Stateville- the Penitentiary in Mass Society

by James B Jacobs

  63. In early 1975 I counted the following number of journal subscriptions: Rising Up Angry—73; Up against the Bench—49; On Ice—57. Since each copy may be circulated to other inmates, the influence of these papers may be substantial.

  64. See David Fogel, We Are the Living Proof: A Social Justice Model for Corrections (Cincinnati: W. H. Anderson, 1975).

  Chapter 6

  1. For the Blackstone Rangers see John Fry, Fire and Blackstone (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1969); R. Sale, The Blackstone Rangers (New York: Popular Library, 1971); J. McPherson, “Almighty Black P Stone and What Does that Mean?” Atlantic Monthly 223 (May and June, 1969). For the Devil’s Disciples see J. Laing, “The Black Disciples,” Wall Street Journal, 12 September 1969, p. 1. For the Vice Lords see Lincoln Kaiser, The Vice Lords: Warriors of the Street (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969); David Dawley, A Nation of Lords (New York: Anchor Books, 1973). See also Irving Spergel, “Youth Manpower Project: What Happened in Woodlawn” unpublished, University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, 1969).

  2. As far as I can tell the term “supergang” was invented by Lawrence Sherman, in “Youth Workers, Police, and the Gangs: Chicago 1956–1970” (master’s thesis, Division of Social Sciences, University of Chicago, 1970). It has been used by James Short, “Youth, Gangs, and Society: Micro and Macrosociological Processes,” The Sociological Quarterly 15 (Winter 1974): 3–19. Malcolm Klein has argued that to characterize groups the size of the Black P Stone Nation or Disciples as “gangs” sacrifices any meaningful definition of the term. Malcolm Klein, Street Gangs and Street Workers (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971), p. 79.

  3. James Short, “Gangs, Politics and the Social Order” (paper delivered at the McKay symposium at The University of Chicago Department of Sociology in the fall of 1972).

  4. Fry, Fire; McPherson, “Black P Stone”; and Dawley, Lords (see n. 1 above).

  5. Office of the Mayor of Chicago, “Organized Youth Crime in Chicago” (mimeo February 1970).

  6. R. Cloward and F. Piven argue that national politics effected a change in the approach to the gangs after the Kennedy victory of 1960. In order to assuage the black neighborhoods concerned about juvenile violence and to placate ethnic whites concerned about integration, the federal government committed itself to various kinds of crime control through social welfare measures on the streets of the ghettos. Cloward and Piven, Regulating the Poor (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971).

  7. Sherman, “Youth Workers” (see n. 2 above), p. 24.

  8. Ibid., p. 26.

  9. I was often amazed by the Stones’ grandiose vision of controlling the entire city of Chicago. Spergel, in Manpower (see n. 1 above), p. 58, reported the same vision several years earlier.

  10. OEO had come to believe that many of their job corps and vocational training programs of the mid-sixties had not succeeded in reaching hard-core ghetto youth. A romanticism, shared by private foundations and some in the federal government, apparently including Vice-president Humphrey, promoted belief in the potential of indigenous community gang leaders to solve their own problems. This romanticism reached its height in 1967 and 1968. Gang leaders were flown in and out of Washington, D.C., as the federal government attempted to forge a national alliance (YOU) of inner city street gangs. The Youth Manpower Project was another effort to “reach” the hard-core inner city youths by allowing them a great degree of autonomy and control in planning and carrying out an antipoverty program.

  For the history of the New York gang “The Real Great Society” and the success of its leaders in convincing government leaders of its potential to effect constructive change in the minority ghettos, see Richard W. Poston, The Gangs and the Establishment (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).

  11. Spergel, “Manpower” (see n. 1 above), p. 165.

  12. U.S., Congress, Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, Hearings on Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders, 90th Congress, 2d session, 1968, part 10.

  13. Lincoln Kaiser notes that the Vice Lord Nation originated in 1958 at the Illinois State Training School for Boys at St. Charles. Vice Lords (see n. 1 above), p. 1.

