He learnt how men can consider other men as beasts. And that the easiest way to get along with such men was to be a beast. A clean face, an open face, an eye raised to meet an eye, these drew attention and attention drawn brought punishment. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
In this paper I will be discussing the semiotic aspects of space and how the spatial reality of the criminal's environment determines patterns of socialisation and communication within his existential world - with consequences for society in general. This spatial reality is examined within the framework of four basic units: the 'slot', or cell (incorporating standard and segregation cells); the yard (incorporating individual, group and racial territories); the parade areas (incorporating discipline and workshop demarcations); the staff offices (spatial distance in professional discourse).
Prison is cut off from the rest of society by four concrete walls. Within those walls are walls within walls. And the whole cellular block system pivots around the 'slot', as a wheel pivots around a hub. This analogy is obvious and concrete when examining those prisons built on the star structure, but it is equally valid in all cases. In the final analysis it is the slot where all 'crims' (criminal inmates) are kept, it is the custodial soul around which the institutional body is built -around which all institutional functions, and hence thought processes, inevitably revolve. Everything is slotted into place!
The Slot
Once a crim enters prison his actions are no longer perceived as those of a living, breathing human being. He enters as a criminal, a defaced binary entity that has been reduced by the courts and media to the raw fabric of his crime: he is what his crime is - within his new environment all eyes will watch, analyse, prophesy, project, that raw deviance onto his every act. If he gets angry over anything it can be traced to his essential criminalness; repressed tendencies, thus a sign of his criminality; unresolved guilt, thus clinging to his 'deviance'. He isn't allowed to be an angry man - just a criminal. Thus at the hub of the prison are the crims' slots, their concrete tombs, solid, verifiable, three metres by two metres. But these tombs, these final social mausoleums into which
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the contagious essence of criminality is compacted and hermetically sealed with heavy iron-bound doors, becomes the crim's womb - his egocentric preserve within which the constant negating reality of prison cannot intrude and where he can begin reconstituting his gnawed and ravaged image of self-worth.
To the crim his slot is a symbol of himself. Once the day has wound itself out and the heavy door slams on the world, he places his physical body into a state of suspended animation and gives rein to his inner self. He arranges his slot so that his 'shit-tub' (toilet bucket) is in the diagonally opposite corner to his sleeping head, thus avoiding psychological defilement - an increased threat to him due to his low social image. He quickly learns and appreciates the crim taboo against shitting in the bucket because of the pervading stench that not only contaminates his sacred area, but also exposes him to the displeasure of other crims when emptying the bucket into the drainage sump at the first morning unlock. This distaste towards defecation is not a unique criminal trait; it and all the other spatial features I will be discussing in this paper are common:
It should be noted that bodily excreta that become matters for befoulment or self-contamination typically start out as a part of the body that is not self-defiling, not, as is said, ego-alien. It is shortly after leaving the body that these materials become somehow transformed in character, acquiring the power to befoul. (Goffman: 1971,53)
The crim tends to maintain his slot in a high standard of cleanliness, with most long-termers becoming almost obsessive - not out of an inherently criminal psychosis, as many psychologists try to argue (projecting their theories rather than understanding the relevancies) - but rather, because their image of self-worth is horrendously eroded throughout the years. Their sanctuary needs to be a counterbalancing force to the grime, filth and stench, the low or negative atmosphere of their environment contaminating their ego.
A strong emphasis on good 'mocka' ('boob' or prison clothing) is also vital here, as boob mocka is re-cycled, stained, worn, torn and often poorly washed or repaired. Thus the crim endeavours to 'rort' (barter, exchange, undermine the rules) new mocka: shoes made up in the prison bootshop; clothing from the tailor shop; belt from the boot-shop; underwear from the laundry. He washes them himself in the yard and he irons them, when no iron is available in the workshop, by placing them between the mattress and bed. In this way, good mocka not only maintains a good reflection of self-worth, but also avoids befoulment: not a symbol of arrogance as the myths propagate.
Within his cell the crim also acquires, repairs or rorts himself new liture, often polishing the floor, arranging things within a spatial lection of functional-fantastic dimensions.
That is: he brackets off one corner as his study; another as the kitchen; bedroom; storeroom; toilet. Where extra furniture is forbidden, although it has become
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popular to encourage interior decorating (as the administrators see it, purely as a bargaining chip in "managerial situations" a euphemism for punishment), the smallest item can come to take on the most monumental importance: an old teaspoon, secreted away despite the threat of punishment; a matchwork frame for the photo of a loved one, etc.
In addition to his furniture, the crim also accrues numerous trivia that reflects his image of self. For example, he may have legal papers and files, books and press clippings, maintaining an image of himself not as a deviate, but as just another human being lost in the machinery of prison. Each crim brings his 'outside' (outside of prison, prior to conviction) image into existence, alive in the things around his slot and he builds on it, becoming almost a caricature of his former self. The slots become a regular rabbit warren, a treasure house of character types a library where the initiated eye looks for clues, signs, as to what speciality each retains or is developing.
Another form of decoration is, inevitably, the pin-up, and again, it reflects something about the crim himself. If pin-ups reduce women down into sex-objects in the outside world, they go one step further in the nick. The crim explores his own sexuality in conjunction with his overall self exploration (the psychological, sociological interactions and resolutions with his peers in the yard and prison staff). He projects into the empty sex-object his own convoluted sexuality, providing a veritable visual orgy for the analyst, who may ponder the massive mammeries, the pout between spread buttocks, or the arrangement of petals in a montage of genitalia. It is an integral part, a coming to grips (no pun intended), with his integrated, overall knowledge of self.
Stacked away in his cupboards, under his bunk, the crim stocks his slot with numerous goods - he becomes a veritable magpie. He hoards everything, as everything is in scarcity. But more importantly, the time continuum of prison (see my paper "Doing Time" in Australian Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol.1.1) reaches back into a bleak history. The collective crim memory knows the diffuse and arbitrary changes in rules (wherein administrators allow certain items on the canteen, then ban them, or reduce the aims' buying power, etc.), or punishments (wherein aims are denied canteen spends), or those periods in history when aims were denied everything but meagre rations. Further, the self-sufficiency, whereby the crim doesn't have to eat boob meals, but can prepare his own from a tin, increases his image of self as an independent human being. It allows him to make responsible choices, building up little shopping lists, storing things away, rationing and managing his own affairs - whereas everything else in the prison functions to deprive him of such responsibility. He maintains an affluent reflection of self-worth. And yet, even as he does so, preserving this one wealth of sef-determination, he pays a price the 'screws' (prison officers) then ride him, insinuating and often openly accusing him, of stock-piling ill-gotten gains; things acquired by
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‘standing over' (threatening) other crims, or profits from the 'book' running the yard's book-making; gambling, etc.).
In this way, once the door slams behind him, the crim wraps himself in a cocoon of revitalising reflections. The spatial arrangement of the slot allows him to lie on his bunk and concretise its reflections with fantasy. Thus the slot becomes his personal space.
Personal space: the space surrounding an individual, anywhere within which an entering by another causes the individual to feel encroached upon, leading him to show displeasure and sometimes withdraw. A contour, not a sphere, is involved, the spatial demands directly in front of the face being larger than at the back.
(Goffman:1971,30)
From his bunk, the crim angles himself so that the frontal contour fills the larger space between him and the door - the door with its visually defouling, anal shaped, 'judas hole' (peep-hole for routine checks by he screws). Along that contour's outer perimeter his senses ride shotgun. That is, he is always alert for the approach of either a regular check, or a 'slug slewer' (a screw who derives satisfaction by peeping secretively at a masturbating crim). But within the con tour proper, his fantasies run rife. The pin-ups on the wall generate an unreality that becomes a potential reality. That is: having never owned a motorcycle, a crim can pin up a picture of one, ride it in his fantasies, never having to contend with oil-leaks, etc. The inherent dangers in this manifest themselves on his release, but for now, he becomes more than the sum of his crimes - in his cell he is free of that negation.
