State-Raised Convict
Jack Henry Abbott (1944-2002)
Sent to reform school as a preadolescent and imprisoned in a state penitentiary at eighteen, jack Henry Abbott was raised in--and, he argues, by--a system so repressive and cruel that its products may be forever incapacitated as citizens and individuals. Adjustment to prison, which the officials use as one criterion in parole hearings, is a logical and moral contradiction for Abbott, for it represents participation in injustice and corruption. Abbott's life since the 1981 publication of his book, symbolically entitled In the Belly of the Beast, from which this essay is taken, provides evidence for his thesis. Within weeks of his release on parole, Abbott murdered a New York waiter in a misunderstanding about the use of a restaurant's restroom As Abbott explained his actions later, his experience as a prisoner taught him that all encounters carry with them the threat of violence, and one must be ready to "defend" oneself, even to the point of murder.
... My mind keeps turning toward one of the main aspects of prison that separates ordinary prisoners who, at some point in their lives, serve a few years and get out never to return--or if they do, it is for another short period and never again-and the convict who is "state-raised," i.e., the prisoner who grows up from boyhood to manhood in penal institutions.
I have referred to it as a form of instability (mental, emotional, etc.). There is no doubt (let us say there is little doubt) that this instability is caused by a lifetime of incarceration. Long stretches of, say, from ages ten to seventeen or eighteen, and then from seventeen or eighteen to ages thirty and forty.
You hear a lot about "arrested adolescence" nowadays, and I believe this concept touches the nub of the instability of prisoners like myself.
Every society gives its men and women the prerogatives of men and women, of adults. Men are given their dues. After a certain age you are regarded as a man by society. You are referred to as "sir"; no one interferes in your affairs, slaps your hands or ignores you. Society is solicitous in general and serves you. You are shown respect. Gradually your judgment is tempered because gradually you see that it has real effects; it impinges on the society, the world. Your experience mellows your emotions because you are free to move about anywhere, work and play at anything. You can pursue any object of love, pleasure, danger, profit, etc. You are taught by the very terms of your social existence, by the objects that come and go from your intentions, the natures of your own emotions--and you learn about yourself, your tastes, your strengths and weaknesses. You, in other words, mature emotionally.
It is not so for the state-raised convict. As a boy in reform school, he is punished for being a little boy. In prison, he is punished for trying to be a man in the sense described above. He is treated as an adolescent in prison. Just as an adolescent is denied the keys to the family car for any disobedience, any mischief, I am subjected to the hole for any disobedience, any mischief. I will go to the hole for murder as well as for stealing a packet of sugar. I will get out of the hole in either case, and the length of time I serve for either offense is no different. My object is solely to avoid leaving evidence that will leave me open to prosecution out there in the world beyond these walls where a semblance of democracy is practiced.
Prison regimes have prisoners making extreme decisions regarding moderate questions, decisions that only fit the logical choice of either-or. No contradiction is allowed openly. You are not allowed to change. You are only allowed to submit; "agreement" does not exist (it implies equality). You are the rebellious adolescent who must obey and submit to the judgment of "grownups"--"tyrants" they are called when we speak of men.
A prisoner who is not state-raised tolerates the situation because of his social maturity prior to incarceration. He knows things are different outside prison. But the state-raised convict has no conception of any difference. He lacks experience and, hence, maturity. His judgment is untempered, rash; his emotions are impulsive, raw, unmellowed.
There are emotions--a whole spectrum of them--that I know of only through words, through reading and my immature imagination. I can imagine I feel those emotions (know, therefore, what they are), but I do not. At age thirty-seven I am barely a precocious child. My passions are those of a boy.
This thing I related above about emotions is the hidden, dark side of state-raised convicts. The foul underbelly everyone hides from everyone else. There is something else. It is the other half--which concerns judgment, reason (moral, ethical, cultural). It is the mantle of pride, integrity, honor. It is the high esteem we naturally have for violence, force. It is what makes us effective, men whose judgment impinges on others, on the world: Dangerous killers who act alone and without emotion, who act with calculation and principles, to avenge themselves, establish and defend their principles with acts of murder that usually evade prosecution by law; this is the state-raised convicts' conception of manhood, in the highest sense.
The model we emulate is a fanatically defiant and alienated individual who cannot imagine what forgiveness is, or mercy or tolerance, because he has no experience of such values. His emotions do not know what such values are, but he imagines them as so many "weaknesses" precisely because the unprincipled offender appears to escape punishment through such "weaknesses" on the part of society.
But if you behave like a man (a man such as yourself) you are doomed; you are feared and hated. You are "crazy" by the standards of the authorities--by their prejudices against prison-behavior.
Can you imagine how I feel--to be treated as a little boy and not as a man? And when I was a little boy, I was treated as a man--and can you imagine what that does to a boy? (I keep waiting for the years to give me a sense of humor, but so far that has evaded me completely.)
So. A guard frowns at me and says: "Why are you not at work?" Or: "Tuck in your shirttail!" Do this and do that. The way a little boy is spoken to. This is something I have had to deal with not for a year or two--nor even ten years-but for, so far, eighteen years. And when I explode, then I have burnt myself by behaving like a contrite and unruly little boy. So I have, in order to avoid that deeper humiliation, developed a method of reversing the whole situation--and I become the man chastising the little boy. (Poor kid!) It has cost me dearly, and not just in terms of years in prison or in the hole.
I cannot adjust to daily life in prison. For almost twenty years this has been true. I have never gone a month in prison without incurring disciplinary action for violating "rules." Not in all these years.
Does this mean I must die in prison? Does this mean I cannot "adjust" to society outside prison?