  14. Dawley, Lords (see n. 1 above), p. 11.

  15. Between 1967 and 1969 the following Vice Lord programs were undertaken: (1) Teen Town—an ice cream parlor converted from a gutted storefront with funds from Alderman Collins and Sears Roebuck; (2) African Lion—a soul shop which was aided in a management training program by a grant from the Field Foundation; (3) Tastee Freeze—an ice cream franchise established with a loan from American National Bank; (4) Simone—a business venture, involving the marketing of black cosmetics, carried out with Sammy Davis, Jr.; (5) West Side Community Development Corporation—a coalition of neighborhood groups attempting to build a viable economic community on the West Side, aided by loans from the First National Bank of Chicago; (6) Management Training Institute—a twenty-week program that taught black history, self-awareness, and business skills, funded by a Coalition for Youth Action in the Department of Labor; (7) Street Academy—an alternative educational program for community dropouts; (8) Partners—in 1968 the Ford Foundation gave $130,000 to improve the executive skills of Vice Lord leaders; (9) House of Lords—two neighborhood “hang’ins” created with Vice Lords money for community youth; (10) Beautification—a program to clean up Lawndale given impetus by an administrative grant from the Field Foundation and a donation of one hundred Youth Corps positions from the Catholic School Board; (11) Tenant’s Rights Action Group—organized to help local people with legal services in disputes with landlords; (12) Art and Soul—two unoccupied storefronts were converted into a studio and gallery to develop the talent of local youth with a grant from the Wieboldt Foundation and with the assistance of Circle Campus.

  16. Dawley, Lords (see n. 1 above), pp. 107–36.

  17. Sherman, “Youth Workers” (see n. 2 above), p. 34. Captain Buckney of the Gang Intelligence Unit maintained that the Blackstone Rangers were paid to conduct the no-vote campaign.

  18. Since June 1972, when I began studying Stateville, the most consistent estimate of gang membership is 50 percent. A few independents have estimated gang membership as low as 33 percent and a few guards as “at least 80 percent.” It is quite remarkable that, even though the gangs have been the gravest problem affecting Illinois corrections for six years, there is no accurate method of compiling information on them. A random sample of the disciplinary cards of all inmates whose inmate number ended in “3” revealed twenty-five cards with a notation of gang membership (16 Stones, 7 Disciples, 1 Latin King, 1 Vice Lord), which would indicate a total of 250 gang members in the entire inmate population. This figure is not given credence by informants. It is a more illuminating statement of the record keeping at the prison than it is of gang membership. A separate census of the 86 inmates in segregation on 1 January 1975 revealed that 34 of them were in the gangs. When the total number of disciplinary tickets is compared for the sample of 25 gang members with the 144 non-gang members, we find that the gang members average 34.0 disciplinary reports as compared with 13.3 for non-gang. For the segregation inmates the 34 gang members (19 Stones, 15 Disciples) averaged 43.0 disciplinary reports, while the 52 non-gang members averaged 35.2.

  19. See William Davidson, “The Worst Jail I Have Ever Seen,” Saturday Evening Post, 13 July 1968, p. 18.

  20. “Organized Crime” (see n. 5 above).

  21. Involvement of youth street gangs in urban politics is hardly a modern phenomenon. In Frederick Thrasher’s classic work, The Gang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927), he pointed out that “political alliances with members of gangs have become so common in recent years that there has been a disposition to regard gangsters as “inlaws” rather than “outlaws.” See also Gerald Suttles and Stephen Kalberg, “Inarticulate Protests: Gangs, the Police, and Politicians in Chicago during 1964–1970” (unpublished paper) delivered by Suttles at the dedication of the B
urgess papers, University of Chicago (Spring 1974).

  22. Walter B. Miller, “American Youth Gangs, Past and Present,” in Abraham S. Blumberg, Current Perspective on Criminal Behavior (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 210–37, at p. 232.

