Instrument of the State by Benjamin J. Harbert

Author:Benjamin J. Harbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

But the media coverage of sexual and physical violence made these mass gatherings a liability for the administration’s safety and public relations concerns. Warden Henderson associated the yard shows with violence, the sex trade, and immorality. Henderson reflects, “There was no useful purpose to be accomplished by men dressing up as women and trying to be seductive to other prisoners.”75 Fights over gal-boys and a firmly entrenched sexual economy bred violence and unpredictability.

Warden Henderson had a slew of problems, and few could be fixed with a country band. The academic and vocational programs, the ones aligned most with the penitentiary model of rehabilitation, had dried up. In his own accounts, Henderson describes singlehandedly marshaling the Department of Education to revive the programs.76 The less dramatic story is that he channeled state penitentiary power through voluntary associations.

Henderson handed over a degree of control to the prisoner clubs to make up for losing rehabilitative program funding. Clubs created more events around their missions. They offered custodial stability, and by now there were more of them: the Jaycees, Vets Incarcerated, the Angola Amateur Boxing Association, Full Gospel Businessmen Fellowship International, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the Lifer’s Association, to name only a few. Events provided incentives for joining. Membership was a prerequisite for attending association-sponsored events that included music, food, and outside guests. In exchange, robust club memberships offered the administration more predictability than the cliques. The optics were also good. The social activity of the prison seemed less recreational when led by altruistic volunteer associations. And finally, concerts moved indoors to more mission-driven banquets that the clubs sponsored and organized. By delegating power to the associations, Henderson solved several problems at once.

In this book, our framework for understanding music at Angola should be clear now: the administration chartered voluntary associations (including bands), granting them limited powers to run certain aspects of prison operations. But why not simply hire subcontractors or pay for operations through state budgets? Part of the answer is that the public can’t stomach images of large bureaucratic state initiatives, especially ones that require additional taxation. Looking at American governance in the twentieth century may shed light on the unique ways that free-world and prison voluntary associations became integral to life at Angola.

Historian Brian Balogh argues that Americans have kept associationalism alive because it keeps state power hidden from sight, when in actuality, state power flows through associations—intermediaries granted power, privilege, and resources through the state.77 Bringing Balogh’s insight to Angola, Warden Henderson’s support of prisoner associations, especially those tied to outside free world associations, could fulfill the penitentiary mission through volunteer groups. For instance, the Alcoholics Anonymous club worked with chapters in the state as well as in Mississippi and Texas to organize events.78 Henderson may or may not have strategized this, but it was the effect of his stewardship, and it was a means for bringing outside volunteers into the prison—a circuitous funding scheme that hides forms of state support as much as it cuts costs.

Voluntary organizations like church groups

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