CONFINED​

There are two major themes that were found throughout the transcripts of the interviews: Dehumanization and Reclaiming of Dignity.



 

The Process of Dehumanization in Jail

 

        The theme of Dehumanization is a process, caused by physical confinement, mental confinement, and gender discrimination. I will first talk about a few distinct dehumanizing events that the study participants discussed with me, than I will explain the physical confinement they faced, the mental confinement they had to endure, and the gender discrimination that the women dealt with.

 

        As I previously explained, my concept of dehumanization is an over-arching classification of any event that strips the inmates of their basic human rights, such as the power to decide for themselves, or the protection from humiliation, or to self educate.

 

        My interview with David provided one of the most shocking discoveries in the life of an inmate. David told me about an incident between himself and one of the corrections officers:

               I had one guard that goes ‘What’s it going to take to push your buttons?’ I said ‘my f***ing   button is broke, you  
               can push it all you want you ain’t gunna get me to react…They try to get  one your nerves, get under your skin
               so you can f***ing yeah, tell ‘em you know…Yeah,  pretty much to f*** up and get a violation, yeah. Assault
              charge or whatever…


Keep in mind that this was a corrections officer that said this to him. It seems a little oxymoronic for a corrections officer to be encouraging criminal behavior. Unfortunately, I do not believe that this was a very unique situation. David emphasized a couple times that the guards do not seem to have proper training. I would have to agree with him if all of the guards treated the inmates like this!
 

        My interview with Danielle enlightened me on how careless and cruel the jail can be. The story she told me was humiliating:
 

               One time when I got my period, there weren’t any pads in the whole building. It didn’t matter if I  had money
              for pads or not, there weren’t any. So I stained my pants, right? I had to sit in my  soiled pants all day. They took
               forever to bring me new clothes. That was degrading, you know?


Just about any woman knows the embarrassment of getting her period and staining her pants. But to have to sit a whole day, in bloody clothes, without the protection of a pad or a tampon, is beyond words. The humiliation and degradation Danielle felt was worse than many people will ever encounter. It is one thing to stain your pants, or to be caught without a tampon and having to ask a stranger for one, but it is something completely different to be forced to sit in wet clothes all day, and to have to wait on someone else to bring you clean underwear. This story is more than humiliation. It is dehumanizing. It is not even legal to allow a dog to sit in a dog cage that is full of his own fecal matter – so why was it okay for the guards to let Danielle sit in her soiled pants for a whole day?
 

        From the interviews, I gathered that cleanliness was not a top priority for the jail to enforce. Danielle was telling me about a few of the things that the inmates had to buy, and informed me of this:

               Some women smelled so bad. Because they couldn’t afford soap. It’s ridiculous. If you didn’t  have the money,
               you just had to deal…


Not only was cleanliness apparently not an issue, neither was a healthy diet. Mary seemed flabbergasted about the food that was provided to her while she was in jail:

             How do you expect people to get healthy when they leave, or to continue to do better or get  better, if you’re feeding
             them all carbohydrates and not enough vegetables and no fresh air. It’s  crazy. It’s not human…


David commented briefly on the food, and the issue of maintaining a healthy weight:

              Food…gained a lot of weight because of the lack of activity. There was really no  physical, you  know, you
              couldn’t lift weights, you couldn’t go jogging. If you did lift weights that program  wasn’t going very long…


        If someone were to have complete control over another person, one would assume that a proper diet and exercise would be something to ensure. According to these statements, however, it does not seem to be the case. Yes, these people were criminals, but they were still human. Does the fact that they committed a crime override their basic human right to decent food and exercise?

        Aside from ensuring that a healthy diet is provided, medical care is another thing to keep in mind when another person is in your care. One of my participants mentioned a couple times that she was diabetic, so I asked her how the medical care was. She said it was fair, and then shared with me a couple stories about her encounters with the medical staff:
 

               I had to do three days in the city. It was huge, a lot of girls. They just gave me- what kind  of insulin did they give
               me – one kind of insulin, and they said you just get one shot- one  shot a  day. Or something and they weren’t
               going by what my body needs. That was scary. It depends on  where you’re at – it really does – it depends on
              what kind of place you’re at…

That is frightening, to have a medical condition that must be monitored at all times, and to be in a place where your medical condition is essentially ignored.  If that is not degrading, I do not know what is. Even when the medical condition is not life threatening, such as a headache, one would want to make sure that they get the medication they ask for. One time during her incarceration, Mary had a headache, and asked for an over-the-counter pain medication. This is what she had to say about that incident:

               …one time I was given the wrong medicine. I felt like I was screwed up like I was high or  something, and I said I    
               think someone gave me the wrong medicine. And all I was  supposed to have was Motrin or something…
              Medical treatment, I don’t know… they do  such  bare minimum. It’s bare minimum…

They do the “bare minimum”. That is alarming, especially if the person has a serious medical condition. I realize that these people were in jail, and to quote Mary: “it’s jail, not Yale”, but why are the inmates getting the “bare minimum” for medical treatment?.