Because a aim's slot is an extension of his body space, his ego-centric reserve and only sanctuary, invasions of that space cause great agitation. Crims accept the fact their slots must be 'tipped up' or 'ramped' (searched thoroughly for contraband): but it doesn't mean they like it any more than the average citizen likes it when an uninvited guest urinates in the clothes closet at a party etc. When a screw drops |cigarette ash on the crim's floor, or fills the slot with smoke just prior to 'slouring up' (slammingand locking the door), particularly when the crim is a non-smoker, it can leave that crim tense and irritable for hours afterwards. Further, when the screws do a ramp and vandalise his possessions (such as tearing up the photos of loved ones, ripping up letters, stealing books, etc.), leaving the slot in a mess, it can create the very ignition necessary for a riot - and such ramps are always found to have occurred just prior to 'jack-ups' (riots). To the crim it feels as though they have stuck a rusting wire coat-hanger up into the womb of his fragile self, twisting, bleeding, aborting what precious life he has left. Thus the crims enforce their own laws governing the act of 'peter thieving' (crims stealing out of each other's peter or slot - but also designating general petty theft), ready to deliver swift and unmerciful punishment.
The bizarre mentality which tolerates or even encourages violent
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ramping is the same mind that seeks to 'eradicate', suppress and lobotomise all traces of the crim's deviance a psychosis generated not in the crim but in the exterminator's reductionist projections. Where such gratuitous exercises against the crim are condoned there tends to exist a unique type of slot - the 'tracks' (intractable section or total segregation in solitary confinement for 'incurable' criminals). Once the crim has been placed in the tracks, usually for reacting violently to other negations and invasions of his self-worth, he is subjected to unrelenting scrutiny and destruction of his ego-centricity. Totally deprived sensorily in a pastel-shaded concrete room and exercise yard, peered at through cage bars or infirmary glass, relentlessly subjected to mental cruelties (such as being constantly accused of: leaving marks on the floor from his footprints; being responsible for the lack of a button on a shirt supplied by the screws; having contraband planted and then discovered in his room), often physically beaten at sadistic whim, denied inter-personal communication, denied material furniture or goods as a reflection of self, the crim's ego is totally invaded. His sense of self-worth implodes like a shrinking star, a black hole that pulls every thing around it down into the void. The tiniest material objects (a hidden matchstick of no obvious value to anyone else) take on frightening value, whilst his personal space expands to fill the whole track section (slot and yard) -his defensive perimeters, his surveillance system, his survival depends on it being so. And as the screws, administrators, psychologists and other 'specialists' make their periodic assessment of the crim's progress, they note his agitation, violent defensive reactions at their entrance, and refer to the mind-boggling, mumbo-jumbo of those textbooks which read such semiotics into the convoluted argument that runs: violent men are put into tracks because they are violent (or otherwise 'intractable'), such men obviously require more body-space, thus inherent violence goes hand in glove with expanded personal space! Everything, all responsibility, is firmly relocated back within the crim's deviance!
This expansion of body-space to compensate for a ravaged self-worth is not unique to crims placed in tracks (although it is obviously heightened and compounded under those conditions). A crim leaving the 'pound' or 'chokey' (punishment solitary confinement), and all long term crims experience the same phenomenon. Whenever a new crim, visitor, psychologist, screw, whoever, approaches the long termer they are naively unaware of their threatening encroachment. They stand no closer than in normal outside communication, but they notice the crim becoming agitated, distressed, often angry or hostile. The crim finds himself becoming abrasive, dismissing the other as a person and communicating nothing but the threat he feels. This can develop into a critical situation once the crim is released from prison it he isn't aware of the situation himself - relying instead on an emotional reaction. Some arrogant, threatening person who charges in upon the crim in an abusive and threatening way, particularly if it is coupled
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with a denial of some request by that crim, may well find himself on the floor with a knife in the stomach and asking: 'why?
II
The Yard
Territories vary in terms of their organisation. Some are 'fixed'; they are staked out geographically and attached to one claimant, his claim being supported often by the law and its courts. Fields, yards, and houses are examples. Some are 'situational'; they are a part of the fixed equipment in the setting (whether publicly or privately owned), but are made available to the populace in the form of claimed goods while-in-use. Temporary tenancy is perceived to be involved, measured in seconds, minutes or hours, informally exerted, raising constant questions as to when the claim begins and when it terminates. Park benches and restaurant tables are examples. Finally, there are 'egocentric' preserves which move around with the claimant, he being in the centre. They are typically, (but not necessarily) claimed long term. Purses are an example.
(Goffman: 1971,29)
The main territorial claims within the yard are: walking claims; shed claims; general claims (including interpersonal relationships); eye claims; and aboriginal (black versus white) claims. Each incorporates aspects of fixed, situational and egocentric preserves. They exist together in the subterranean pit that is the yard. It grows out from the side of the cell block, one of many spokes attached to the hub, it buries into the earth and throws its walls up to the sky. The walls, a black hot tar-skin stretched too tightly across unseen earth, the sky: unmercifully rhot, bitterly cold, that is the yard. From wall to wall, bouncing, richocheting, folding the gaze ever inward, that is the yard. Fifty metres by forty metres, sewerage drains down one side, toilets and rubbish bins across the back, globs of spittle, cigarette butts, paper, garbage everywhere, another space down the other side; an observation grill for the eternal authoritative eye is buried into the soul of the cell block and an open-sided shed in the middle - that is the yard. Space is at a premium, nothing exists beyond the yard.
Walking Claims
The one open, unobstructed walkway down the side of shed and yard, away from sewerage and toilet contamination, is blue ribbon territory. Across the back, between rubbish bins, toilets and shed, is the red ribbon territory. Down the other side, between open sewerage, under close scrutiny of screws in the observation grill and shed, is the yellow ribbon territory. The blue ribbon (my term, not boob talk) turf is held by the long-termers, the 'old lags' (old crims). The yellow ribbon turf is held by the new chums, just-sentenced crims. The red ribbon turf is occupied by those moving between. And that arrangement is a mutual arrangement, not built on power or violence as the myths would propagate, but rather, on rites of passage. Suffice it to say, in this paper, that when a new crim enters prison he doesn't see himself as a criminal - his image of self is still intact, shored up by loved ones
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who instruct him on the weekly visit 'not to get involved, contaminated, by all those recidivists and hardened types'! In time, as his self-worth is ground down, he turns to the other crims in a bid to both resolve his own criminality and attain affirming communication of his self-worth. Thus, when the crim first enters the yard, it suits him to stay close to the observation grills, close to the door out - the link with the outside. In time he moves further from the observation grill, knowing it now for what it is: not the door out, but the eternally negating eye. But because space is at a premium, his graduation to blue ribbon turf is dependent not just on how long he has served, but also on a myriad of other factors - which are outside the scope of this particular paper. Thus it is, the spatial relationship between observation grill and blue ribbon turf provides a wealth of semiotic clues as to a crim's progress and survival through prison.
A crim, therefore, utilises the walking claims for that sole purpose - a court system, unspoken, often non-conscious, judges and enforces the common crim code. The crim paces his turf, a precise path, twenty metres long, stop, turn in precision, twenty metres back, stop, turn: back and forth. His pathway is, initially, a situational claim, public space made private through occupation, but once it has become so, it is fixed. It is his turf, no invasion will be tolerated. His line of travel is imprinted into his mind, every shade and contour of the tar track is computed to the nearest square inch, ensuring maximum space for all crims who want to ‘pickle and pork'(walk). In ones, twos, groups, the crims sweep up and down, up and down, threading past, through each other, a whole grey fleet of mine-sweepers on a sullen black sea.
The importance of these walking claims resides in the unique psychological benefits they provide. The body becomes tired, running on automation, whilst the mind relaxes beneath the rhythmic beat, until a quiet oblivion, hyponotichaze, settles over the conscious mind and an incredible clarity of thought emerges. Lost within his rhythmic beat, the crim rises up, transcends the suffocating walls and eternal eye of negation, finding freedom to create: fantasy that comes alive; artistic structures, sentences; self and social analysis; but also, a unique power of prediction, prophecy based on phenomenological reduction, drawing on signs, letters, slips-of-the tongue, Freudian slips, information provided by visitors, the mass media, the temporal library of prison (cf. 'Doing Time'). Thus the crim soon puts together character profiles on hundreds of people, knowing the inadequacies and strengths of both their personal views and their philosophy of role.
