A propos of my “book review” of a prison guards memoir in my last post, I thought I would give some insight into what inmates think about prison rules are regulations and the people who “enforce” them.
Context: Every week some mid-level manager on the prison staff comes around to do an inspection of all the housing units. This involves walking around with a clipboard, looking officious, and rating each inmate housing unit on a scale of 1 to 10 on various criteria allegedly having to do with neatness and cleanliness. Seeing as housing units are roach-infested warehouses crowded to the point where one inmate with COVID means at least 75 inmates with COVID, the real reason for such inspections is not for hygienic reasons. Rather, it’s to try to enforce some sort of order and discipline on men who would rather not be ordered and disciplined. It’s a quasi-military approach toward a bunch of unwilling conscripts who would just as soon go AWOL and give aid and comfort to the enemy as listen to housekeeping tips. What could possibly go wrong? The prison offered a combination carrot/stick for compliance: the higher you finished in the inspection standings, the sooner you got to go over for your meal. They failed to see that this is much of an incentive. The prison rotated 1500 inmates through the dining facility in an hour. The food isn’t any different if you go to eat at 5 or 5:45. You don’t get seconds (even if you had that death wish). And the guards kick you out if they see you sitting at a table and not eating. It’s not as if anything is leisurely or tasty, so who cares if you go first, save for a surprisingly large portion of inmates whose particular psychological damage makes then feel as if being first for anything is somehow related to their worth as human beings? Great dinner companions, right?
At any rate, the F-2 Unit in the title had recently received a new unit counselor, whose job, in practice, is to oversee his subordinate watch officers and to process paperwork. Now, people outside the system tend to get fooled by the “counselor” title, but these aren’t — with one notable exception I can think of — the kind of people from whom you would seek any sort of sane or humane advice. By the way, the one exception I thought of got forced into retirement all the sudden one day; he was told he could retire then or take a pension cut when the new staff benefits program went into effect at the end of the month. He just turned around and walked out of the prison and never came back. Actually, a very sage way to start your retirement from this place. Anyway, the new counselor showed up on F-2 and while were were all a captive audience at afternoon head count, went on an aggressively hostile rant about how this unit, which is notorious for being absolutely nothing more than a warehouse for humans and housing humans who act accordingly, is going to, both literally and figurative, clean up its act. He came on like a movie drill sergeant, and that rousing talk prompted plenty of eye rolls, laughs, and cat calls, if nothing in the way of better living through total hygiene. He punctuated his rant by proclaiming, vis-a-vis inspection ranking I suppose, “I don’t dwell on the bottom.”
Then, one day, F-2 ranked first. There is no explaining cosmic mystery, but we do know that Skateboard took inspiration and produced this: