-United States Department of Justice
AS of Thursday, May 19, 2016, there are 6,851,000 people in American prisons. This country has had the highest incarceration rate in the world since 2002.
Somewhere, in a cell in Pennsylvania, my father amounts to a tally in this statistic. He, like many, understood the world in numbers. To him, this meant there are 7 million people with which he would have to compete for dwindling opportunities.
In prison, he learned the systems of bartering. The men traded dried fish as a means of currency. A man’s biggest prize was his cell phone, which every inmate kept stowed in his bunk. This was against the rules, but the strict and bureaucratic mail system proved to be a terribly inefficient mode of conversation. Without any private or timely way of communicating with the outside world, men resorted to keeping communication contraband. My father spoke of the whispers that arose after sundown,
“After the lights go out, all the guys huddle around their beds and call home. I’ll hear ‘em crying to their girlfriends and making promises. The nights are filled with guys trying to reach outside the only way they can.”
One can imagine the thousands of secret calls, hidden strings from inside the cell, stretching out into the surrounding neighborhoods. The prison has a reach. It grabs those around it and leaves those trapped within it forever marked by their captivity. In the communities around prisons, my father speaks of the criminal networks smuggling goods into the penitentiary while the world sleeps. By day, those smugglers helped maintain the economy with regular 9-to-5s. Hypocritically, those very individuals have discriminatory hiring practices towards those with a criminal record. This, in turn, pushes ex-cons back down a path of deviance. Though it was made illegal to discriminate against a person for having a criminal conviction through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this was difficult to enforce, and many instances of anomie exacerbated their likelihood of turning to crime once again.
IN prison, the warden rules. Previous means of attaining success become irrelevant – in prison there are no banks, no brokers, no regular means of accumulating capital. Given this, prisoners become amateur “MacGyvers”, fashioning makeshift currencies, institutions, and businesses. Though the U.S. Correctional System aims to dismantle systemic and personal deviance, in reality, it is the perfect climate for a vast criminal ecosystem.
My dad often spoke of MacGyver before he went to prison the first time. He considered him to be the epitome of masculine success – “MacGyver” was about an agent of the same name who never carried a gun and used pure genius and innovation to rapidly improvise weapons out of basic things. The show gained a decent following, and the impression it left on my father was evident – MacGyver seemed to prove that wit and work promised results. In prison, a sea of vigilante MacGyvers make use of their limited modes of attaining success in a Mertonion effort to obtain the American Dream.
THE prevalence of Mertonion genius in evading limitations imposed by authority is vibrant around the U.S. correctional system. Inmates who don’t have a form of amassing wealth agree on a market system where dried fish serve as currency, and this allows for services and goods to be bought and traded. Inmates leverage any opportunity to improve the prison experience, to the extent that relationships become commodified. Pressure to provide for those still relying on inmates, who were often unfairly imprisoned or over-sentenced, made detainees go to dangerous lengths. It isn’t possible to personally run businesses from within the prison, because the strict censorship of material going in and out of security prevented anything beyond rudimentary communication. It could take many weeks for a letter to reach an inmate, and a long time for an inmate to have their response approved, mailed, and delivered. As such, inmates deviated from the rules and found other means of making money beyond snail mail. Through illegal cell phones, currencies, code, and the black market/dealing, criminals attempt to clear the wreckage of their mistakes.
Robert K. Merton theorized that the existence of a cultural ideal that is also unattainable leads to anomie. In awareness of this, and to avoid it, groups of people referred to as “innovators” deviate from the culturally accepted means of obtaining success. Unfortunately, the intersection of Mertonian Innovation and the American dream results in deviation from the law, and policy-wise, overreach of the law will only lead to further deviation.
ONCE a man is detained, his life and self-identity changes forever. He is no longer Robert, but rather an inmate or an ex-con. He is redefined by this new label, which casts a shadow of seeming aggression, violence, and opposition to authority, even when individuals have no trace of these traits. The stigma of prison forces newly released correctional subjects to deviate from the law, though this is out of desperation as they attempt to innovate ways to rebuild their capital and lives. Unfortunately, these innovators are also aware of their bootleg businesses’ path to confinement. Many operate with the awareness that they will eventually likely be caught again; prisoners hope that, by this time, they will have provided their families with enough to survive and sustain themselves. They simply don’t have the time, resources, or reputation to rebuild by conventional means, lest those relying on them suffer. Ironically, the very place intended to correct individuals forces them further down a path of deviancy. Feeling as if they have no other option, as men try to pay for multiple children’s colleges, mortgages, and general expenses, they move to underground means of making money. Prison marks a period of time where inmates can’t amass wealth, run their prior businesses, or financially provide for their families. Oftentimes they spend copious amounts of money on legal fees. The resulting situation, where they are left waiting for release, feels “less like a pause and more like a loss”, as my father has called it. In the scramble to make up for lost time amidst many social and occupational obstacles, inmates will turn to illegal means to attain the American Dream.