Having claimed his turf as a fixed possession, the crim is annoyed and frustrated whenever new chums walk across his path - the unspoken law stipulates walkers have the right-of-way, they travel a priority highway, the road to transcendental freedom. Further, some new crims attempt to intrude on his turf, walking along the same, the precise path, but swerving in and out of walkers like a drunken driver, or they seat themselves conveniently in the sunshine, right in the midst
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of the walkers' busy highway. The consequences of such behaviour are obvious, as on any highway; a collision is inevitable! An old crim may simply 'pull their coat' (pull them up and let them know the law), or give them the mail' (tell them straight out, in no uncertain terms). Or, the older crims may aim their shoulder sat the intruder's chest, meeting him head-on, smashing him off the road, marching heavily straight over the sunbathers, treading on their legs and backs, fixing them with a glare that lets them know: you've broken the law and if you want to do something about this rough justice we'll be happy to accommodate you! Thus through their claims, the semiotics of the prison yard, the
crims begin to structure their own laws and justice, coming to understand the function of such structures for what they are, instead of seeing them only as the pain-inducing hypocrisies they have suffered under all their lives.
Having established his turf a crim may be suddenly plunged into doubt and trepidation when another respected crim makes his return from an outstation (prison farm), or is under new sentence, and lays claim to the same strip of turf. The crim isn' t conscious of why he feels hostility toward this intruder, but subconsciously feels the intruder is taking him lightly, treating him without due respect, denying him his true crim status, until one day a collision in walking is inevitable. It is only then they both realise that, whereas the current turf-holder perceives the walk-way as his, the intruder, the returned crim, held the same turf years before and unconsciously slipped back into the habit perceiving himself as the aggrieved person in the affair!
It is whilst walking that bad blood tends to come out. That is, two men who have 'fallen out' (have come to blows previously, or at least have 'declared' - voiced publicly - their mutual dislike) and share a mutual animosity that extends a long way back into slights, insults, bagging (talking behind the other's back), insinuations, find things dawn to a head whilst walking. Continually passing each other, they both are denied the soothing mesmerism sought in walking - driven back into the brute reality of prison, continually confronting their enemy, they are drawn inexorably together in a physical clash. Thus they come to blows or even to death.
Shed Claims
The shed is divided into high, middle and low status areas: blue, red and yellow ribbon territories based on the same boundaries as the yard. That is, a table and benches run down the centre, the corner closest to the observation grill is terrain held by new chums and low status crims who may need the screws' protective gaze (e.g. 'el grecos' - seckos, or sex offenders, 'tamperers' - child molesters, 'chocolate frogs', 'dogs' -informers), while the furthermost corner is terrain held by 'staunch' or solid' crims (those who know and respect the common code). The 'able is used for card games, chess and the like, with established schools holding certain fixed claims (usually on weekends only). Thus,
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whereas walking space tends to be held on an individual basis, shed claims tend to fall within the control of 'withs':
A party of more than one whose members are perceived to be 'together'. They maintain some kind of ecological proximity, ensuring the closeness that ordinarily permits easy conversation and the exclusion of non-members who otherwise might intercept talk. At least one member, and usually all, has the right to initiate talk within the with at will.
(Goffman: 1971, 19)
The first problem the crim realises, when it comes to existing in the social withs possible in the yard, is that it adds fuel to the eternal negative eye that is always upon him. He learns the boob truism, that: if you're by yourself they (screws, other staff etc.) claim you are brooding and plotting revenge; if you're two out they claim you are a pair of poofters; if you're three out they reckon you are a gang of stand over merchants; and, if you're four or more, they reckon you are a riotous gathering - it's a no win situation! But he also knows, that within an institution whose every function is to pinpoint and eradicate the deviances they perceive as inherent in his every move (the screws aim for the flesh, the 'trickcyclists' aim for the mind - identical forces), cut off from family and loved ones, denied any other meaningful communication and social interaction, he must, inevitably, come to share a with.
Although there may be no communication between the high status and low status withs, the blue and yellow ribbon territorial claims, a form of interaction occurs. That is, withs are not absolute entities, but rather, like all social classes, are loose categories with crims belonging to several withs at any one time. Power is a two-way process, not administered downward through violence, as the myths would propagate, but flowing in both directions. The crims in low status withs pass power upward, recognising their own limitations in a violent and harsh environment, whilst the high status crims accept the authority, and often adoration, being offered up to them - becoming the spokesmen for all crims, acquiring material benefits as a consequence, and paying the price of increased screw hostility. The reason dogs (informers) are hated within such a social arrangement is not simply because a judas is universally despised, but also, a dog doesn't tell the truth! A dog is subject to his masters' (the screws') perceptions, and thus never comes to understand the nuances of power, social and psychological support, ego-preserving communication being enacted within crim culture. Thus he looks for the deviance his masters fear, twisting innocent or normal interactions into manifestations of perversion, providing them wi th the horrors they want to hear and see.
Once a crim has been declared to be a dog, generally exposed as being 'no-good' (a dog, or weak person of no scruples), he is 'put on the coat' 'coated' (non-verbally signalled by a tugging of the lapel - looked through as though he doesn't exist). To be put on the coat, denied social communication in any with, is the worst punishment a crim can
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suffer. Locked within four concrete walls, ground down by every mechanism of the institutional machine, he is now deprived of all human contact! Thus, violence is not the greatest deterrent in crim society, as the myths would propagate, but rather, it is the coat. A dog, or someone who is about to be declared as no-good, will often present himself to the people he has betrayed or offended, volunteering himself for physical punishment, seeking a brutal beating rather than live on the coat (death as an end to alienation).
The act of coating a crim is so offensive, that crims take an almost obsessive care in enacting the obligatory ritual concern involved in all human departures. Greetings and farewells are used whenever crims meet and separate, even if they are likely to meet minutes later, even when they work in the same workshops; to fail in this ritual would be to leave someone 'posted' (deserted, left behind without being told what is happening), leaving him to feel abandoned, treated with disrespect - a quasi coating!
The card table, held by withs who form schools on the weekend, serves a more important function than whiling away the long boring hours of enforced leisure. It is through cards, as also in the gymnasium lifting weights, that crims can create a highly intensified form of communication. An unrelenting scrutiny, generating an atmosphere thick with signs, is carried out within the elaborate rituals of a game. How a crim bets, bluffs, what he will run on, how he leads, when he folds, coping with debt, the commitments and obligations, cash and commodities, what he does know and what he doesn't, all come together in a jig-saw of human relations that takes the participants deeper into themselves and their friends than is externally observed, The cards or gymnasium weights may hold an interest, an excitement in the game itself, but within that game is a much more important reference and cross checking of human traits and social formation.
General Claims
Other areas in the yard, such as the toilets, shower cubicles, seats for the weekly movie, a particular spot where the winter sun continues to fall, all become fixed territories for the crim. The hierarchical structure of crim society dictates that the 'heavies' (long term, solid or staunch crims - 'good-blokes') accrue and hold the prime real estate. This prime turf is not necessarily determined by comfort or convenience. There are certain psychological considerations: the toilet for long-termers is the one furthest and obscured from the screw's gaze, thus ensuring some kind of dignity (as the doors are only half-size); the movie seats may be more uncomfortable than many others, but they are located in such a position as to ensure an enemy, someone the crim may have fallen out with, cannot use the cover of darkness to make a sneak attack; the
shower cubicle may offer the same advantage, also allowing the long-termer to distance himself from the frivolities, aggravation and
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general disturbances created by short-termers. Because such claims ao become fixed, the crim maintains their general standard of cleanliness and repair, whereas short-termers tend to vandalise the other facilities as an expression of contempt for the system.
Amongst the heavies a change of fixed claims does not necessarily signify a change in the hierarchical structure, unless it is accompanied by certain other signs, such as: a deliberate brushing aside of certain egocentric preserves, such as another crim's 'swy' (two ounces of tobacco); a refusal to shift if the turf-holder challenges the temporary invasion, which is accompanied by some derogatory statement, or a dismissive or challenging stare. If such a challenge is signified, if a heavy has been slighted, he must immediately declare his offender and defend his turf - otherwise a hierarchical shift has occurred. New crims are immediately challenged as soon as they encroach on the fixed claims, whilst older crims who are preparing to leave the prison system entirely must gracefully relinquish their claims - or be identified by their attitude, thus become outsiders and be muscled off altogether.
A unique interpersonal relationship develops between crims that must also come under the heading of general claims, and that is the formation of 'china plates', 'five-eights' (mates), or 'oppos' (one's opposite number). The term 'opposite' is semantically closest to the basis of this relationship, in that a crim subjects himself to intense analysis, constantly cross-referring between his own image of self, his crim social image, his deviant image in his keeper's eyes and idealistic images. Sometimes consciously, then, usually subconsciously, he will seek a strong and deep friendship with another crim who exhibits characteristics that are lacking in himself. If he feels he lacks humour, is over-rational, his oppo will be a wit, humorous to the point of absurdity. If he is excessively violent and masculine, his oppo will be of a more gentle, passive nature. But these are extremes, positions adopted early in a crim's lagging. In time, as oppos leave, or the crim gets transferred to other jails, or yards, his oppos change. The unique aspect of his relationship is that the two crims draw from each other, seeking something needed in their own make-up, strengthening, softening, blending - until in time it is generally remarked how much they look, act and sound alike.
