What have I become?

We get the occasional surreptitious look at newspapers in here, and yesterday I was able to procure the A section of the Los Angeles Times (the November 6, 2006 edition). “A City Strains to Arrest a Deadly Trend” caught my eye immediately. The story featured the recent murder of a 12 year old boy in the city of San Bernardino. It addressed all the classic issues of a city grappling with violent crime and gang activity. But it really got me thinking…

Living in here, completely isolated from the normal rhythms of social life, it is easy, far too easy, to lose touch with what I guess one can call ones sense of social identity. In this enclosed, highly regimented, artificial environment, social identity—which is already pretty eroded in many offenders by their prior antisocial, criminal histories—is further eroded by the total disconnection that takes place—social and psychological--in the carceral process.

I could not believe that I had felt, albeit just for a second, a sense of absolute distance from this mainstream representation of social identity conveyed in the article—the expression of a city wounded by violent crime. I was taken aback by this brief feeling of dislocation, of displaced identification if you will, in large part because I have worked so hard (and have become very proud) to maintain and grow a sense of identification, of belongingness, with my community, and with society. Early in my incarceration, I resolved to consciously resist adopting the prison vernacular and the prison mentality it fosters and sustains (which is characteristically anti-social, and revels in the very de-indentification with the social that I have at great pains worked to maintain). For this decision, I have lived as a vagabond and an outcaste here (a prison social position usually assigned through anti-anti-social conduct, and which is usually hard and very vulnerable), fiercely maintaining my non-affiliation with prison associations (like prison gangs) at considerable personal risk. It is a dangerous thing to remain a non-affiliate in prison—but I considered it more detrimental still, a betrayal of my own social identity no less, to pursue any other course, despite the benefits (safety, mostly).

And so the momentary horror I felt at my reaction to the article--I felt sympathy, but only a thin, emaciated sense of empathy—put me into a brief panic, and caused me to immediately reevaluate the entire progress of the six years of my carceral life.

I calmed down eventually, and began to think clearly. I had not, after all, become an institutionalized prisoner (a ‘docile body’ in Foucault’s phraseology). But I had neglected something. I had neglected, partly due to purely structural reasons, but partly because of personal bitterness at having to live in prison—I had neglected considering the authentic, nonreplicable, perspective of the Other of the carceral process—the very social identity, ironically, I had worked so hard to maintain: the mother, having lost her 12 year old son in a senseless act of brutality; a community afraid to let their youth venture more than a few blocks from their homes; a young boy, missing his murdered friend, barely old enough to comprehend it. I had neglected this perspective, the perception of the community’s Other—which can only be described as me.

I had been so busy in the negative element of the task, fighting off institutionalization, that I forgot the vital constructive element—maintaining an actual identification with society. I had fallen into the old fallacy of thinking resistance a form of construction.

To be sure, much of this can be attributed to the structure of the carceral process itself. How is one to maintain an identification with the social, and with general social values, when one is kept isolated from society? The problem is compounded by the fact that many offenders, when incarcerated, haven’t yet developed fully formed social identities, or worse, have developed distinctly anti-social identities. Sadly, for many youthful offenders, these structural factors are simply too great to overcome. They are caught up unawares, and develop under the influence of the system identities radically antithetical to society, and suited only for prison society—caged selves, literally formed through interaction with the core feature of the prison milieu—the cell.

But youthful offenders must bear some responsibility. And I especially must bear it, having understood my predicament, and in full knowledge of what is needed to maintain an empathic link to society. Still, it is frightening to think that even I am prone—despite my efforts—to moments of capitulation to institutionalization. If anything, it reveals the awesome negative power of social isolation—which is something we must all bear in mind, because every one of these guys will go home eventually. As such, it is in the best interest of society, and it is the responsibility of people like me who have ears to hear and eyes to see, to devise ways of reintroducing to institutionalized youthful offenders the face of society, and urging them, inviting them, to re-identify.