Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life After Capitalism: A Memoir by Michael Albert

Author:Michael Albert [Albert, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Prison School?

Threats Work

Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

—Michel Foucault

Returning to teaching, in South End Press’s early, lean years, I held a simultaneous part-time job teaching in prison. I did it at two centers of incarceration—one low security, the other middle security.

The low security prison was—in those days—like a large suburban home. It had a yard and various common rooms, and the prisoners each had their own bedroom as well as freedom to move around the facility. There were no bars. I would drive up and park in the lot outside, walk to the door, and be admitted. I saw no guns and was never searched. I’d enter a common room to teach, but I could also roam around, eat with folks, and even chat with them in their rooms—although the doors had to be left open. Low security, however, did not mean that the prisoners had committed trivial crimes or were getting out of prison soon. I made friends with people in there for murder who had life sentences. Interestingly, once we established trust—due to the content and style of my classes—many of the inmates would tell me that they were guilty of what they were in for, or, if not for that, then they were guilty of something else. But not all of them. Some, it seemed, were completely innocent.

It was also quite clear that while a few of the inmates might have been at high risk for committing a new crime if released, others were no more likely to commit new crimes than the average person. Their earlier crimes had been committed due to special circumstances, youthful context, bad luck, or economic desperation. I liked the inmates about in the same fashion as I would like a similar-size group of lower-income folks met at a community picnic or ball game, which meant I liked them a whole lot more than I would like a similar group of high-income professionals, much less corporate owners. A particularly eye-opening part of all this for me was that I could have easily taken a prisoner out of there in my car without being stopped. That’s what low-security meant, and in this institution it was blatantly true. So I asked the prisoners, what keeps you here? Why don’t you just pick up and leave?

I was taken down a hall to a back window. In the distance was another prison, the next one I would teach at, and further off, was still another prison. The third one was high security. The prisoners told me if they were to bolt from their low security home, they would in time get caught and wind up in one of the others—either in horror or in hell. The threat of horror and hell kept them in purgatory. The disgusting web bore considerable resemblance to life outside.

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