A crim's oppo or china (china plate) is an integral part of his territorial claims. Where one is, so shall the other be. One acts as a 'backstop' (loyal supporter in times of crisis) for the other- fall out with one and you fall out with both. If one sits in the movies, it goes without saying that the chair next to his is reserved. In times of overcrowding they share the same cell. This does not mean they do everything together, as each has his own interests, but no matter how far apart they are, they are chinas - and there's no changing that. No matter how tar apart they are, they know every problem, doubt or crisis confronting the other. A china's body odour isn't as offensive as other people's, he always comes first when it comes to a 'whack-up' (distribution of
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goods) - he is the crim's alter ego. And if chinas fall out, distance themselves or coat each other, the whole yard feels it! And a crim who is alone, who has no five-eights, is a man with problems!
This relationship of oppos is even more obvious amongst homo-sexual crims. When a crim comes to jail he may be resisting certain homosexual tendencies, thus he teams up with a cat' (catamite, an admitted homosexual), able to dismiss the relationship, initially, on the grounds of simple sexual release - getting 'a drain' or 'an empty' from a 'ballarat' (cat), which being a legacy from boys' homes, thus quasi permissible, is OK, so long as it ends there. But because crims know that the nature of all oppo relationships inevitably results in a merging of character types, they place a general taboo on homosexuality, warning: 'if you're in the cart going you'11 be between the shafts on the way home', or, 'today's hock (dominant partner) is tomorrow's cat'. And the truism inevitably proves itself.
Eye Claims
The glance, look, penetration of the eyes. Although in our society the offense that can be committed by intrusive looks tends to be slighter than other kinds of offensive incursions, the distance over which the intrusion can occur is considerable, the directions multiple, the occasions of possible intrusion may be numerous, and the adjustments required in eye discipline constant and delicate.
(Goffman: 1971,45)
The taboo against staring is inviolate. The crim swiftly learns, appreciates, and applies it. A 'Morton Bay fig', a 'gig' or 'morton' (a busy-body, a starer, idle watcher), is despised not simply because a crim is often engaged in illicit activities and fears arrest, but more importantly, he has been reduced to his crime, a deviant object, a specimen beneath the microscopic eye of his gaolers: staring reduces him to just that, an object or specimen. The stare becomes symbolic of that whole soul-shredding process. Thus the worst insult that can be delivered to a crim (besides declaring him to be no-good or a dog, which is irreversible and cannot go unavenged if untrue), is to declare him a 'thing'.
The spatial reality of prison, the concrete boxes stacked, tunnelled, channelled and flowing in and out of themselves, locks both the crim and his keepers into a social web. In day-to-day interaction, over the years, everyone gets to know everyone else - even if it is only on nodding terms. And the word 'nodding' is apt here, for it is a signal from the eyes, an acknowledgement, an affirmation of the existing order. Whether passing a friend or foe, the eyes meet - or, if they choose not to meet, that is a sign in itself; a sign that must be continued throughout the following hours, days, weeks, years, until finally, when the order changes, when suddenly the other must be acknowledged, they have to go through a whole re-affirmation ritual of catching each other's eye and making polite conversation, pretending there hasn't been a constant communication going on the whole time! The absolute
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density of eye-to-eye communication is overwhelming, the eyes have to be regulated, connected, switched off, but always the communication goes on.
Rules and regulations stipulate that silence is the major medium in prison. The penalties for talking, and particularly for speaking your mind, are swift, sharp and sudden. The crim learns to speak the proverbial 'thousand word' look, able to stand in silence and under unrelenting scrutiny, yet conduct a conversation with another crim without the screws knowing. The whole crim culture flows beneath the very eyes of their oppressors, the language leaps, bounces, and flows in and around the keepers, whilst the crims direct it all with swift, sure looks. And the eyes say what the tongue would if it were allowed to wag: 'are you a jerry' (are you clued in to the whole underground truths, philosophies, humours that are going on right around you)?
The taboo against staring is most noticeable during the forty minute contact visit, where once a week the crims meet their loved ones flesh to flesh, an anchor back into the outside world where they are men once again. When he enters the visit room, is 'rubbed down' (frisked) by the screw, the crim scans the room until his eye comes up with his visitor. That scanning runs over the unfamiliar, never intruding, never lingering, locking into the familiar. As a consequence, when someone unknown comes in to visit with his normal visitors, the crim may well stand in the middle of the room, confused, turning to the screw in askance - unable to pick out his regular visitor because of the unexpected addition - missing one reality because of the structure of another. In this way, each crim forms a little island of intensity around his visitors, sometimes briefly acknowledging common friends if they are sitting close, but equally, sometimes not noticing their presence, consciously awakening only when they bump into each other going back out of the door.
At all official encounters between crim and staff, the stare is a tool which the crim uses to elicit certain responses, signs, with which to read the semiotics of the other' s character. For a brief, piercing moment he raises his dumb animal eyes, he lifts their heavy lids up and fixes the screw (whoever) with an unflinching gaze. Within a micro-second of time the screw either reflects an inner smile, or a sudden inadequacy, or a flash of frightened rage, or looks away, revealing either his ability or inability to meet the crim on any level but role-to-role. But as soon as that sign is given, the crim drops his gaze, switches the sensors off, thus withdrawing his own threat, letting the status quo return, often refusing to meet the other’s eyes again, having read enough there until their next encounter.
This refusal by crims to raise their eyes, relying totally on a systematic scanning that sees everything but fixes nothing, never intruding on each others' preserves, never leaving themselves open to abuse by their more inhumane keepers, creates the image in the
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'squarehead' (the average citizen, non-criminal) mind of archetypal criminal shiftiness. The squareheads read such signs as a reflection of guilt or a troubled conscience, a refusal to meet the world face on. This misreading is compounded by the way the crim stands: slouch-shouldered and talking from the side of his mouth.
To the squarehead observer the slouch is a sign of submissive or abject defeat, a slovenliness that connotes a broken spirit. For the crim it is equivalent to a military salute of arms. He learns early that the only way to survive is to become invisible, give the screws, psychologists, whoever, what they want, so-that they will take their pet theories somewhere else, practise on some other poor bastard and let him get on with his 'lagging' (sentence - not to be confused with 'lagging' which means to inform). Thus the crims slouch around, reading, speaking, interacting with the tiniest movement, the least imperceptible sign, speaking volumes which the squareheads' eyes will never interpret.
Talking from the side of his mouth is a trait the crim doesn't consciously learn, but rather, adopts through necessity. Again, it is perceived by the squarehead as a sign of his shiftiness, his inherent criminality, whereas in fact, it is a trait developed in an environment full of distrust, hostility, restricted space, a general medium of silence - where one word may save a friend from a beating, but at the same time bring a beating onto the speaker. The crim soon learns how to keep one side of his face totally impassive, yet slip a warning, or a quizzical quip,
a satirical jibe, from the other lip. And all the time, standing in the classical slouch whilst staring ahead with a deadpan expression -unseen by the eternal eye. The trouble is, whereas the slouch discourages attention, the act of speaking out of the corner of his mouth invites hostility - in much the same way as:
The way they modulate their voices the English in an American setting may sound and look conspiratorial to Americans, which can result in them being branded as troublemakers.
(Hall: 1959, 134)
Aboriginal (Black versus White) Claims
With particular reference to the tribal aboriginal, the black crim perceives spatial relationships in a radically different way than his white counterpart: a cultural gap exists wide as the one between squareheads and crims in general. Thus, the semiotics read into black territorial claims by white crims is often as much the product of their own projections as are the projections of negativity imposed on their own culture by screws and others. Such misreadings maintain the old cycles of fear, suspicion, frustration, anger and violence - the cycle of prejudice. Thus, even the white crim who fights against prejudice may find himself caught up in it through a lack of common communication, finding dislike preferable to apparent exploitation.