MY father began running Newport Olympia from within the prison during his first sentence. He claimed it was for real estate, and spoke of the calls he made from both personal and penitentiary phones. His stashed cell-phone and heavy reliance on jovial networking allowed him to form a sort of enterprise,
“I tell you, the Chef takes care of me. I don’t even have to put in work, it’s all just fun. You joke with the guys, you ask how the ladies are at home – how are the mistresses, girlfriends, kids, you know. They give you updates and you laugh, maybe talk about lunch. Then you mention a little business. Finish with a good joke.”
Behind the walls of the prison, networking is not as easy as having a business lunch with a client. All discussion of money must be done covertly and all mail to the outside written in very discreet code; security thoroughly searched every letter, and even little details like lipstick stains could prevent a letter from being allowed through,
“The guards know the signs. Guys have had lipstick laced with LSD brought into the Pen [penitentiary] by having it disguised as a kiss from back home. The stuff they come up with. You wouldn’t believe it. They have a whole code.”
This code allows correctional subjects to communicate with one another, and the outside world, without detection from authority. For reference, words like “low” and “light” were used in place of marijuana, in a sentence like, “I feel low” or “needing to see the light”. Though there was intense security, attempts to prevent inmates from doing business always ultimately failed. The demand for illegal substances, like cigarettes and alcohol, proved too tempting of an opportunity for desperate jailbirds to let pass. So, as authority figures slowly discover illegal enterprises, new ones emerge to fill their absence.
Some, like my father, choose to create illegal businesses designed to work outside the walls from within the walls. Though he did not make profit during his sentence, he was able to lay the foundation for an income after his release. Not long after he was allowed to begin living in a halfway house, when we were juniors, he invited my brother and I to a boat show to bond. Speaking of his vision of the future, he told us his plan,
“By May of next year, I’m gonna have enough to pay for both of your colleges.”
The funding of our education proved significant because the fallout of my father’s sentence prevented my mother from keeping a job in our town, and his bad credit sabotaged hers to the extent that she could not take out loans. This was not uncommon in the penitentiary. Inmates’ crimes virtually always had some form of impact on the family, be it socially, economically, or emotionally. Their guilt and struggle to maintain a position of leadership from behind the walls drove them to take unconventional, illegal routes. During my visits in middle school after my father’s first sentence, I recall the murmur of other reuniting families as they sat in the waiting room. Sometimes the prisoner’s significant others seemed happy, but most spoke in aggravated tones and frustratedly spoke of their struggle when their children went to get snacks from the vending machines. After a family member is incarcerated, and the community discovers, members are often socially ostracized by association. There is the notion that family would have known or was a part of the crime. This can affect schooling, occupations, social support, and church affiliation. At the very least, it almost always guarantees the loss of part of the family’s income, which can have a catastrophic effect on the trajectory of their children’s lives. More than 2.7 million children have an incarcerated parent, and there are more than 1.1 million incarcerated fathers. These children often lose an important source of parental income. Even after release, the stigma of imprisonment follows them as they try to re-enter the workforce. Ironically, the very people pushing back against criminal records have been pivotal in helping smuggle goods into the Penitentiary at night,
“[The townspeople] sneak in right before the dawn and sneak whatever you want under or through the fence. Cigs, drink, and pills are the easiest, and those are like gold. Those can get you anything.”
Without the aid of the townspeople, parts of the supply and demand chain would be disrupted, thus unbalancing the delicate financial ecosystem. If the townspeople were suddenly to stop helping smuggle goods, prisoners would have to innovate new means of obtaining contraband. In times of scarcity of connection to outside smugglers, inmates bribed guards with little offers or befriended staff in the hopes of getting a piece of gum or two, though high security limited the commonality of this exchange. One could imagine that if total contact with the townspeople were to be severed, prisoners would rely more heavily on bribery and friendship with guards.
