There was immediate consternation among the top custodial staff. Frequent conflicts occurred when guards tried to stop the leaders or interrupt their activities. Custody people complained that the administration had “given (the prison) away.” The open pipeline to Stampar helped to keep the ABLE members functioning in light of this widespread hostility. Meetings were carried on by the executive committee and by the entire membership without supervision. (I attended several of these meetings in my capacity as researcher when it seemed to the leaders that I might be useful to them.)
Little headway was made by the inmate leaders in winning any concrete concessions from the administration, although ABLE members constantly complained to administrators that they needed some tangible successes to maintain their credibility with their memberships. As long as the administration was at least willing to recognize these leaders and, by the special details, give them certain deference, including the right to intervene for their people, the leaders strove to develop a reform agenda and to prevent a riot. Almost all informants, both staff and inmates, attribute to the activities of the gang leaders the absence of a riot at Stateville during 1972.
Superintendent Revis disbanded ABLE after meeting with them once in July. During the meeting (at which I was present) he asked the leaders whom they represented, and each gave his gang affiliations. Revis further demanded to know what they had accomplished. The ABLE members responded that their dearth of accomplishments merely reflected the administration’s bad faith. The baseball bat incident (see p. 164) which occurred soon thereafter enabled Revis to call a general lockup. ABLE never again was formally recognized, although it has been kept alive by the sporadic and informal activity of the gang leadership and outsiders.
The gangs at Stateville have not grown weaker since 1972. Indeed, the yard incident of 29 April 1973, the B house takeover of 6 September 1974, and the coordinated commissary boycott of July 1974 indicate that the gangs remain a powerful force. What has changed, however, is the relationship between the formal organization and the gangs.
There is far less interaction between the administration and the gang leaders. This is due partly to the fact that the staff has more control of the prison now than it did in 1972. Also, there is a profound cynicism about the advisability of working with the gangs, particularly in light of the collapse of that policy at Pontiac.36 In addition, the parole or transfer of several of the old cons who began ABLE has disrupted the gang leaders’ conduit to the administration. A lessening of reform pressure from the outside has taken away much of the public relations value of an inmate council. To be sure, civilian program heads still have to share their power with the gang leaders, and outside reformers continue to articulate with them, but one senses that this too will change as the Brierton administration becomes stronger yet and the gangs turn their attention away from political and reform issues to developing the rackets within the prison.
Conclusion
Between 1970 and 1975 a crisis in control at Stateville was manifested by the numbers of staff and inmates who were attacked and by numerous instances of collective rebellion. The first guard in thirty years was killed; the first hostages were taken since the 1920s; the first escapes occurred since the 1940s.
The crisis was precipitated by the presence of four supergangs behind the walls, but the underlying cause was the failure of the reform regime to find a new equilibrium to replace the authoritarian regime of personal dominance. The human relations model of management had no effective strategy for attenuating the stresses of maximum security incarceration. When the stresses threatened to overwhelm the organization Warden Twomey, Superintendent Stampar, Assistant Warden Meyer, and Director Bensinger fell back upon the old solutions; general lockup and the Special Program Unit.
The gangs entered Stateville after 1969 having experienced a remarkable period of development on the streets of Chicago. What distinguished these gangs from their predecessors was the way in which they had been redefined as legitimate grassroots community structures by representatives of the larger society’s institutional center. Having been so defined, the gangs came to see themselves as alternatives to religious, political, economic, and social structures.
But the accommodation between the gangs and central political institutions was strained and short-lived. Ultimately, the gangs were repressed through a shift in law enforcement resources and priorities. They were sent to prison en masse after 1969. They brought to the state prisons heightened expectations about the types of demands that could be made on central institutions, the kinds of deference that their leaders could expect to receive as community spokesmen, and a sense of defiance toward institutions of social control.
Inside Stateville the gangs found that the lack of staff control made easier their recruitment of new membership. As on the street they moved to take over the rackets as well as to achieve a voice in the decision-making process. They saw nothing inconsistent about exploiting both legitimate and illegitimate opportunities.
At the lower and intermediate staff levels accommodations had to be reached with the gang leaders. In exchange for their cooperation in keeping things cool, they were shown deference and given some informal voice in lower-level decision-making. For a time this formed the basis for maintaining order at the prison. Project ABLE represented a serious, if vacillating, attempt to establish a new equilibrium by sharing authority with the charismatic gang leaders. But cooperation with the gangs was an unstable strategy. First, it was anathema to the old Ragenites and intensified their alienation. Second, the more established the gangs became, the more precarious became the life of non-gang members, especially whites. Third, there was no assurance that the gangs would not turn against one another.
By 1975 Stateville seemed to have weathered the worst of the crisis in control. Many of the top gang leaders had been paroled. More important, the formal organization was reasserting its authority through the guard union and through the security-conscious administration of Warden Brierton.