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Stone Walls
In order to understand the spatial relationships amongst black crims, it is first necessary to take a brief detour into an overall temporal framework. Both the long-term white crim and the black crim share a relative link, in that both experience time as a phenomenon not related to minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, but as a continuum (cf. 'Doing Time'). But for the black crim it extends further back than the white crim's temporal frame can reach. Thus, whereas the white crims share a collective cultural memory that can draw on facts, figures, myths, character types, names and a whole oral tradition linked to criminality throughout a prison's history, the black crims share a collective cultural memory that draws on the same kinds of truths, but within a different kind of society over thousands of years: the time-span of their people.
In the same way as the crim subjects everyone to a ruthless in-depth analysis, cutting through the masks, roles, the inadequacies disguised as virtues in a materialist-oriented squarehead society, so too does the black crim. Both share the same consciousness within prison, where material wealth does not buy status in the hierarchy of crim society -rank is determined by deed alone. But the black crim's belief extends beyond prison walls, whereas the white's belief is valid only within the spatial dictates of his confinement. Thus the black crims place very low cultural value on material goods of most kinds (except, obviously, the kinds that maintain survival), whilst the white crims still hoard them, keeping them as egocentric preserves, claims not to be violated by others - barriers over which conflict continually leaps.
As material goods hold low cultural value, false wealth that turns man away from his common-wealth of humanity, the black crims share each others' belongings very loosely. One black crim borrows from his 'cooda' (tribal or clannish brother; honour given to one who shares the common cultural values), then lends to another, each holding a situational claim according to his need. This is not to say the original owner, who tends to make the initial purchase with communal funds, doesn't hold a fixed claim, as he does. But it is not an egocentric claim, he doesn't rely on material wealth for his reflection of self-worth; common usage or possession of his material goods does not invade his image of self. Neither does it mean to say that the owner loses track of his belongings, as the density of their culture ensures there is always a link to it that defies the white crim's eye.
This common usage and maximisation ot material goods amongst the black crims results in their goods becoming worn, shabby at a rate faster than corresponding white crims' goods. Thus, in the white crim's mind, failing to make the link between wear and common usage, (despite a conscious awareness and open criticism of such communal practices ) this maltreatment of 'valuable' articles suggests a wilfulness: a disrespect for other people's belongings and a slovenly character. Further, when a black crim 'borrows' a white crim's
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belongings without obtaining prior permission, acting without malice, then leaves those belongings abandoned somewhere in the yard - desecrated and violated through contamination with sweat and dirt- the white crim is 'justifiably' incensed. The black crim has, firstly, breached the taboo against peter-thieving, and, secondly, treated the white crim with disrespect - 'had a go at whitey', treated him like a 'mug' (an idiot, someone easily conned). It is a slight that cannot go unchallenged.
The white crim may decide it isn't worth challenging the black crim over such a slight, on the reasoning that 'blacks are too stupid to know better', but the rankling still sits in his heart. This isn't to suggest either, that the black crim may not have been perfectly aware of what breaches of white ethics he was committing, as he may well have been acting precisely as the white crim suspected: 'testing white'. If the white crim is sufficiently aggrieved, with the slight being witnessed by others, he may approach the black crim and begin to berate or challenge him. The black crim tends to offer him a similar glance to the ones the white crim exercises on the screws, fixing him for a fleeting second, then turning away with an obvious sign of disinterest. The black crim is simply puzzled and slightly irritated by such a fuss over some rotten old piece of junk. But for the white crim this is just one more slight, adding insult to injury.
Deciding he has no way of saving face, other than a direct confrontation, the white crim may step in front of the black crim, blocking his path. Further words are useless; both men have lived with violence and the hypocrisy of argumentative processes (that try to deny their true base of power) for too long, blows are inevitable. But the black crims tend to be faster with their reflexes, quick to read the signs of impending force, moving to block the blow and deliver a counter-punch. But the advantage held by black crims in speed is undermined by the white crim's tendency toward sheer violence. The black crim fights according to the rules, avoiding a clinch, using his fists, keeping his feet on the ground - his lack of materialism keeps him closer to the spiritual truth of man's self-destruction in the destruction of another. But the white crim fights to win at any cost, using teeth, gouging eyes, pulling his opponent down and choking him against the concrete, using his feet as fists - then suffering the negation of his self, needing to cling more and more to his crim role and materialistic wealth in order to escape the anguish of his actions.
Able to retain their cultural values in images, myth and legend, transferring it to whatever medium is available, the black crims recognise no private/public space. Thus the walking claims held by white crims, the carefully delineated fixed turf, are treated as any other piece of prison space. The land was there before white men built their prisons, it will be there long after concrete walls crumble back down into the dust. No one can claim the land as their own, it is for all to
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share. But the white crim doesn't understand that, he feels only the disrespect and apparent arrogance of the black crims who cross his path, bump into him in passing, stand idly in the way, or stop and talk when all his body language is signifying he wants to be alone.
The black crims also differ radically from the white crims with respect to the taboo against an invasion of ego-preserve through befoulment. That is, excreta and other body odours are not ego-alien to them, but on the contrary, are natural odours that provide a unique scent. Their odours are the breath of their bodies, signalling sickness or health, a passing of all things between them and the earth. But to the white crim, they are 'unwashed heathens', who stink 'like shit', who befoul themselves with dirty clothing, often swapping and using other people's sweaty shirts - an offense to the air they pollute. Yet to the black crims, the whites are ashamed of their own being, they stink and look like fat bloated maggots, painting themselves in chemical odours that pretend to imitate the odour of flowers and the fruits of mother earth, hiding behind false scent as they hide behind their materialistic status.
Having no taboo against befoulment through contamination in areas designated by white crims as negative turf, such as the areas immediately around the toilets, rubbish bins and observation grill in the yard, black crims utilise that space. In an otherwise crowded yard, where space is at a premium, these comparatively large expanses of territory are deserted, and black crims invert the social order, making 'low' into 'high'. Thus they sit close to the toilets, even to the point of leaning against the door hinge, squatting on the rubbish bin stands, skylarking right beneath the screws' eyes. To some social scientists these signs would imply a power structure that has forced the black crims to occupy the lower status areas - but that is, as has been demonstrated, another case of squarehead projection. As it is, it suits the black crims admirably to have so much space to themselves without the intrusion of white culture.
If a white crim wants to talk to one of the black crims, he has to cross an open expanse of restructured space, which in itself becomes a border between black and white turf, compelled to enact all kinds of ritual greeting. That is, he must smile, to show he isn't an invader, relax his hands to reveal his intention to speak, all the signs humans everywhere express when in such a situation. This is, of course, totally unnecessary for the black crims, as they always walk in a casual (almost absurdly so, to the white eye), open way, never tense or possessive unless openly threatened. Yet, because the white crim is enacting a ritual, fluctuating between what he normally is and what he now presents himself to be, the black crims become suspicious - reading the semiotics of the situation as something out of the ordinary which must be treated with caution. The white crim also notices a change, notices the black crims suddenly fix their eyes on him, reading their signs as hostility - by the time the encounter has been opened and closed a myriad of misinformation has been mixed into the initial intent.
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White crims believe that they are having to cross space claimed by the black crim as his fixed territory, and thus cannot even go to the toilet without having their own situational claims impinged upon by him: and if they are compelled by necessity to do so, they are subject to acute embarrassment through their need to make a bowel movement within his claim, thereby subjecting him, thus themselves, to an open breach of the befoulment taboo, resulting in a constant social tension. Put simply, the white crim feels uncomfortable because he can't have a crap, and he blames the black crims. The black crim, on the other hand, reads the semiotics of this tension from his own cultural perception, seeing it as either a typical white hostility, the kind of unpredictable mindless aggravation exercised on his people for centuries, or he is amused by the white crim's powerlessness in re-structured space.
Another cause of poor relations between the black and white crims is a huge communication gap based on the former using extensive sign language, whilst the latter uses predominantly verbal language (but not exclusively so, as for example, where a coating can be placed and maintained simply by the non-verbal tugging of one's coat lapel whilst casting an eye toward the offending party). The white crim remains ignorant of the richness and diversity of non-verbal interaction going on amongst the black crims, asdo the screws to white crim eye contact, and thus labours under the delusion that the black crim is an intellectual inferior who fluctuates between sullen introversion and sudden extroverted laughter. Thus, except for such subjects like sport, where a man is judged on his own prowess, the black and white crims are separated by a cultural gap - one that should be breached by their common experiences, but isn' t because the black crim feels he can say more, sum it all up, reach the poignant truths, with a simple movement of his hand.