        To summarize, I found that the inmates were stripped of all power. The power to bath. The power to change their dirty clothes. The power to ensure they eat a balanced diet and to take the correct medications when they need them. These are basic functions of a human being, and they were torn away from the participants I interviewed. The participants were humiliated, degraded, and were in an environment that tried to socialize them to become more criminal than they already were. At the end of her interview, I asked Danielle if she had anything that she wanted to add, and she told me that her time in jail was “the most traumatic time of her life. Even though I was only in for four months, I still have nightmares about it.”

Physical Confinement

 

        When we think of jail, one of the first thoughts is about the confinement. We know that in jail, you get locked up in a cage, and cannot leave until you are told to do so. One thing most of us do not think about, however, is what it is like for the people who are there. My participants Mary and Danielle spoke quite a bit about the physical confinement of jail. During Danielle’s interview, in reference to the jail, she said: “You feel like you’re rotting away in there.” Danielle also added:

 

               We didn’t have room at all. The unit was tiny and overcrowded. Day room wasn’t big enough to fit all everyone.
               It was so crowded all the time. You’d just go stir crazy.


        I deduced that because she emphasized so much that the jail was very tiny and crowded, it was one of the most influential aspects of jail. Living for weeks, even months, in cramped conditions is not something one would easily forget. Mary also made a comment about the size of the jail: “There were seventeen of us when I got there. I slept on the floor for one month.” Not only was the jail small to begin with, it was obviously over-crowded. So over-crowded, Mary had to sleep on the floor. It begs the question: How many other women had to sleep on the floor?

 

        Another problem with physical confinement at the jail was the ability to go outside. According to my participants, the women were supposed to be allowed to go outside for an hour a day, everyday. According to the women I interviewed, however, that was not the case. Mary told me, sounding truly sad: “…fresh air is so important. That was the thing I missed the most. I did not go outside enough...” She repeated her statement again, adding: “…not having enough fresh air, people need to be outside.”
 

        Fresh air is not something very many people would think about when they think of jail. It is something that most people take for granted. People who are free sometimes complain about going outside to clean the snow off their car, or to rake the leaves. We know that Mary will not ever take a refreshing walk down the street for granted again.



Mental Confinement

 

         When people are sent to correctional facilities, they are supposedly sent so they can reform, to rehabilitate, to learn the things they need to know in order to live a crime free life. At least that is what is implied by the word “correctional”. However, from what I have learned from the participants, they did not learn much in jail. The books that were available in the library were outdated, and in poor condition. Danielle told me:
               

               Every once in a blue moon you were allowed to go to the library to get a book. They didn’t even  have many    
               books to choose from either. The books were all ratty and in terrible shape…


David also mentioned the condition of the library books, saying:

               The library, old stuff nothing new. Nothing to better yourself. No educational nothing. No  computer classes
               nothing…

When I asked David if there were any programs that he would have like to have had available when he was incarcerated he told me:
 

                Well today’s a computer world, there should be some computers. There was one  computer, but  you couldn’t go
               onto the internet, you couldn’t do nothing. They had one…computer to 60 guys,  so how’s that work?


        There were no drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs available to two out of the three women I interviewed. For the men, there were drug rehabilitation counselors available, but it was very difficult to meet with them. When I asked David about the programs that were available, he told me:

              When I was in county they had a LADAC ** counselor, which most crimes in jail now-a-days are  drug and alcohol
              related. He was over booked. You couldn’t get in to see him when you needed  to. You didn’t even know if he got
               your request slip…

* *LADAC is an acronym for Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor; A LADAC provides “qualified alcohol abuse counseling, 

drug abuse counseling, combined alcohol and drug abuse counseling, counseling to families with substance abusing members,

 and counseling to  children of alcoholics.” (Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau 2009)**

The fact that this house of corrections had a drug and alcohol counselor available for the men is a good thing, but the down side of it was the men apparently had a very difficult time meeting with this counselor. According to the women, there were not any programs available at all for drug and alcohol related problems. Danielle explained to me that the women’s unit was not offered AA “or anything like that”. I asked her if AA would have been helpful, and she replied “Yes. NA too. Probably 90% of the women were on drugs.” Mary also shared:

               They didn’t have AA or NA or anything like that. And most of the people there were  addicted to something, so
               that wasn’t right. That was one of the first things I cried about when I  got there, because they didn’t have any
               meetings. That wasn’t right that they didn’t have  meetings.

