Good Morning, 98567230. What can I do for you?
Good morning, sir. I am flattered to have the pleasure of being the first to greet you in your new appointment on behalf of your inmates.
All right. You aren’t my inmates; you are wards of the state. But my door will always be open. [Glancing down at a paper on his desk] Mr. ah Russell. Why have you requested this meeting?
Most people just call me Mike, sir. What I’m here about, sir, is helping to make your assignment here easier.
What makes you think you can do that, Mike?
Well, I am sort of in a manner of speaking the shop steward here, you might say. As chairman of the Inmate Council I thought I might explain to you how the system works.
The system? I was under the impression that it was my assignment to implement the existing system.
Of course, sir. Unquestionably. You’re in full charge. You have all the official statutes to back you up, a professionally trained staff, and even a National Guard with guns if you need them. There’s no doubt about who’s running the prison. On the other hand we do outnumber you roughly eight to one, and life for all of us will be pleasanter if we are agreed on certain basic rules of engagement.
Let me remind you that the rules already exist. Rules and regulations. Neither you nor I can change them. That’s for legislators to do.
But how they are interpreted in the cell-blocks, and how they are enforced, are day-to-day matters that we can control, sir. Don’t forget that we are all locked in here together. You for shifts of eight hours a day, we for the whole twenty-four. For those eight hours you are as much prisoners of the rules as we are. It’s a separate world from Outside. The customs are different. We need a set of procedures that we can agree on.
You are obviously an educated man, Mike. What put you here?
That’s not important, sir. What’s important is how we all get along during the hours we’re going to be spending together. Are we going to get along according to what both of us agree are the real facts on the ground, or according to what some politicians have concocted to guide the Corrections Department?
I think I see where you’re going. How about some specifics.
Well, for one thing, fairness. We are criminals, but that doesn’t make us stupid. We understand that this place is a safe haven. Outside, where you live, is a dangerous place. It has already, in a way, defeated us. From our point of view it has a variety of scary operators— predatory lenders, mortgage foreclosers, aggressive bill collectors, expensive schools, advertisers who teach your children that they must have Air Jordans instead of no-name sneakers, con men who tempt you with expensive offers to set you up to make hundreds of dollars an hour working from home on your cell phone once you have paid them for their worthless degrees, ridiculously expensive health insurance, even more ridiculously attractive automobiles, taxes that only go up and never down. Inside here we are sheltered from all that. We pay no taxes. We have free health care. We get three square meals a day. We pay no rent. The cable guy comes when we call. We have guards to protect us from the bad apples among us. We lead a secure life. It’s sort of a nanny culture, you might say. You, on the other hand, after your sixteen hours a day outside, struggling with all the uncertainties of constant capitalist competition, bring your anxieties to work with you when you come Inside, and you see how coddled we are by contrast, and this can tempt you into behavior we don’t need to give in to among ourselves — resentment against the impersonal injustice of society that you can if you wish take out in aggression against us outcasts. We have no defenders. It is not unusual for this to show up sometimes in the form of open warfare between screws and cons (forgive the jargon; they are standard expressions here) that just serves to make life more difficult for everybody.
Now I’m not so sure I know where we’re going.
Where we’re going, sir, is a defense of a carefully evolved division of labor evolved over a long period. Certain inmates among us are not as appreciative of our privileged lives as others. They have bad habits from their days Outside. And certain of your corrections officers have such overwhelming personal problems with their Outside lives that they bring them Inside and are only too happy for a chance to relieve their tensions with occasional rough, not to say sadistic, behavior. Both these types of transgressors require policing, and the deterrent of swift punishment. But if the policing and the punishment are administered only by your officers, that will naturally be resented by us prisoners, who will suspect that the referees are once again stacked against them, and will begin to behave in retaliatory ways that will disrupt the calm life all of us require for coexistence.
So what are you suggesting?
That you respect our self-administered justice system, sir, even though it may sometimes violate the letter of the official rules. We have enforcers whose methods might not meet Emily Post’s standards. Our enforcers are inclined to accept a certain amount of lawlessness as inevitable. Smuggling, for example. Especially of small tension-relieving items such as bongs or little one-shot whiskey bottles. Small victories over the rules can have a powerful peacekeeping effect, especially if they reinforce the informally established hierarchy of authority recognized among us inmates ourselves. A fist-fight or two can release a lot of built-up steam before it rises to the level of shivs made from spoons or attempts to take revenge on especially disrespectful screws. Allowing us to run our own unofficial system for defining justice and administering punishment can save you a lot of headaches, sir. Obviously this can’t extend to attempts to escape, or serious assassination attempts, and we wouldn’t try in those cases to interfere with whatever your rules say. But overlooking small offenses that serve to relieve tension by waiving some of the rules against, say, disrespectful answers to guards, or deliberately slow observance of orders seen by prisoners as unwarranted, are best judged not by strict enforcement, but by their usefulness in keeping the peace. I urge you, therefore, not to spoil the start of your tenure here by being overeager.
Or without consulting you, Mr. Russell?
Or without consulting me, Warden. On behalf of the inmates, welcome you to our mutual prison.
I thank you for your advice. I will keep it in mind.
Thank you, sir. In Rick’s immortal words, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Vance Weaver 