Besides the many tribal sign languages, the most common nonverbal language used by black crims is based on a card game called 'koont'. It is a game very similar to blackjack, the exception being that all coloured cards are removed from the deck. To score ten is to score a koont. Players stand or squat around a blanket on the ground, the money goes into the centre, each is dealt two cards, if no-one scores a koont, another card is dealt - but no more. An ace counts as one, thus, two fives are a koont, a nine and an ace is a koont. But a ten and an ace (which may also count as eleven) is too high, so the player must split them in the same way as he does in blackjack, buying a third card and , hoping for a double koont. Three nines counts as a triple koont - the best score a man can get!
The non-verbal signs that arise out of koont are many, but some of the main signals are: three fingers struck against the palm (similar to the letter M in deaf-and-dumb cued signs) signifies excellent, three koonts; two fingers, very good, two koonts; one finger, good, one koont. A nod of the head means the player is in the game. An open hand, tipped palm-inward and wriggled with fingers spread and
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thumb upright, means it's no-good, the player can't win. Various other fingers signify the different playing cards. But these signs are extended into everyday life, in that someone may be declared as no-good, with a flick of the hand, whilst yet another may be shown as a man of character, with three fingers. A nod of the head signifies, in a similar way to people everywhere, an affirmation of social ties, but it can also be an acceptance of a challenge, an agreement with an unspoken thought suddenly communicated with the eye, or induce an established ritual known to the participants - suddenly abandoning one game or job to do something else that it is felt should be done in preference.
The black crims are kept sensitive to non-verbal language due to the subtle differences between their tribes, as each tribe, ranging from the most distant desert people to city dwellers, maintains a fixed social territory outside of prison. Thus, even within prison itself, where territorial claims are neutralised, the city tribes hold certain powers. But these powers are not absolute, as are those of white counterparts - the heavy crims in the elite prison with. Rather, it is power based on council, wherein the city tribes have their leader, the heavy of their with, and the other tribes have theirs. The leaders delegate power to the city with and its leader only in limited spheres, such as interaction with authority, the accruing of material goods or resolving institutional enigmas. But no leader can consider himself superior to any other; it is a council based on mutual interests.
White crims and staff alike fail to grasp the significance of separate tribes and leader, mistakenly trying to exercise control or influence through an 'apparent' leader, who must stall for time, consult others, and only then return with a positive answer. This delay lends credence, in the white's eyes, to the myth of blacks being unable to think quickly or make spontaneous decisions for themselves. For themselves they can, for other tribes they can't - to do so would show disrespect.
It is when overcrowding occurs, or when the black population begins to equal or exceed the white population that racial violence breaks out. The black crims find a greater density of culture, the air thick with signs, able to lose themselves within its intense communication. Thus, they find their own values reinforced, forming a body of mass thought that flows within itself, either oblivious to their breaches of white spatial claims, or, no longer caring, having the support of numbers to overthrow what, to them, is a ludicrous and selfish culture anyway. But for the white crim, who is pushed out of line by a charging mass, whenever a queue is 'meant' to be formed; is driven out of his walking claims, denied his clarity and peace of mind, by sprawling bodies and drunken drivers; has his clothing 'tea leafed' (thieved), finding it sweaty and discarded; has his fixed claims, such as toilet, shower, movie seat, taken and then left broken or shabby; and discovers the black crims no longer keep their eyes down whilst breaching such
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concrete taboos, but instead have an arrogant, challenging manner that is, and can be interpreted no other way, a sign of disrespect - a
threat that cannot go unchallenged. The black crims may not perceive any antagonism in their own actions, but can see and hear the white crims' antagonism toward them, until in the end the interacting, inter-feeding hostility can meet in violence.
Ill
The Parade Areas
Every morning and afternoon the crim awaits the parades. He is called, not by name but by work detail, a single party at a time, enters into the gloom, the cold catacombs of a cellblock's heart, shuffles numbly up to the regimented line painted sharply across crooked cobblestones, a symbol of desperate order imposed on a warped base, no longer hearing the mindless orders bellowed out from some screw's knotted gut: 'get behind the line, toes up to the line - but not on the line'. When the parade muster is counted, checked, ticked off, 'rubbed down' (frisked), 'filed off (given the order to turn and march off), he will step ou t of perpetual shade and walk, ever so briefly, across an area cut and slashed with squares of lawn and open sky, fresh air and cleanliness, then plunge back into concrete, enter into the workshops and his various spatial claims.
When the crim is called onto parade he participates in a ritual, an act demanded by his keepers who believe it will teach him 'discipline' (which is a euphemism for fear), but which teaches him something vital to an integration of his self as a whole. As I have already stated, rites of passage are beyond the scope of this particular paper, but suffice it to say: the line doesn't teach the crim to respect the screws; rather, it it allows him to identify them as his enemies, his oppressors, the kinds of hypocrite he has known and reacted against all his life - thus ended up in prison. They are on one side of the line, he and his peers, the crims, are on the other.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, legs apart, hands behind the back, creates a tension within the crims' ranks. Such close contact, especially for long-termers, is an intolerable irritation, a harsh invasion of their extended body space. The ego is threatened, rubbed against the negation it has sought to escape, so the crim puts his mind through
various exercises in a bid to escape having to consciously acknowledge his predicament - lest he surface into reality and go mad. Thus, in the initial stages of the routine of shouting, panicking screws, who can't count, or lose their rosters, or drop their hats, or who encountermand their superior officers - who in turn goes in to a panic, or the screw who goes into an apoplectic fit over an unfastened button, frothing at the mouth, restrained with great difficulty by his colleagues as he tries to break into violence against the offender, providing a veritable wealth of information about themselves, the crim studies every aspect of the
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circus from the subliminal corner of his unmoving eye. He gleans an incredibly accurate character profile on his keepers, computing their traits, storing and recalling it whenever he needs to manipulate them -or simply as a massive script of satire, humour to be re-enacted for crims of a future generation! And that future generation will verify those truths, by purposely leaving a button unfastened, or by simple observation, thus learning the strength of myths and archetypal prison techniques.
If the parade drags on, drawn out by general incompetency or some sadistic senior officer, who marches up and down before the crims, sneering and making derogatory remarks, egged on toward uncontrolled abuse by some crim who releases an offensive fart at his antics, demanding that all kinds of unnecessary delays be enacted, the crim begins to withdraw into a state of semi-trance. He simply switches off to avoid the increasing weight of spatial negation. But should the parade draw on indefinitely, cramping his neck, burning into his feet and ankles, pulling him physically out of his trance, forcing him completely back into the reality of his predicament, he turns his mind to hatred. With hatred, knowning what the particular officer is doing, what kind of man he is, comes anger - and that, coupled with other forms of negation throughout the rest of the prison, may well be the triger for a mass consciousnes needed in riots.
Having to stand with legs apart and hands behind his back puts the crim in a vulnerable, exposed position, supposedly compelling him towards submissiveness - breaking his spirit so that upon release he will no longer pose a threat! Indeed he is in a vulnerable position, as the screws can, and occasionally do, knee his straight in the testicles for some real or imagined slight. But it doesn't make him submissive, quite the contrary, he simply learns to look submissive. He develops a casual open stance, a hands-in-waist-band cross-legged look that follows him out onto the streets, which deceives an aggressor into believing he has a definite advantage. But that illusion is the crim's advantage. He practises moving swiftly and smoothly, or slowly but surely, bringing his hands into fists and traversing up into a direct line from the shoulder - and with just a little twist of the hips the groin is guarded. Thus his aggressors are always taken aback when the crim mysteriously changes the apparent negative signs into a positive advantage.
The illusion of stance also extends into general body language, with the crim using postures that contradict his attitude toward things -signs that signify one thing amongst squareheads but signify the opposite amongst crims. For example, when a squarehead places his feet up on a table, in the midst of a conversation, it signifies a loss of interest in the conversation, a switching-off in communication and an absorption into his own physical reality. But when a crim performs the same act under the same circumstances, he is in fact opening up to
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communication. To lift his feet off the ground, relinquish the one precious purchase required for leverage in conflict, is to begin reducing his guard, the scepticism and resistance he characteristically displays. Thus squareheads often misread the crim's body language, reading negative for positive, positive for negative - sometimes unable to read the signs at all.