7
Transition of the Guard Force
I was back there on the job when it broke out. I was frightened. I think every officer out there was frightened because we had no weapons. The tower officers—they didn’t know exactly what to do. They were firing warning shots. You couldn’t see clearly what they were doing, so you didn’t know whether to duck, run or stand still—and then you look at the inmates and they are coming with sticks, baseball bats, iron bars and all this stuff. Any man who says he wasn’t afraid, I’ve have to call him a liar.
Middle-aged white guard, Stateville Penitentiary, 1974
Despite serious strains in the organization, the Stateville staff until 1970 was characterized by racial and ethnic homogeneity, intense personal loyalty to the institution and to the warden, complete submission of the rank and file to the authority of the captains, and a pervasive belief in Stateville’s mission to control the toughest prison population in the state. After 1970 three developments had the effect of transforming the social organization of the staff: the introduction of the reform administration and the new “professional” roles, the advent of public employee unionism, and the much increased racial integration of the staff.
The Reform Movement and Social Organization
Even before Twomey took office, the tenor of the new Bensinger administration’s program appeared to the guards to be “inmate-oriented.” Among other changes, the first six months of 1970 brought two outgoing letters a week for each inmate, Sunday visiting, and $50.00 gate money. On 14 July 1970, Warden Pate attempted to soften a departmental bulletin on corporal punishment with the following remark: “The attached directive was received from Springfield today. I wish to point out that this is not something new to us. . . . Rule 75 of the Employees’ Rules and Regulations has been in effect for a long period of time.” But the thrust and tone of the directive were clear.
Corporal Punishment—Corporal punishment or mistreatment of individuals, under the custody and control of the Adult
Division of the Department of Corrections, in any of its institutions or facilities or those on parole is strictly prohibited.
Corporal punishment or mistreatment is defined as . . . the striking, pushing, or the shoving of an individual for the purpose of causing physical pain or discomfort; improper use of chemicals in any of its forms; violence of any nature; use of profane or abusive language, or any other measures which may be injurious or which may tend to degrade the individual.
Among themselves, guards spoke sarcastically about now having to be careful “not to verbally abuse the inmate.”
Almost universally, the guards felt that the new warden and director were “permissive” and “for the inmate.” For the next five years it was a constant complaint that guards had “no support” and “no backing.” The captains’ meetings were discontinued entirely. Communication between the guards and the new civilian administration became intermittent and strained. That the warden was infrequently in the yard was interpreted as further proof of his lack of concern. Stateville guards had come to expect the prison to be directed by a leader with whom they could personally identify. This was central to the military model according to which the staff had been trained.
Rumors that Twomey was a long-haired radical from Berkeley who was going to fire many of the staff were scarcely allayed when the new warden delivered to the inmates his notorious “I am here to serve you” address, and when he gave out information to inmates over his prison radio program (before the guards were informed) about new liberalized commissary policies. Criticism mounted when he walked through the prison chatting with inmates and failed to acknowledge the officers. Guards today recall a dramatic episode in the inmate dining room in Twomey’s first months: the new warden dumped on the ground several trays of melons that were on the line to be served to the inmates, proclaiming them “unfit for human consumption.”
The reform movement which catapulted “treatment-oriented,” “correctional” people like John Twomey and Joe Cannon into wardenships carried an injunction to morally uplift the inmate and to provide him with services. There was a theme of concern about “treating inmates like men” and eliminating the “dehumanizing” conditions of penal confinement. One of Twomey’s earliest orders (never fully implemented) was that inmates be called to their visits by name rather than by their institutional number.
On 28 October 1970, only seven weeks after becoming warden, Twomey announced his new policy eliminating the line officer’s authority to have an inmate “walked” from his assignment. This reversal of a deeply rooted, traditional, and emotionally laden Stateville procedure would have met resistance under any conditions, but the change came at a time when the line officers’ authority had become highly problematic. The gangs had recently surfaced, sporting insignias, emblems, tattoos, and stylized salutes. Gang members were defying orders, refusing to give officers their names and numbers, and grouping together in collective defiance. Inmates no longer traveled in orderly lines; nor would they go to their own cells upon entering the cell house. For the first time in Stateville’s history, a “safekeeping” tier was designated for those inmates who were afraid to go out on the yard and who preferred to serve their sentences without ever leaving their cells.
Under the new warden, guards flocked to join the union. A job action (partial strike) was called when Twomey refused to rescind his order on the “walks.” Guards refused to unlock the cell houses and capitulated only when one of the cell house keepers gave in. But soon thereafter, Twomey did rescind the order and replaced it with a compromise whereby lieutenants were required to remove an inmate from an assignment at an officer’s request but did not necessarily have to take him to isolation (see chapter 4).
