hearing.
Conclusion
The transformation of the prison into a rational-legal bureaucracy has not proceeded without setbacks and even now is not complete. Such a transformation was incompatible with the tenets of the authoritarian regime. It was also incompatible with the human relations model of management that characterized the Twomey and Cannon administrations. Brierton has openly embraced the rational-legal bureaucratic model and has taken the initiative in its detailed articulation.
The reforms mandated by the courts can only be implemented by well-run organizations. Even for mature and efficient bureaucracies the costs of complying with court orders may be high. Due process procedures, hearings, and appeals place considerable strain on administrative resources and may impair efficient management.
We need to reemphasize that the courts have raised the expectations of the inmates about the standards of treatment to which they are entitled. The very proliferation of inmate lawsuits is to be explained in terms of higher expectations as well as by liberalized procedures. Whether rational administration and responsive grievance mechanisms will be sufficient to meet the press of inmate demands is a serious issue to be faced in the future.
The most significant outside organizations with respect to shaping the institution’s goals are the panoply of public agencies intersecting with the prison. ILEC to some degree has its independent correctional program built around the “justice model” propounded by David Fogel.64 The “justice model” calls for a far greater redefinition of authority relationships and organizational roles than does the “corporate model” adhered to by David Brierton. To date tension has been avoided by agreement on the need to sponsor programs for the physical reconstruction of Stateville and for the addition of much security technology. Whether in the future strains in the relationship will develop is a matter to watch closely.
There are already signs of strain between the affirmative action office and the prison. Much objected to are the special recruitment drives in the inner city. There is also disgruntlement among whites and blacks over race being considered an issue in promotions. The Affirmative Action office continues to raise questions about hiring decisions and especially about the high percentages of black guards who are discharged.
The outside private-interest groups are less significant in determining organizational goals and behavior than is apparent from the rhetoric of administrators. It is doubtful whether these private interest groups have had any direct impact at all on policy making. They do, however, affect staff morale, which is sensitive to what seems to be pervasive public sympathy for the prisoner. The importance of what is perceived to be the prevailing public opinion should not be discounted.
Nor does the press appear to have an important impact on policy formation. During the September 1974 B house takeover, the Chicago Tribune quoted a Stateville guard as blaming a television special on Stateville for triggering the riot. But the accusation hardly seems justified. The few TV news spots on Stateville have tended to be objective and dispassionate. Certainly the radical press has contributed to politicizing the population, but it is difficult to assess how deep or widely disseminated is its influence.
6
Penetration of the Gangs
The gang leaders have absolute control. T. could just have told his men to tear it down and they would—a lot of these guys would die for their gang—dying doesn’t mean anything to them. They’d rather die than let it be said that they wouldn’t go all the way.
Fifty-year-old black inmate (Stateville 1972)
The dominance of four Chicago street gangs at Stateville since 1969 must be related to the rise of professional administration and to the intrusion of the courts. The abandonment of the “hands off” doctrine exposed an authoritarian regime to outside accountability, limited the institution’s recourse to coercive sanctions and provided the inmates with a legitimate mean
s of expression with which to challenge the system of social control. The rise of professional administration, informed by the rehabilitative ideal and the human relations model of management, led to intrastaff conflict, a decline in the morale of the guard force, and ultimately to the deterioration of the organization’s capacity to meet basic control and maintenance goals. It was only in the context of this organizational crisis that the gangs were able to organize, recruit, and achieve dominance.
The Politicization of Chicago Street Gangs
Three black gangs—the Blackstone Rangers (who later renamed themselves the Black P Stone Nation), the Devil’s Disciples (sometimes referred to as the Black Gangster Disciple Nation) and the Conservative Vice Lords—have been given extensive attention by the media and by scholars.1 The Latin Kings, while less well known nationally, seem to have followed a somewhat similar pattern of growth and development. Each of the four gangs is territorially based in Chicago’s slum districts, and, because of their great size, the relatively high age of their leaders, and their imperialistic annexation of smaller gangs they might aptly be termed “supergangs.”2
Not only are the supergangs larger and more violent than their predecessors of the past several decades but their location at the intersection of the civil rights movement, the youth movement, and a reconstructed relationship between the federal government and grassroots society suggests a divergence from the traditional street gang.3 Supporters of these gangs have interpreted their development as an evolution toward political and social consciousness.4 The police and other critics have defined the gangs’ flirtations with politics, community action, and minority movements as a thin facade, and have labeled those who have accepted the gangs as legitimate community organizations naive do-gooders.5
Stateville- the Penitentiary in Mass Society Page 17