During the parades and whenever he moves from one security area to another, the crim receives a rubbing down, a frisk. These frisks are primarily carried out to uncover contraband (and as nearly everything is 'unlawful issue' all crims traffic in contraband), but their function is more crucial to overall security than just that. The second function
doesn't become obvious to the crim until it has set in. That is, the first function, the search, offends him at first, He resents the negation of this ego preserve, the contamination of his clothing and body by hands that flick up his sides, along his raised arms, down his inner legs, But when he flinches the screw becomes more diligent - suspicious of a natural human sign, as in a crim it must be something deviant! And so, in time he learns to switch off his mind, step back into his ego so as to avoid contamination, reducing the ritual to minimal contact by his signs of apparent passiveness. Thus it is there he realises the secondary function, as he can create a distance from the indignity so as to gain perspective. The screws need to rub crims down. They need it in the same way as a horse-breaker needs to rub a horse down. It breaks down the mutual suspicion and fear, it merges roles, obliviates prejudices, until in the end an old screw doesn’t bother frisking old crims: none of the drama interests either of the many more. Both read broader, mutual semiotics, avoiding the intrigues that are destructive to them both individually and jointly.
Not all parades are workshop parades. Crims are always interviewed, punished or generally organised under that name. Whether it is making a request of the superintendent, arranging for something through a welfare officer, going to the dentist, whether in a group or as an individual, the crim stands on a relevant line. If it is a punishment line, awaiting admission into a magistrate's presence, he will have to stand some distance apart, staring silently ahead, denied contact with any other crims. All these lines demarcate the division that exists between crims and non-crims, even when the people doing the interviewing claim to be an uninterested or helpful party. The concrete reality, the white strip of paint, clearly delineates a clash or conflict of interest. This point is never clearer than on the magistrate's parade, where some green-grocer-cum-justice-of- the-peace sits behind the superintendent's desk and plays at administering justice. The crim stands outside on his line, waiting for up to an hour, is then marched in by two burly screws, surrounded by several more, and ordered by a bellowing voice:' toes behind the line, up to the line - but not on it'! The crim adopts this usual stance, subliminally watching the senior officer who stands behind the magistrate's shoulder, casting his shadow over
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the who ritual, whilst the prosecuting officer stands to his left and the superintendent to his right - the whole team line-up leaning him to solitary' confinement, the crim waits for the command, wheels about and marches off to the chokey.
Quite often request parades have what the crims call 'preliminary disappointment lines'. That is, the screws line the crims up to await an interview by some board or official, then after they have been standing on one line for half an hour, they call them into a corridor to join the crims who preceded them - standing on another line! And because the whole procedure is enacted in silence the crims use extensive body signals to communicate with each other throughout the whole procedure. Simply by leaning ever so slightly, imperceptibly to the screws, one crim can create a motion wave that dents another crims large body space. Their need for greater body space makes them super-sensitive to any movement, j ust as the enforced silence compels them to use that sensitivity to maximum effect. Thus, by leaning backwards, forwards or sideways conversations are pointed to or opened and closed, the eyes warn, amuse, question, answer: yet the body and its organs remain fixed firmly ahead.
Once a workshop parade has been 'mustered' (counted, as above), the disciplinary screw for that party escorts them out of the cell-block and into the sunshine, where he gives the order: 'Halt. Cover off two abreast in two lines. And no talking. File off. The party follows a tar trail that treks through slices of green lawn, beneath enough open sky to remember freedom and a longing sweeps up that must be repressed. The crim longs to break away from the automation of mechanical discipline and throw himself onto a lawn, roll over and over, feel the soft grass cushion his tired skin, pluck the grass, put it between his teeth, breathe it into his nose, look straight up into the wild blue yonder - and breathe slowly. But the feet keep moving at the regulated pace ('slow down there at the front'), shoulder to shoulder ('keep in twos'), one behind the other ('Keep in line'), whilst the mind turns inward, like a funeral procession carrying some secret coffin full of black humour and fruitful fantasy, eyes catching flashing eyes, sly laughter slipping out and mocking the whole world, borne evitably on toward the workshops.
Within the workshops a unique relationship is struck up between the instructor and a heavy crim. The former is differentiated from the normal screws only by the fact he is a tradesman, thus is aware of the relationship that exists between a man and his work, whilst the latter is either a tradesman in his own right, or has become skilled within prison, choosing his particular job precisely because if offers a reflection of self in a completed task. If the kind of work is broing or repetitious, then the heavy crim may simply use the ship as a base for 'rorting' (exchanging, smuggling, operating the yard book, etc., of 'Doing Time'). But regardless, the relationship between instructor and
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heavy crim exists, the reason for this being, quite simply, a marriage of convenience. The instructor has two priorities: to maximise the work done and to minimise the number of rorts of stealing going on in his shop. The crim has two also: making his job and work bench into a fixed claim, an egocentric preserve where he can exercise all kinds of creative license and retain all kinds of extra possessions otherwise not permitted within the prison system (thus maintaining his fragile image of self-worth); maximising the number of rorts, without bringing himself or the instructor 'undone' (into troble with the higher authorities).
The relationship between the instructor and a heavy long- term crim is imperative. New instructors often enter the job and immediately set about cutting off that crim's little rorts and fixed claim, finding it intimidating to enter onto that egocentric preseve, re-arranging schedules, personally overseeing work, annoyed and downright threatened by a crim telling him what to do - or having so much authority. It is a nightmare, as it doesn't allow him a demarcation line between his self and the self of a deviate, and his role is the only defence possible. Inevitably he sacks or 'falls out' (become enemies) with the crim who then quits, but then the nightmare grows worse. The short- term crims don' t need any egocentric preserve, no fixed claims to be looked after and kept in good maintenance, care nothing for work schedules as they care nothing for the job, vandalising, sabotaging or stealing every thin they can aly their hands on. The new instructor runs from pillar to post, psyching himself up to a huge confrontation and subjugation of these boils of deviane that are breaking out every where, until finally he has to sack half his staff - and then start again from scratch with his own, long-term crim.
Between the long-term crim and the instructor, there must exist a realisation, they both must be 'ajerry' (aware of the unspoken rules that transcend roles), to their relationship. The screw must let the crim know he knows about the rorts etc., without ever admitting he knows, so that the crim doesn't make the mistake of treating him as a mug: or, as the crim truism goes, 'mistake kindness for weakness'. This isn't to say all screws or instructors come to this realisation, as some spend forty years of their lives trying to finally suppress the deviance they perceive in any crim having power or authority, as it still undermines their own sense of purpose. But once the crim appreciates the instructor is ajerry, he disciplines himself with all rorts (not acting carte blanche, as he would if the instructor was a mug), sets up his fixed claims, takes control of work (even if only from a distance) and draws all the other crims along in the ethos he generates, each finding some kind of interaction and meaning generated amongst all participants in the process. Thus the instructor no longer feels threatened when the crim comes into his office, once his egocentric claim, nor feels guilty about being on the crim's claim, both moving about within a
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situational territory that respects the finer nuances of individual preserves.
IV
The Staff Offices
If the crims' slots are a hub, the yards and parades spokes, then the offices temporarily occupied by various 'specialist' staff are the wheel -face proper. They are the outermost extremities that seek to turn everything back around a non-criminal axle. But like everything else in prison, their offices are cut into a concrete walls, chiselled out cubby-holes, slotted and grooved into the cellblock hub, locked into the same stone spatial reality as everyone else - but trying to pretend otherwise. Their favourite quote is: 'stone walls and iron bars do not a prison make'. They keep their spatio-temporal reality firmly outride the walls os as to prove the point - to themselves.
The crim watches new specialists come into the prison, file into a vacant office, an office that has been vacant before and will be vacant again, setting up their little egocentric preserves. There are trick-cyclists' (psychologists), psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, welfare offices, 'wild beasts' (priests), social workers, males and females, of every shape, description and denomination. They come armed with their university diplomas, frame and hang them on the wall of a room little larger than a slot, stand back and admire the symmetry. Through that diploma they will perceive everything, using it as a grid of interpretation, pushing it, squeezing it onto the crims - making it fit. It has to work, as, after all, it is an investment of countless years, built on an image of self, on bricks of revolution or religion that daren't be underminded. Then they open up their suitcase, take out their books, potplants, crucifixes, poetry, posters and photographs - loved ones, cars, homes, pets. They need the same kinds of material relections of self as anyone else. The once-empty, foreign, frightening room has become a fixed claim. And the crim appreciates that, he is touched by it, he can understand it, as he too has his little slot.