        Kelly told me that AA was available to her when she was incarcerated, as well as a class to get a GED, so that is good, but not great. AA was apparently only available for a certain period of time, and the same goes for the GED program. When I asked Danielle if she spoke to the directors of the jail about getting AA or NA, she told me that they claimed that they were “understaffed” or they could not find a woman to run the program. No matter the excuse, it should have been available. Counseling should have been available as well, and when I asked the women if there was a counselor, they all said no. Mary explained that counseling “would have been helpful”, but she did not believe that what was said would have remained confidential.

 

        I learned many things when I  was asking the women about what programs were available, and there was one thing that stood out in particular: Gender Discrimination.

 

 

Gender Discrimination

 

        All three of the women I interviewed mentioned at least once that the women’s unit did not have as many programs, or things to do, as the men’s unit. When I asked Kelly if there were any programs that she would have liked to have available, but were not, she said:

               Well, they had like, um, an exercise room, or a work out room. But they only let the guys  do that.  The girls
               weren’t allowed to do that. And I thought we should have been allowed  to do that.  Yeah, like a weight lifting
               room, a exercise room for them and we didn’t get to do it…See it  wasn’t fair there because it was mostly guys
               and only a few women. We did get some time out  but the guys got more time out, than we did. I just thought it
               was so unfair. In that way.​

I asked Kelly if she had complained about this injustice, she said:

               Yeah, we did. But it didn’t do anything. We’d say “How come they get more time out than  we do?” ya know? I do
               remember saying stuff about that. We were always stuck inside. We did  get out but not as much as them.

Danielle also commented on the freedom of the men:

               Well men had free roam of the place. They even had a weight room to exercise. We were all  stuck in the unit all    
               the time. We didn’t have a place to exercise. Many times we  didn’t even get  outside rec, and we were supposed to
               get that everyday…

During Danielle’s interview, I asked her what programs she would have liked to have, and she replied:

               Just an opportunity, like the men, to help out like with laundry, the cleaning, the  kitchen…women were not given
               a chance to do anything like that…they didn’t give us the  opportunity to work…

Mary validated Danielle’s statement about how there were no jobs for the women at the jail:

               It was very hard, as a woman, to get a job. They didn’t have jobs for women; we had to push it…  yeah, and I
               was one of those people to really be like “why can’t we do mow this yard or why  can’t we…?” ya know…

        I understand that the women make up a vast minority in jail. It is a fact that there are not as many women in jail as there are men. What I do not understand is why these women do not have access to many of the things that are available for the male inmates. It is not fair, and it should not be legal.



       While the availability of things certainly matters to incarcerated women, I have concluded that, based on these interviews, this aspect of the experience had little impact on reform. When it came to living a crime-free life, it was all dependent on the mentality of the inmate.



 

Reclaiming of Dignity

        Reading through the transcripts, I came to the conclusion that the people I interviewed made the decision to live crime-free lives on their own. They had the right mentality. It did not really seem matter what was or was not available in jail; what mattered was their ambition to get better. They reclaimed their dignity. David put it quite well:

               It’s all up to the individual that’s in there and accepting why you’re in there. Not, it’s just all  personal, in my eyes. I’ve
               been the negative one and I’ve been the positive one…I went in with a  good attitude and I came out with a good
               attitude. Because I, I went into the programs of AA and  Narcotics Anonymous as soon as I got busted. On my will…

Mary also said that it was “all in the attitude”. She said to me:

               For myself, going there was, like I said my mentality was already positive…I accept it because I  know they don’t get it
               yet. I’ve got it. I know I’ve got it. I’m not going to go back out and use.  I’m not going to…You know, if people don’t get it
               though, they – I don’t know, you’ve just got  to be sick enough…to stop what they’re doing and stop blaming everyone
               else. Honestly, that’s  what it all comes down to…

       When people are sick enough, and realize they need help and they need it now, the help should be available in the jail. People should not have to wait for weeks, or months, to start going to counseling, or AA, or NA, or whatever they need to go to. The rehabilitative services should be available in the jail, so when the inmate accepts her actions, and realizes that she has no one to blame but herself, she can get the help. What I have learned from these five people was the jail does strongly influence the inmates, but unfortunately, the influence is not always a positive one.