As the gangs grew stronger and the administration became more yielding, guards experienced pervasive fear on the job. More guards were injured in 1972 than in any other year in the history of the prison. Nor has fear abated. It was on 10 January 1973 that James Zeiger was fatally stabbed and then thrown off the highest tier in B house to the cement floor forty feet below. On 6 September 1973 ten hostages were taken in cell house B. A survey of former guards who resigned from Stateville between 1 July 1973 and 30 June 1974 found that more than 50 percent cited “lack of safety” as their reason for quitting.1
While Bensinger and Twomey continued to articulate a philosophy of reform and rehabilitation in the face of escalating violence and loss of control, the guards became more and more demoralized and alienated. One consequence was that the guards themselves came to be seen by the administration and by the “outside” as the crucial impediment to the implementation of reform. A John Howard report issued early in Twomey’s administration, and given wide publicity by the media, concluded that “some prison guards at Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet have provoked incidents with prisoners to discredit relaxation of prison regulations.”2
This “fifth column theory” was popularly held throughout the Twomey years and was brought up time and again in press interviews with Warden Cannon. Twomey’s own critical perception of guards was illuminated in his Five Year Plan for the Adult Division, written shortly before he became warden: “Yet an honest appraisal of the nation’s “war on crime” priorities makes it clear that our essential response has been to pour virtually all available resources into prevention and enforcement activities, while virtually ignoring the gross deficiencies in our correctional institutions, the most glaring of which is the substandard quality and inferior training of the correctional officer” (my emphasis). Having been socialized into a custody versus treatment definition of the situation at Menard, Twomey continued to reinforce that definition, while at the same time verbally repudiating it. Staff was quick to point out that Twomey even had separate parties for treatment and custody.
Warden Twomey, and Warden Cannon after him, seemed to endorse the 1967 President’s Commission’s recommendation for a “collaborative model” of prison. According to that model, the role of the guard had to be transformed from turnkey and disciplinarian to counselor and agent of rehabilitation.3
To the primary goal of preventing escapes, riots, and predatory behavior, rehabilitation was added. That these primary and secondary goals are fundamentally incompatible has been the subject of considerable scholarly comment.4 It is not surprising that contradictory organizational goals have caused conflict in such organizational micro-units as the guard role. Under the role prescriptions dictated by the rehabilitative ideal, the guard is to relax and to act spontaneously. Inmates are to be “understood,” not blamed, and formal disciplinary mechanisms should be triggered as infrequently as possible. These are vague directives, but no more precise rules concerning the “how” of rehabilitation can be formulated since the essence of rehabilitation work, as practiced by “professionals,” lies in treating each individual as unique according to professional judgment, which belies adherence to hard and fast rules.5 What is allowed one prisoner may be denied another depending on evaluation of individual needs.
Where guards have attempted to follow these vague role prescriptions, they have often met with frustration. Inmates themselves believe that differential treatment based on individual needs requires professional competence. While competency and proficiency may be imputed to psychologists and social workers based on academic credentials, inmates are quick to point out that they will grant no such discretionary authority to “screws.” The very essence of the professional’s authority lies in his claim to charisma while the guard’s only basis for authority is his rank within the caste system.
The rehabilitative ideal has no clear directives for the administration of a large-scale people-processing institution. In order to carry out primary tasks and to manage large numbers of men and materials, bureaucratic organization and impersonal treatment are necessary. Furthermore, to distinguish between inmates on the basis of psychological needs leaves the nonprofessional open to charges of gross bias, discrimination, and injustice.6
Treatment personnel in their adminis
trative capacities are likely to hold guards responsible for preventing escapes and riots, ensuring order, and maintaining the prison as a smoothly functioning institution. The consequence of these contradictory demands on the guard is evidenced by the extremely high rates of staff turnover.
The old-timers look back nostalgically to the “old days” when they knew what their job entailed and how they would be evaluated.7 One told me that “during Ragen’s days you knew every day what you were supposed to do and now you are in a position where there are too many supervisors and too many changing rules. First one will come and tell you it’s got to be done this way and then somebody else comes along and says to do something different. In the old days we knew what our job was.”
Guards are more likely to fall back on their security and maintenance role because it is the only one on which they can be objectively evaluated. No guard will be reprimanded or dismissed for failure to communicate meaningfully with inmates. On the other hand, the guard whose carelessness smooths the way for an escape or whose lack of vigilance contributes to opportunity for a stabbing or rape will most likely find himself out of a job.
When Twomey and the other college-educated civilians took over many of the elite positions within the organization, the captains became a shadow government resisting any changes from the traditional routine. “They can do whatever they want to in the courts or in Springfield, but we run it” was an attitude frequently spoken and even more frequently implied. The captains were never in open rebellion; their response to change was more like passive resistance; they simply ignored new rules, directives, and orders.
There had been a strong feeling at Stateville for years that eventually the reformers would lose interest and go away, and the feeling was even stronger under Twomey and Cannon. The captains were rarely held accountable for the failure of policies to be implemented or for failure of the organization to carry out basic tasks. Often they were able to sustain their definition of the situation as “impossible.” Using confiscated inmate letters, informants, and other esoteric omens, the captains were always detecting signs of trouble; gang flare-ups, escapes, and massive rebellion. Typical is the following excerpt from my field notes of 17 September 1974:
Stateville- the Penitentiary in Mass Society Page 22