WHEN my father promised us he would make the funds to cover our college education, he was lingering behind a long, slick speedboat. He glanced at the helm with a wistful sheen in his eyes. As a boy who had grown up by the ocean, he loved sailing ships and spent as much of his free time as possible fishing. He dreamed of buying his mother a house on the coast, himself an equally nice local home, and spending his days sailing the seas and doing real estate. The slivers of his American dream weave themselves into points in his conversation. My father mentions his fond moments spent catching minnows in Montauk and throwing back shrimp cocktails with clients. Somewhere, deep down, this dream lingers within him. It gave fuel to the fire that eventually sent him back to the cell he was struggling so hard to transcend. As long as the possibility of attaining the things he had dreamed of existed, with hard work, he could succeed. Such thinking was common in the prison. Men boasted to one another about the luxurious lives they would lead after they finished serving time,
“Sometimes my buddies tell me stories about their girlfriends – some have three they’re juggling at once. Mixing up names, gifts, all that. Homes for all three, kids with two. No one knows if any of it’s true but it’s hysterical.”
These ideas, though crude, are reminiscent of the idealized American family; individuals have money, a spouse, and children, who live comfortably. The dissonance between the attainability of this dream by inmates creates a sense of anomie, or normlessness. Though they feel culturally compelled to seek this ideal, all the acceptable modes of achieving it are unaccessible for ex-cons. Those who have served time face discrimination from employers; after two months, only 31% of inmates are able to find jobs, and most of those jobs are in construction and manual labor. With a median hourly wage of $8, convicts are barely able to provide for themselves, let alone their families. This pushes them to increasingly deviant behavior as they attempt to find some means of alleviating anomie. Without stable employment, it is difficult for ex-criminal to re-enter society. More than 90% of companies rely on background checks when hiring employees, and this leads to widespread discrimination for convicts. With this in mind, and with the awareness that he would have to be competing for an already strictly limited amount of jobs, my father began dealing.
THE Post Office first noticed the smell, ripe and dank, on a cold Winter day. Suspecting drugs, a postal inspections officer interviewed him, and he gave written consent to have his packages searched. My father’s packages contained 112 vials of hashish and 10 kilos of marijuana that he had purchased for $60,000. In a moment, his growing business screeched to a halt. A week later, he was arrested at his home by a SWAT team.
His girlfriend called me on the phone to deliver the news a few weeks later, right before Christmas. I was a senior in high school and had just applied to colleges. As a young child, I dreamed of attending Duke University and studying neuroscience. My father knew of my aspirations, and was acutely aware of the burden he carried in amending for his absence by paying for my college education.
In her phone call, she told me that one day he walked in with a ghostly pallor. Brushing her off, she didn’t find out his worries until an armed squad knocked on her door a week later to arrest him. When she called, she explained why he did it,
“He just wanted to do good by you guys. He couldn’t make money anywhere else. No one would hire a 60 year old guy who spent seven years in jail. He didn’t have the money to start off and make more with. He was doing his best in his circumstances, and he didn’t mean for this to happen.”
The Western cultural ideal is to have a home, an income, perhaps an education, and be able to provide for one’s family with hard work. This was not an option for my father, who experienced constant rejection as he applied for menial jobs at fast-food restaurants and gas stations. Despite his best efforts, he saw no other way to be able to pay for his children’s college educations, and to fail to do so would be a mockery of the American Dream. In a bid to fix the normlessness of his experience, he turned to trafficking drugs. The prison experience is already dehumanizing and can erase one’s sense of identity and control, so the normlessness of societal limitations after release only adds fuel to an already raging fire. Inmates can’t decide when they go outside, what exactly they eat, when to sleep, when to wake up, or when to leave. It takes previously autonomous adults and reverts them back to a child-like state. With so few means of creating society’s vision of success, and so little control over their lives and environment, it is easier to move in an illegal direction. The American Dream is to Americans as Salvation is to Catholics; one will toil their entire life, and try endless means, to achieve an end that can’t be guaranteed. Americans chase pecuniary success amidst a sea of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and systemic inequality. Even beyond the walls of the Penitentiary, limitations lead people to innovate means of achieving the end they desire, though it is notable that the very place intended to correct deviation simply produces more of it.
IN a way, the prison experience is indicative of humanity’s need to standardize and organize, to create systems within communities despite limitations. It is also indicative of the immense failure of law enforcement to provide inmates with opportunities to lawfully provide for their families. The weight of their families’ well-being is a heavy burden to bear, and without programs to help carry some of the load, prisoners can be sucked into wrongdoing. The question becomes, does the responsibility for this wrongdoing fall on the offending individuals, or on the larger collective for contributing to a culture that idealizes a certain lifestyle while making it unattainable or unrealistic for most? Is it ethical to further criminalize an individual for using the only mode of adaptation available to them? An enduring condition of the social order is the difference between what America defines success to be, and how possible it is to obtain that success. Until this issue is addressed and amended, deviance will continue to emerge. My father, the defendant, is a totally different person as a result of being incarcerated. The life-changing and life-improving process was used to make the most of every day, but he paid for his innovation.