The forgotten 5 percent

“What we have here is a failure to communicate...” I have never appreciated more the irony of that statement until now, in the midst of my own prison term.

Throughout my incarceration, I have frequently said, “If only the administration knew what kind of allies they could have if they stopped focusing on controlling the 5 percent of inmates that are beyond hope, and would reach out to the 5 percent that have most of their own interests in common.”

It is probably not widely understood that in most prisons, the administration allows a relatively small percentage of the inmate population (usually the most violence prone) to dictate the entire structuring of prison life and activities. Indeed, evidence suggests that, when it comes to violence, a relatively small proportion of inmates are responsible for the majority of violent incidents in any given institution. Furthermore, it is probably even less widely known that there is a relatively small proportion of inmates that have absolutely removed themselves from violence completely, and are in virtually full sympathy with prison authorities with respect to the safety and security of the prison, and the promotion of a therapeutic environment (however idealistic these might seem given current prison conditions).

Prison populations are not homogeneous. In between the majority of prison inmates, which are more or less an admixture of the extremes, there exists a small group of inmates that absolutely embody and fuel the resistance culture that currently blights the prison system; but there is also an equally small group that completely rejects the prison culture and struggles to maintain the kind of pro-social norms and values that everybody wishes that the prisons could facilitate.

These diametrically opposite extremes represent, to my mind, the two potential focus points for prison administrators, and represent two possible approaches, equally opposite, to administrating the prison environment.

No one, in the current discussion, is giving appropriate attention to the other 5 percent.

True, at least in the juvenile system, there is a renewed focus on rehabilitative/incentive programming. But, although rehabilitative and incentive based programming does target inmates that maintain a positive lifestyle, the rest of the institution frequently remains for the most part entrenched in a disciplinary mode divorced from the incentive programs and developed to focus on the other violent minority. When this happens, incentive programming once again becomes marginal and is never fully integrated into the general program structure of the prison. This happens most frequently in institutions with high levels of violence (like the institution where I live). Prison authorities cannot ignore or make of marginal concern institutional violence, while incentive programming can easily be sacrificed or made marginal if institutional violence is so frequent that it consumes a large amount of institutional time and energy.

The challenge is to adequately address the 'safety and security' of institutions without defining the social structure of institutional life around the exigency of violence control. This is not the easiest path to be sure. The disciplinary and control model is much easier and probably more efficient. But we must remember that criminal justice is not a business, and prisons are not warehouses that operate on the maximal efficiency model for controlling warehoused goods. Prisons house human beings, and their existence, especially in the juvenile system, is premised upon providing a social structuring conducive to the development of pro-social behavior.

It is way too easy to fall into the dead end of making marginalized, extra-structural incentive programming the entire focus of the rehabilitative aspect of the prison environment. It takes creative commitment to envision a prison environment that structurally embodies and promotes pro-social behavior, and provides incentives for the demonstration of such behavior.

It also takes intimate, first hand knowledge of the current dynamics of prison life and culture. This is where the forgotten 5 percent come in. This group has the potential to be an invaluable resource to prison authorities.

Contrary to popular knowledge, not all inmates are uneducated, and not all the educated inmates are devious and manipulative. Many of them, in fact, are quietly living positive, pro-social lives in prison, but are forced to fly below the radar because of the overall disciplinary structure of the institution, which does not acknowledge their lifestyle as structurally and culturally valuable, and actually serves to entrench and institutionalize prison resistance culture.

And they know what is going on. The administrative-bureaucratic nomenclature may escape some of them—but in reality they have a quite sophisticated, objective understanding of their environment. If given the opportunity, they could bring an invaluable perspective and insight into the discussion.

A failure to utilize these inmates would be a serious mistake—a communication failure that could very well hamstring any genuine reform efforts.