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Example research essay topic: Maximum Security Dining Room - 2,642 words

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... went to the hole once for "skating, " which consists of being where you " re not supposed to be. In my case I had walked to the front of the tier to get a glass of water for another man so he could make coffee. Other men have gone to the hole for carrying bread from the dining room so they could snack late at night. The hole at Jefferson City was officially designated "O-Hall. " They took your shoes and put you in a bare cell containing only a toilet (it was flushed once every several hours by the guard). There were 18 cells in the hole.

The cells measure about 4 feet by 10 feet. I've seen as many as five men to a cell-two or three is relatively common. You have no toothbrush, since deprivation of personal hygiene is part of the punishment. For 10 days you do nothing. We used to develop what we called "elephant hide" on our hips. The floor was of terrazzo tile (except for the last three feet, by the toilet, which is dark gray slate).

After lying on the floor for awhile the pressure would make your hips tender, and after a few trips to the hole you would develop a dark callous. They fed us once a day, at 11: 30 a. m. We hoarded toilet paper so that we could wrap a sandwich in it for late in the evening. After six or seven days your stomach would shrink, and one meal a day would be sufficient. The big thing in the hole was cigarettes.

The inmate in charge of cleaning the hole (who also had a room there) usually could be bribed to bring cigarettes. We didn't get cigarettes every day because some guards were more vigilant than others, and the inmate wouldn't be able to pass anything. But when we did score, you could hear such cryptic remarks as, "Man, I sure hope the sun comes out tomorrow, " meaning the man talking needed a light. A disconcerting experience was to wake up in the middle of the night with a two-inch watering crawling across your face. This happened frequently, especially late in the evening. If a watering came toward your cell, you could take off your shirt and shoo it toward someone else's cell.

You didn't want to kill it-for one thing you were in your stocking feet; for another, you had to sleep on the same floor on which it was smashed. But there is more to prison than the buildings, cells and administrative philosophy (or lack of it). The most important aspect of prison is the relationship of the inmates to each other. Many in society believe that when a man goes to prison he should have but one thing on his mind-to be "rehabilitated. " But life goes on, even in prison. You can't become a robot who has no emotional needs, a sterilized entity who thinks about nothing except an abstraction called "rehabilitation. " A large percentage of the men in prison are serving sentences of 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years or life.

The future, for them, is vague, uncertain, difficult to visualize. How long can a man suppress his emotions and still retain the use of them? On entering prison you are advised to "do your own time, " which means that you do not meddle in the business of others. If you see a man getting killed, don't get involved. (I've known men who were thrown in solitary for "being involved in a fracas, " which consisted of going to the aid of someone who was being assaulted. ) There is one exception; the quickest way to make parole is to save the life of a guard who is being assaulted by a convict. The moral, which is not lost on the prisoners, is that you may go to the aid of the guards, but you may not go to the aid of your best friend. One of the oldest sayings in prison is that "people mistake kindness for weakness. " The easiest way not to show weakness is to be as cold as ice.

It is a prison truism that the fewer friends you have the better off you are. (Your friends may get involved in something and drag you into it. ) Contrary to what Truman Capote said in an interview in the late 1960 s, not all men in prison engage in homosexuality. Thirty to 40 percent would be a more accurate figure-and even this depends on the type of institution. The more secure the institution, the more homosexuality there will be. The incidence reaches an apex at the maximum security prisons where there is less hope of relief. Also, in the maximum security prison, there will be more "long timers, " for whom prison is a way of life. They find their memories fading; after a few years it's hard to reconstruct the faces of the girls you knew.

Eventually new sex images begin to appear-those of the surrogate females that are everywhere in the prison world. I remember calling once with a man who had been convicted on a charge of conspiracy to commit a hired killing. By that time he had been there a few years. One night he said to me, "You know, when I first came in, every time I saw one of these fags I had an urge to smack him in the mouth. But after a while I began to realize I wasn't on the streets any more, and I had to forget everything I ever learned out there if I wanted to live in here. "In the first place, in here you never know who's who or who's what. Secondly, it doesn't make any damned difference.

Out there a fag is a weak sonofabitch. In here, a fag will kill you just as quick as anybody else. So far as I'm concerned, the only thing I want to know about a guy is if he's a snitch. " Incidentally, this man served more than 10 years without ever getting involved in any way with homosexuality. Where is the prison administration while all this is going on?

The only thing that ultimately matters to the administration is that you don't make waves. If you don't make waves, neither will they. In general, prison personnel are not trained for the work. More often than not they are afraid of the convicts, and since they spend a large part of their time with the convicts they have a natural desire to be liked by them.

To the convicts, a "good" guard is one who is interested in keeping trouble down without making life unbearable for the prisoners. I remember one three-month period in C-hall when most of the cell doors stayed open from 8 a. m. to lights out at 10 p. m. There were no stabbings, no rapes, no robberies.

The convicts knew that the guard was taking a chance, and that trouble in the hall could cause a general tightening up. Prison employees suffer from the same sort of stereotyping that applies to convicts. The prison guards often are depicted as insensitive and slightly retarded brutes who get their kicks from breaking inmate fingers. A tiny minority fits that description. The rest are simply people. When I first went to Jeff City The Starting salary for guards was $ 240 a month, and they wore no uniforms.

During the summer crop planting and harvesting months, there would be many vacancies on the guard force, but once the crops were harvested the local farmers would sign on to work at the prison. Prison jobs were known among the farmer-guards as "the milk run. " There was surprisingly little guard-on-inmate brutality. One reason for this was a man named B. J. Poiry; though his actual title was senior guard captain, he was frequently addressed as "Major. " He was a blocky, solid man with square chin, known to the inmates as "The Jaw. " Poiry smiled little, was zealous in the performance of his duties, and enjoyed the respect of most of the convicts.