  23. Ibid., p. 235.

  24. In his evaluation of the Youth Manpower Project (see n. 1 above, p. 59), Spergel also pointed out that the Stones were an alternative to politicization. “There was also some interest in Black Power and black culture activities by both groups, particularly among the Blackstone Rangers. Nevertheless, neither of the organizations appears to have had a strong civil rights commitment or to have engaged significantly in local or citywide civil rights and Black Power efforts. There were frequent attempts by representatives of these other organizations to involve the Rangers and Disciples; and the Rangers, on several occasions, participated, on a limited basis, in Black Power meetings and civil rights demonstrations, but both Rangers and Disciples clearly avoided commitment or systematic engagement in race-related issues and activities. They were primarily concerned with their power, not with Black Power.”

  25. Some of the materials in this section have been previously reported in James B. Jacobs, “Street Gangs behind Bars,” Social Problems 21, no. 4 (winter 1974). That article reported a participant observation study carried out at Stateville between June and September 1972. Many more data have been collected since then and appear throughout the text.

  26. It seems inaccurate to speak of these gangs as “organizations” as the term is used sociologically. Lewis Yablonsky argues that the violent gang stands midway between a mob and a group and has coined the term “near group” to refer to that organizational form. Yablonsky, The Violent Gang (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970), chap. 14. I feel that “near group” is not a very helpful analytical term. It might be more useful to think of the supergangs as proto-organizations of the “normative” type suggested by A. Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971).

  27. I have reproduced the inmate documents with their original spelling and syntax in order to describe more accurately the prison situation which includes the linguistic styles of the gang members.

  28. In this section, some of which is based upon participant observation in 1972, I have used fictitious initials in place of the real names of informants in order to protect their confidences.

  29. Thrasher distinguished three levels of involvement in the street gangs which he studied: (1) the inner circle, including the leader and his lieutenants; (2) the rank and file, including members in good standing; and (3) the fringers, or the nebulous ring of hangers-on who cannot be counted on to go to the full length in any exploit. The Gang (see n. 21 above). In his study of violent gangs in the Morningside Heights area of Manhattan, Lewis Yablonsky also sought to delineate levels of membership but tied his categories of core and marginal membership to personality types rather than to organizational role. Yablonsky, The Violent Gang (see n. 26 above), pp. 248–257.

  30. McCleery observed that the key concern of the convicted man is lack of information about institutional policies and decisions. Theoretical Studies (see Introduction, n. 9, above).

  31. The Sielaff administration, which took office in 1973, eliminated all inmate clerk jobs and thus speeded up the disintegration of the old inmate social system. Communication between front and back was slowed down.

  32. Whether one subscribes to the theories of Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (New York: Free Press, 1955), or of Walter B. Miller, “Lower Class Subculture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Violence,” Journal of Social Issues 14 (Summer 1958): 5–19, with respect to the origins of delinquent gangs, the important point here, is, as Thrasher has emphasized, that the gang serves as a membership and reference group which provides the delinquent youth with status and a favorable evaluation of self.

  33. Robert Johns, “Civil Rights and Prison Violence” (unpublished paper, undated).

  34. For parallel examples of secondary group organization inside prison see James B. Jacobs, “Stratification and Conflict Among Prison Inmates,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 66 no. 4 December 1975.

  35. Warden John Petrilli at Pontiac Penitentiary did extend formal recognition to the gangs. The gangs were given separate cell houses, proportional representation on assignments, and open access to the warden, who declared that “everything is negotiable.” The inmates were organized in various committees and met with the warden frequently. Each gang was allowed to use the chapel for a full assembly each month. While the young gang members spoke highly of Warden Petrilli, they were unable to keep the peace among themselves. Part of this may be explained by the absence of any of the older or higher-ranking gang leadership. In any case, two gang rumbles at Pontiac, which left several dead and seriously injured, led to the repudiation of this policy and ultimately to the removal of Warden Petrilli.

  36. See. n. 35 above.

  Chapter 7

  1. The telephone questionnaire was designed by this author and administered by a law student, Mary Grear. The results have been separately reported in “Drop Outs and Rejects: An Analysis of Turnover Among Stateville Prison Guards” (unpublished, Center for Studies in Criminal Justice, University of Chicago Law School, 1975).

