“A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic—the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happens. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is all you need to know about Ivan Denisovich, because the idea that anyone could live for a minute in such circumstances seems impossible; one day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. It isn’t the horror of the time at hand but the unimaginable sameness of the time ahead that makes prisons unendurable for their inmates. The inmates on death row in Texas are called men in “timeless time,” because they alone aren’t serving time: they aren’t waiting out five years or a decade or a lifetime. The basic reality of American prisons is not that of the lock and key but that of the lock and clock.
That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling. Time stops. A note of attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia—anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog, covering the guards as much as the guarded. “Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard, / Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,” Dylan sings, and while it isn’t strictly true—just ask the prisoners—it contains a truth: the guards are doing time, too. As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment. For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.”
–NEW YORKER, “The Caging of America: Why do we lock up so many people?”
by Adam Gopnik
Read the full piece HERE
Photo by Steve Liss
%93 of inmates are male,hence my re-writing of the title:
“The caging of American men.”
Another quote from the same article at the New Yorker: The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized. I remember being shocked about that when I first arrived in the USA. It’s odd especially as there’s such a prudish quality to the USA TV with its no sex rules. But joking about people being brutally raped day after day? No problem. I was used to jokes based on kicking men in the balls (which… Read more »
I work in one of the largest men’s prisons in the world as a psychologist. I love the work I do, and I hope that in some small way I am making a difference in men’s lives. I believe that while we are working on empowering women, a real feminist will tell you that social justice is not being done if we aren’t doing anything for the men.
Step one: End the war on drugs. Of course, this is easier said than done because it has become enshrined in state and federal policy.
There’s a story of a guy who undertook to supply the inmates at one particular prison with mother’s day cards. Got a terrifiic response. He was so impressed he offered the same for father’s day. Fail.
Problem is, you can’t address this without getting all culturally and sexually judgmental and chauvinistic and so forth. So, we, or they, are hosed.
About 85% of men incarcerated for the second offense were raised in a single parent home. In divorce, women are granted custody about 95% of the time (not sure about the exact number). In the case of single parenthood (never married) the child(ren) are almost always with the mother. Feminists will of course be their usual charming Medusa selves and blame fathers. The simple fact is that modern society and the raising of children by a single woman is, in most cases, another flawed feminist idea.
Compared to sons, why don’t daughters of single mothers commit crimes, if any? Why don’t sons turn out crime-free like most daughters from the same (single) mothers? Maybe brothers should be looking up to their sisters as role models? No, we can’t blame fathers, because they are never or rarely around so they are excluded from blame and on the same token can’t be role models either.
Prison is the end of the road, where lives come to a halt; life and death become timeless. Instead of throwing money at prisons, we should be more PROACTIVE in crime prevention. Don’t cut back, we need to keep investing in education, social programs, jobs and young people. There is more ROI in all of this, than in prisons! I don’t like the idea of taxpayers’ money keeping the incarcerated behind bars for years and years or on life sentences, literally wasting away and living off our hard-earned money while not getting anything in return; but maybe more broken people… Read more »
Also our economy is getting to the point where it’s hard to earn a living for ourselves, keeping ourselves from starving, let alone raising a family, that the alternate route of prison life may start looking attractive! Free shelter, food, medical care, entertainment, education and so on – prison life could look real sweet. To illustrate this, there was one newstory where this senior citizen committed a petty crime, because he couldn’t support himself anymore and he needed medical attention…and so he figured that they would throw him in jail; but that didn’t happen, so next time he needs to… Read more »
This is exactly what I’m talking about…$1 BILLION Dollars for new crime bill??? Steve Harper loves prisons. Here is Caging in Canada: [quote] Ontario says federal crime bill will cost the province $1 billion TORONTO – The omnibus federal crime bill will cost Ontario more than $1 billion in increased police and court costs, the province’s Liberal government said Monday as it demanded Ottawa pick up the tab. Bill C-10 creates new mandatory minimum sentences, increases maximum sentences for some crimes, limits the use of conditional sentences such as house arrest and makes it harder to get a pardon. Ontario… Read more »
Hi Tom, “The question is why?” The prison population started to rise when VAWA started rolling back civil rights. If you google “VAWA mass incarceration of minorities” you will get information on it. Here are a few paragraphs from an article called “Feminist Gulag, No prosecution Necessary” “The U.S. prison population has risen dramatically in the last four decades. Ideologically, the rise is invariably attributed to “law-and-order” conservatives, who indeed seldom deny their own role (or indifference). In fact, few conservatives understand what they are defending. Conservatives who rightly decry “judicial activism” in civil law are often blind to the… Read more »
What about the war on drugs?