During the final years of the Nash administration at Jeff City, Poiry ran the prison. He was The Man. In late 1964 the Jeff City prison was racked by a series of unrelated killings. Corruption was everywhere.

One captain, called "Marrying Sam, " was in charge of making cell changes for inmates. If you wanted a cell change you could give the captain's inmate clerk $ 5 and you would be moved within hours. I remember one 18 -year-old boy who changed cells 18 times in a single month. In late 1964, in a one-week period, one inmate smuggled in 14 ounces of amphetamine, another inmate 2 ounces, and another four ounces. So much dope was available, in so many hands, it was almost impossible to sell all of it. Then, in one 24 -day period, four inmates were murdered.

The Nash administration at the prison ended when Warden Nash walked into his bedroom late one night and put a bullet in his brain. Shortly after I arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary, Warden Nash called me to the "control center" for an interview. "Maloney, " he said, "I've reviewed your record from Also. You tried to escape twice, instigated a riot and cut another inmate up. If you behave like that in this prison you " ll die in this prison. Either we " ll kill you, the inmates will kill you or you " ll die of old age. On the other hand, keep your nose clean, and you can reasonably expect to make a parole in 20 or 25 years. " At the age of 19, with many prison years in front of me, my least worry was making parole.

I was far more interested in staying alive and maintaining some semblance of dignity. I felt that I had to prove myself-to not show weakness-to the inmates or the administration. This resulted in a hard-headedness that landed me in the hole many times, and in solitary five times, for trying to escape, making zip guns and allegedly stabbing another convict. By 1965 I was beginning to think in terms of my future, and the possibility of someday making parole. This created a typical dilemma. I had invested five years toward making a "reputation, " in the course of which I had also made some enemies.

Now that I wanted to devote my time to studying, painting, writing and preparing for the future, I had to keep one eye on the past. Someone I had had trouble with might think I was now vulnerable (the dilemma of my friend Ronnie Western), and find some pretext to even an old score. I eventually developed a frame of mind in which I would try to avoid trouble, and at the same time carry myself in such a way that those around me knew there was a point at which I would not walk away. Fred T.

Wilkinson, former assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, was appointed as the new director of corrections. Wilkinson brought in other former federal prison people, among them Harold R. Swenson, as warden. The new administration took over a prison that had been described as "the bloodiest 47 acres in America, " and "a medieval twilight zone. " Under the new administration the food improved immediately. The long metal dining tables were replaced with four-man tables, recreation areas were expanded and cobble-stoned streets were blacktopped. Old buildings came down and new ones went up. "Evening yard" was started during weeknights.

Radio and television sets were sold in the prison canteen. The population at Jeff City began to drop because of the opening of the Fordland Honor Camp and the new medium security prison at Moberly, which ultimately absorbed 800 of the men who would have been assigned to Jeff City. New dimensions of prison life began to emerge in the late ' 60 s-food strikes; work strikes; racial tension and conflict; civil rights suits. The first serious incident of racial violence during my years at Jeff City occurred in the summer of 1964.

The administration had decided to integrate the prison. It began by moving a small group of blacks to one of the upper tiers of all-white F-hall. Several days later, as a line of several hundred convicts was returning from the yard through the tunnel in the evening, the line was halted by several hooded men brandishing knives. Several minutes later a commotion started at the rear of the line.

One black ran past me and was skewered with an 18 -inch knife when he reached the front of the line. He fell dead. Three other blacks were stabbed. For days there were rumors of an impending race riot, until a group of black leaders met with white leaders and talked the situation out.

There had always been prejudice and discrimination in the prison, but the two races had gambled together, bartered together, played together, worked together, all in relative harmony. Black-white relations were never the same after the incident in the tunnel. On one occasion, two members of the E-Squad (guards trained in riot control) were standing in the tunnel as the inmates were returning from dinner. One guard called loudly to the other: "Hey, you grab the next nigger that comes along with one of them Afros, and I'll get the next sonofabitch wearing one of those nigger medals [Black Muslim emblems] around his neck. " It was in this kind of atmosphere that prisoners began to file civil rights suits in the federal court. One of the first, filed by an inmate who'd been in maximum security more than three years, was instrumental in the construction of a small recreation area for the men in maximum security. A few other concessions followed.

In February, 1971, I requested a transfer to Moberly, and arrived there in March. It was a radical departure from Jeff City. Instead of cells you had a room, and you carried a key to your own room. Instead of a green uniform you wore a grey uniform. You did not have to have a "pass" to go from one place to another-someone simply called and said "send Maloney back to the housing unit. " But it was a schizoid environment. It seemed peaceful, tranquil.

When my family came to visit we were no longer separated by bars and screens, but could sit on couches and drink coffee together. Back in the wings, which were seldom patrolled by the guards, it was a jungle. There was racial trouble of one sort or another at all times. Entire wings- 70 men to a wing-would explode with violence.

Young boys were raped with regularity. From the day I entered until the day I left 18 months later I never saw anyone above the rank of guard captain in any of the wings I was assigned to. When the day came to go to the pre-parole unit at Church Farm, I was happy to leave Moberly, even though I had been treated well there. I was disheartened when five blacks at Church Farm raped a 22 -year-old pre-release unit convict a week after I arrived. The civilian coordinator of the release unit asked me the next day if I would protect the man who'd been raped. I agreed but pointed out that in the event of violence my parole could be jeopardized.

So for the next three weeks I had to escort him to and from the dining room, the commissary, to the yard for exercise. I breathed a massive sign of relief when he went home. No other problems arose before I, too, came home. Bibliography:


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