  2. See Chicago Sun Times, 11 August 1971.

  3. The Task Force on Corrections of the President’s Commission on Crime and the Administration of Justice concluded: “In contrast with the traditional system, a new concept of relationships in correctional institutions, the “collaborative regime,” has been evolving during the past few decades. An outstanding feature of this trend is increased communication between custodial staff, inmates and treatment staff. Custodial staff, by virtue of their close contact with all aspects of an inmate’s life, have a great potential for counselling functions, both with individual inmates and in group discussions” (p. 11).

  The same call for a redefinition of the guard’s role was set forth in a John Howard report, “Adult Correctional Facilities and Programs in Illinois” (released 2 March 1970).

  4. E.g., Morris Janowitz and R. Vinter, “Effective Institutions for Juvenile Delinquents: A Research Statement,” Social Service Review 33 (June) 1959: 118–130.

  5. Donald Cressey, “Limitations on Organization of Treatment in the Modern Prison,” pp. 77–104 in Theoretical Studies in Social Organization of the Prison, ed. R. Cloward et al. (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1960).

  6. This point is made in the mental hospital context by A. Stanton and M. Schwartz, The Mental Hospital (London: Tavistock, 1954).

  7. Note the following sober warning presented as a model for guard training by the American Correctional Association, Correction Officers Training Guide (n.d.), p. 23. “Bribery usually begins as a result of being too intimate with inmates. They offer a cigar, cigarettes, or some trivial article. Each time this is done a closer contact is made and finally they come through with what they really want the officer to do. They may work the officer into a compromising position by securing information from him which may make it appear to his superiors that he has been passing on confidential or department information. Or it may be that an inmate is a witness to some incident involving the officer, and which, if known, would not add to his reputation for efficiency and reliability. Self-protection being a powerful instinct, the officer, might ask the inmate to keep quiet or to falsify his testimony when questioned. This is the beginning of bribery, and it may get the officer on the inmate’s payroll from that time on.”

  8. The figure varies slightly depending upon whom one wants to count as a guard, since recent Department of Personnel changes have transformed some guards into “prison clerks” and various other positions. A recent lawsuit brought by the University of Chicago’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, Greer vs. Sielaff (No. 75C247), charges that a black guard was discriminatorily discharged from his position at Stateville. The suit has been brought as a class action and charges
that “at all times, the Defendants acting individually and in concert have maintained policies, practices and customs of limiting the employment opportunities of past, present and prospective black prison guards, including plaintiff, by such acts as: (a) selecting and hiring guards on the basis of race, (b) discharging and disciplining guards on the basis of race, (c) distributing work assignments on the basis of race, (d) promoting guards on the basis of race.

  9. See James B. Jacobs and Mary P. Greer, “Drop-outs and Rejects: An Analysis of Turnover among Stateville Prison Guards” (unpublished paper, Center for Studies in Criminal Justice, University of Chicago Law School, 1975).

  10. The Model Employer Program carried out by the State of Illinois Department of Personnel began in July 1974, when the first minority recruits were hired to become prospective prison guards. Unlike the usual recruit, the “Affirmative Action group” (as they have come to be called) is given a three-week orientation program before beginning recruit training at the academy. To date (June 1975), seventy-five Stateville/Joliet guards have been hired in this way.

  11. This version of the events is consistent with Randolph’s own recollection.

  12. In 1961 the Illinois legislature passed a statute providing “that any employee of the state may authorize the withholding of a portion of his salary, wages and annuities for any one or more of the following purposes . . . (3) For payment to any labor union.” Ill. Rev. Stat., chap. 127, sec. 351–60 (1965).

  13. In 1969 Stateville/Joliet employees collectively accumulated 289 pink slip warnings, 171 suspensions, and 107 probationary discharges and requests to resign. Soon after Bensinger came into office, the “pinkies” were abolished.

  14. During the early years of local 1866 there was considerable debate whether the lieutenants would be allowed to join because of fear that that would create a company union. One of the bylaws stated that lieutenants and above could not join, but AFSCME representatives explained to the local that such a clause was illegal.