Gorillas... and Real Hemen
Hausknecht, Murray
Our society prides housed he still exists in a state of depri. itself on the fact that the concentra- vation. Some of the deprivations are tion camp remains a thing apart, a obvious: The largest...
...in prison, writes Sykes, "the inmate's self image is in danger of becoming .. . fractured, a monochrome without the hues of reality...
...Inmate leaders who advocate "cooperation" lose their influence...
...the "ball buster," who at tempts to maintain his human dignity through individual revolt and intran sigence...
...Press, Princeton, N.J...
...But while the modern parent explains his rules to the child, the prisoner is deprived of even this comfort: Explanations of rules "are often deliberately withheld as a matter of calculated policy...
...The "ball buster" is disap proved of by the prisoners since he tends to provoke the guards into re pressive measures against everyone...
...THIS GROUP, therefore, tends to be fa vored by the guards, and a system arises of institutionalized evasions of the formal rules...
...In effect, there is an informal compact between guards and prisoners: the guards ignore violations of certain regulations in return for the prisoners' cooperation in maintaining order...
...A PRISON is a bureaucracy designed for total control of the inmate's life...
...THERE ARE two main ways in which the inmates adapt to the deprivations...
...It is somewhat worse than other bureaucracies in that all power, in formal terms, lies with the guards, and the prison administration is strongly motivated to maintain total control in or der to prevent escapes which inevita bly bring public censure for "ineffi ciency...
...Maintenance of custody is so important that the goal of "rehabili tation," supposedly a prime function of the prison, is not only subordinated to it but serves as a rationalization for the strictest bureaucratic regimenta tion of the prisoner...
...We have prisons, of course, but the prisoner is usually protected from starvation, unrestrained brutality, and pitiless economic explotation...
...From the point of view of the guards, the "real man" is "cooperative," since, unlike the "ball buster" his hostility is not overtly expressed...
...A prison is a one sex society, but the crucial consequence is not so much the sheer biological frustration or the guilt that results from succumbing to the numerous perversions that are a common feature of prison life...
...A heterosexual relationship is usually necessary for maintaining one's self image...
...For example, the warden of the New Jersey prison which formed the main basis of Sykes' valuable study, states that strict enforcement of the rules is more important for rehabilitation than the traditional means of education, psychological treatment, etc., because adherence to these regulations inevitably helps the individual to direct his behavior into socially approved channels...
...7'/z feet wide, and 10 feet high...
...Professor Gresham Sykes of Princeton University makes clear in a recent study of an American prison that focusing on the recent gains in raising the material conditions of prisoners is to miss the critical experience of imprisonment.* For even if the prisoner is more or less adequately fed and * The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison, by Gresham M. Sykes...
...it becomes increasingly difficult to withstand the "gorillas" and the "wolves...
...This "corruption" of the guards eventually grows to the point where both guards and prisoners are running the prison...
...The first is essentially "individualistic," and consists of a range of roles...
...This, in turn, gives each prisoner a measure of support in the fight to maintain his ego...
...individuals become more vulnerable to the "pains of imprisonment"—in short, tensions mount and the stage is set for a prison riot...
...the "wolves" and "punks," the homosexuals and their victims...
...But, reports Sykes, this ideal serves to support the prison status quo...
...These, in the prison argot, include the "rat," an informer...
...The "real man" is oriented to cooperation with the other prisoners, and, therefore, tends to promote group solidarity...
...Thus, at a loss of dignity, the prisoners gain a measure of autonomy...
...the "gorillas" and "merchants," who apply to their fel low prisoners the tactics of the hood lum and racketeer...
...The second adaptation takes as its ideal the "real man," the individual who "endures" by maintaining his identity through fortitude and icy selfcontrol...
...with their loss of influence group solidarity dissolves...
...But while the prison is not deliberately organized to destroy the prisoner's sense of humanity, simply by being a place in which men are denied their liberty it comes uncomfortably dose to achieving the same ends as the concentration camp...
...But this uneasy truce can continue only as long as the reality can be ignored...
...Providing explanations carries an implication that those who are ruled have a right to know," and this supposition would endanger the guards' belief in the legitimacy of their own power...
...3.75...
...Under this kind of regime the individual's image of himself as an adult is jeopardized by the attempt to control his every action as if he were a child...
...Princeton Univ...
...1958...
...does not create disorder by preying upon his fellows...
...Yet, like other bureaucracies, the formal presuppositions are contradicted by reality...
...and is an advocate of the benefits of "getting along by playing it cool...
...Yet they also seem a last despairing way in which the prisoner, living under conditions which deny his humanity, attempts to communicate to the rest of the society what one articulate "ball buster" shouted to his guards: "'I'm a man, to you, to you, to you, and to the warden out there in Front House and to everyone in this institution and in this world, I'm a man...
...The prison as a social system, Sykes shows, can maintain internal order only so long as power is shared with the inmate community...
...It is in terms of the damage to the individual's identity that the deprivations are significant...
...Some of the deprivations are tion camp remains a thing apart, a obvious: The largest cells in the New distinctive feature of totalitarian so- Jersey State Prison are 15 feet long, ciety...
...As Sykes describes them, prison riots are violent and destructive...
...an attempted escape frightens the administration—and the system is "tightened up" once more by a reimposition of the formal bureaucratic discipline...
...Eventually it must be acknowledged— a disgruntled guard talks to a newspaperman...
Vol. 6 • January 1959 • No. 1