The government answers yes--but I remember society, and it is not like prison. I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that fact alone never adjust to society. I would be back in prison within months.
Now, I care about myself and I cannot let it happen that I cannot adjust to freedom. Even if it means spending my life in prison-because to me prison is nothing but mutiny and revolt .
. . . A round peg will not fit into a square slot. I don't think they'll ever let me out of prison so long as my release depends on my "good adjustment to prison."
In the beginning the walls of my cell were made of boiler-plate steel, and I would kick them all day every day, hollering, screaming--for no apparent reason. I was so choked with rage in those days (about sixteen or seventeen years ago), I could hardly talk, even when I was calm: I stuttered badly. I used to throw my tray as casually as you would toss a balled-up scrap of paper in a trash can--but would do it with a tray full of food at the face of a guard.
That is what I mean by a response to the prison experience by a man who does not belong there.
Hell, if I never went to prison, who knows what "evil" I would have committed. I'm not at all saying that because I don't belong in prison that I should not have been sent there. Theoretically, no one should belong in prison! I was sent there for punishment--and I happen to have gotten it. I do not think it is like that with most men who are sent to prison. Everyone hurts in prison, but not like that.
I still cannot talk to a guard, not unless I have his ass in a corner and am giving him the orders. I still stutter sometimes when I have to address a guard--address him without breaking rules. I can cuss one out very eloquently or insult him, but that's when I've broken a rule or don't care if I do break one. It is strange to contemplate: people with a stuttering defect in society can usually sing without stuttering; well, I can cuss without stuttering ...
It's impossible. I'm the kind of fool who, facing Caesar and his starving lions, need only retract a statement to walk away scot-free but instead cannot suppress saying "fuck you" to Caesar--knowing full well the consequences. What is more, I refuse to be martyred; I don't accept the consequences, and whine all the way to my death. A death, it seems, that I chose.
If I could please Caesar, I would, I gladly would.
It's a fucked-up world, but it's all I got.
I have never accepted that I did this to myself. I have never been successfully indoctrinated with that belief. That is the only reason I have been in prison this long.
Indoctrination begins the moment someone is arrested. It becomes more thorough every step of the way, from the moment of arrest to incarceration. In prison, it finds its most profound expression.
Every minute for years you are forced to believe that your suffering is a result of your "ill behavior," that it is self-inflicted. You are indoctrinated to blindly accept anything done to you. But if a guard knocks me to the floor, only by indoctrination can I be brought to believe I did it to myself. If I am thrown in the prison hole for having violated a prison rule--for having, for example, shown insolence to a pig--I can only believe I brought this upon myself through indoctrination.
... I might have become indoctrinated were it not for the evil and ignorant quality of the men who are employed in prisons.
A prisoner is taught that what is required of him is to never resist, never contradict. A prisoner is taught to plead with the pigs and accept guilt for things he never did.
I have had guards I have never seen before report me for making threats and arguing with them. I have been taken before disciplinary committees of guards for things I have never done, things they all knew I never did. And I have been ordered to the hole for things they knew I never did.
My prison record has in it more violence reported by guards than that of any of the 25,000 federal prisoners behind bars today, and I am not guilty of nine--tenths of the charges. Yet there is nothing at all I can do about it.
If I were beaten to death tomorrow, my record would go before the coroner's jury--before anyone who had the power to investigate-and my "past record of violence" would vindicate my murderers. In fact, the prison regime can commit any atrocity against me, and my "record" will acquit them.
The government shows that record to judges if I get into court on a civil suit against the prison or on a petition for writ of habeas corpus. It is designed to prejudice the judge--a man who relishes any opportunity to prejudice himself against prisoners.
Responsibility? I am not responsible for what the government--its system of justice, its prison--has done to me. I did not do this to myself.
This is not easy to say; it is not a point of view to hold. Why? Because it has cost me, so far, almost two decades of imprisonment. This I hold is the greater responsibility: I did not do this to myself.
I do not share in the sins of this guilty country; we are not "all in this together"! Who in America today would dare take the responsibility for himself and others that I and countless other prisoners like me have taken?
... I know you aren't mean enough to think I'm trying to shift the responsibility for my own "corrupt self." Indeed I am not. I have only tried to indicate the opposite: that I demand responsibility for myself And in so doing, I have come to understand the reasons for it all. I myself can handle it quite well.
I do not have the confidence of a sleepwalker, and so my wish to better myself is in a spiritual sense a very conscious wish.
The Existentialists say they take all responsibility for their lives and the world upon their shoulders. Who can fault that? The world is amazed at how "cruel" it is! (This is very funny to think about!) And then, when the "chips are down" (Sartre's favorite expression), Sartre, who has never gambled but is enamored of the terminology of a kind of daring that doesn't involve getting his ass skinned, "martyrs" himself. It is the same kind of responsibility anyone takes upon himself by submitting to your bad opinion of him by hanging his head and agreeing with all the accusations--and then, when he has done that, forlornly tells you he is sorry it rained last night, sorry the price of tea went up, etc., etc. He won't defend himself, because he is truly at fault and is too pathetic to be punished.
To say you are not responsible for the life of someone you killed in self-defense, not responsible for the circumstances that brought you to prison (and kept you there for two decades )--to say all that in the face of your accusers, accusers who also justify their mistreatment of you by those accusations, is to be really responsible for your words and deeds. Because every time you reject the accusations, you are held responsible further for things you are not responsible for.
. . . I've only lately discovered that at age thirty I began to exercise the ability to think. I'm more restless now than I was at age ten--and nothing could stop me then.
It is funny that some of us must not only get our bearings but must also know all the details of the world before we venture out into it. Only now do I feel I know enough to live, but it is not funny that what I have learned may demand that I throw my life away from me.