🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
The prison system in which I abide exercises authority in a manner that dehumanizes the prisoner under its care. One specific way in which this occurs is the impermissibility of all interpersonal interactions between guards and prisoners. This creates a dynamic of inhuman/impersonal authoritarian vs. subjugated/dehumanized subordinate. It is a living epitome of the Stanford Prison Experiment. I believe that allowing genuine humane interactions between those two character roles would serve to encourage empathy instead of enmity. Instituting such a change would be free and only requires a basic understanding of those characters’ mindsets. Beyond that, a few simple interactions could be permitted which could break down the demarcation of prisoner vs. guard.
Prisoners in this institution have been convicted of criminal behavior and are sentences to serve time set by statues. This system already removes individual considerations of people and personality in exchange for set sentences for a given act. With the institution, guards are trained to issue orders, maintain control and never fraternize with prisoners. This creates a role of subjugation for the prisoners that is forcefully imposed. Demographics from which a vast majority of prisoners come often breed resentment to oppressive acts. Whether a particular individuals’ response to that resentment is anger or shame, aggressive or passive, violent or self-destructive, any such response is counterproductive to rehabilitation. It would serve a positive end, then, to see these unnecessary acts of oppression cease in pursuit of rehabilitation.
From the perspective of the guards, training intentionally dehumanizes prisoners in basic ways like never using a prisoners first name or nick-name and issuing each prisoner a number, forcing every inmate to wear identical uniforms, and never making a request but only issuing an order. Any response from a prisoner that is angry, aggressive, or violent, whether overt or passive, reinforces the necessity of exerting control. This leads into a dynamic process whereby the exercise of authority triggers resistance, which triggers more exercise of authority. In that environment we prisoners cannot make decisions, we are told what to do. Even our rules are written by military theorists in the vein that we have a “proper chain of command” and are to “follow the last order given”. When the militaristic authority treats you as not being human, how could you not reject the system?
Breaking down the demarcation of guard/prisoner is a change that could have psychological benefits on both sides. The simplicity of the steps necessary to achieve such an end are inarguably worth the attempt. Courtesy; Please and Thank you, holding a door or a gate, instead of issuing an order, make a request. It’s a shift from believing the prisoner needs to be controlled until they change to seeing that the same authority can be used to help the prisoners change. Force should be a last resort within these walls where a failure to rehabilitate someone very likely victimizes more people when that prisoners is released.
Pennsylvania’s prison system operates under a paramilitaristic theory and routine. Such a system does not attempt to rehabilitate but to subjugate. When the authority makes themselves the enemy of their subject you can only expect the system to be rejected. A wide variety of particular traumas common to prisoner demographics doesn’t just render such a technique ineffective but counterproductive and harmful. Permitting acts of courtesy and genuine human social exchanges between guards and prisoners could go a long way in breaking down the reinforced animosity between those people. It has the potential to change this prison from an institution into a community.