Entering a specialist's office the crim feels as though he is encroaching on an egocentric preserve. He doesn't know it consciously, he feels it. It makes him nervous, unsure, careful not to offend. The specialist sits back, analysing this social enigma, squinting down the barrel of his or her academic sights, fitting the nervousness, the body language, eye avoidance, spatial distancing, fear of contact, into some predetermined semiotic pattern - coming up with all the wrong answers. The crim realises that the specialist is misreading, misinterpreting every-. thing he is saying and doing, simply because they have no common language or structure to communicate through. They lack a medium of interpretation, some way of putting the crim's convoluted signs back into 'normal' codes. The only vehicle of expression possessed by the crim is his language: 'bomb talk' (the subject of another paper,
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beyond the scope of this one). But it means nothing to the specialists, just dirty words, cute rhyming slang, clever jargon.
It becomes imperative for the crim to get his message across, as in his mind he sees the specialists as the closest link to outside, least biased and poisoned against crims, someone to affirm his fading reflection of self-worth. He comes back time and again, always frustrated, blocked out, his words twisted and re-interpreted through an acceptable model, treated as a slightly demented child. And slowly a rankling grows in his heart: the specialists are no better than screws, it's just that they function differently. The screws examine his every physical act, reading into it a sign of deviance (if he helps another crim to his feet he is seen to be picking a pocket), whilst the specialists analyse his every though and emotion, interpreting them into symbols of psychosis (if he is angry it is not because he has a right to be, but rather, it must arise out of some deep-rooted repression). But the crim cannot convince the specialist every sign is being interpreted wrongly, for the more he reacts and resists such a view, the more his actions convince the specialist he or she is on the right track. 'Yes', they say, 'I am close now, he has gone into a state of conflict, he'll confront the truth soon'.
The crim realises that if he is to get anywhere with the specialist, he will have to practise the same modes of defence he does with the screws: give them what they want so as to be able to get on with the real things of importance. Thus, the crim 'cracks', admits to the specialist, that yes, the textbook analysis was correct! The specialist is delighted, quite ecstatic: victory, a lifetime of doubt and twenty years study has finally paid off! The specialist then invokes the cure and the crim dredges up all his childhood terrors, all the things he has never forgotten yet must pretend he has so as to speed up the whole farce. And over the next few weeks the specialist's office becomes filled with the possessions: a drawing, flowers he likes, cards he sends, books he recommends. The once egocentric claim held by the specialist has become a fixed claim held in trust by them both.
To say the crim is necessarily conscious of his machinating tactics is wrong, as he has learned those tactis in a hard school: learned to give the screws what they want or else self-destruct, he simply re-enancts the mechanisms of that knowledge in order to get the specialists to judge him as he is - not to dismiss his faults, but at least to see them, not to make up faults that don't exist except in the fear of the specialist's mind itself. And if he hasn't learnt those defensive mechanisms when he meets the specialists, he will by the time he leaves them.
Having admitted his 'guilt', stopped 'resisting' (repressions, the faith of God, the ability to come to his own social arrangements, whatever), the crim finds the specialist wants to reward him in the same way as the screws and everyone else in prison does - rorting is tacitly condoned, whether it be a cup of coffee, a book, or a favourable report. The degree of reward is proportional to the degree of his resistance. If it
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was weak, then the rewards are minimal. But if he fought the specialist on every corner, questioned, contradicted, undermined the academic truths and their validity to prison, and thus threatened the specialist's self-worth in the same way as prison threatens his, the surrender brings much greater riches, more luxurious rorts - from support in a transfer, to a roll on the carpet and coming together in the name of their saviour! But after the cure has been invoked, the deviance healed, the joy of their health celebrated, there is nowhere for the specialist to go - yet for the crim it is only just beginning.
The crim sets about seeking answers to his situation and the world he exists in, trying to erect a structure to contain his real life experiences. The specialist begins to discover, as they both upick the common threads of their lives, there is little difference between both of them. It gets worse. The specialist finds the crim steering back into the so-called resolved repressions, cross-referring them with their now common experiences - finding they fit the specialist more than they do the crim. The specialist is mortified, confused, frightened, whilst the crim is perplexed, still searching, concerned for his friend's anguish. But then, one day, the crim arrives at the office to be handed his trinkets (symbolically exorcising him), and told: the specialist is too busy, or the problem is insurmountable, or he has 'used' the specialist, manipulated the situation to his own advantage. The room is shut tightly against him.
Thereafter, both the crim and specialist have their spatial dimensions altered. The crim no longer has access to one particular office in the prison, his physical space has shrunk by that degree, but in addition he then finds the whole office building odious, hostile territory that radiates its own 'special' brand of negativity. The specialist begins to dread the open parade grounds where he/she might suddenly confront the crim, turning away the eyes in a pretence of non-seeing, yet having to confront him anyway in the confusion of semiotics sparked by that avoidance itself. The specialist begins arriving early and leaving late, his/her office falls into disarray: dead flowers, dust-covered, unopened books, photographs warped in the sun. And the specialist no longer dresses smartly for work, no longer caring about the presentation of self, reflecting an inner change, turning up in overalls like any other shift-worker on an industrial production line. The specialist's body space increases, no longer trying to get close, reacting emotionally to the crim's extensive body space without understanding it, seeing all aims as particularly cunning - more sly than ever initially suspected: convincing him/ herself that new 'clients' (trying to get them to make the same spatial distinction) are being influenced by, or are members of some secret group of deviates contaminating the thought processes of the whole prison, and if he/she could just get a big stick and hit them, or a crucifix and fry them, or some electric wires and lobotomise them, the whole problem would be cured. But eventually, like the instructors in
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the workshops, they leave dreading the sight of the 'stone walls and iron bars', that do, for them, a prison make - or they cope adequately, within the spatial limitations of their offices (in ways analogous to the workshops), whilst a few have begun investigating the spatio-structuralist transformations in a bod to expand their own interpretative code and the processes in between (as this paper endeavours, through a modality of semiois, to point the way).
Getting out of prison
In the same way as concrete walls, tangible points of reference, allow for a spatial clarity in writing (the use of relatively denotative style), the absence of the lack of tangibility experienced by the crim upon release, the lack of anything concrete, insists I change to a different spatial medium (the use of a connotative style).
Getting out of prison: there is a massive cultural shock awaiting the crim once he steps through the gate, leaves his tiny concrete tomb with its heavy airs, snatches off the blindfold hung three square metres in front of his eyes for an eternity, lets the light tear into a mind that has fed too long on shades of night, fed too long on a luxuriousness of black broth thick with cultural signs.
This density of cultural signs, an air thick with human interaction, every eye fixed within a stream of thought, trapped within the concrete covers as a text is paper-bound, an abundance of secret codes to fill the vacuum left by an otherwise sensory depriving environment, is cruelly missed when the crim steps back out onto the street. When squareheads speak of institutionalisation their crude minds struggle with the absurdity that crims actually come to love prison - they hate the place, they hate it with every fibre of their being. But when they step out onto that street; when their eyes, so used to pastel tone and grey cold, sterile concrete, cold black skies, are brutally assailed by screaming, twisting, psychedelic colours, shops full of consumer goods - shoes that aren't just shoes, but aesthetic art-forms, moulded leather that bucks and shines, billboards that hold not paper but the essence of raw, flowing, floating colour, worlds, shapes, streets stretching out like voyages into insanity, corners that open and close into raw, bloody, broken phenomena that burn the retina an plunge the mind into a padded cell: when ears that are used to silence, used to searching the darkness for an intruding step, attune to the breeze and half-whispered cautions, are plunged into a roaring maelstrom of seering heat, with the clash and clatter, an orchestra of miners beating their hammers against iron anvils - sounds that filter in so richly, teasing, sensually seducing, losing and tripping thoughts one over the other, teasing out all meaning, lost in the waves and waves of noise: when a mouth that is never allowed to speak, never allowed to form and frame the truth, never unhinging, except in one corner, must now grapple with words, material forms, decisions, like lumps of rotten meat gagging in his
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throat, vomited out of his mouth, spit out with a curse, unable to breathe - reaching out with a hand to stop a passerby, a barmaid, anyone, who doesn't stop then he throws out a sign with his eyes, who doesn't see him at all, his words are always unsure, too slow, too deformed, the mumblings of a monster. And he is alone in a huge, empty, uncaring world. He stands in the middle of the footpath, like a twig in the middle of a stream, with thousands of faceless, eyeless, robotic people sweeping past him, rendering him totally invisible, an object - a thing - and yet, at the same time, leaving him too obvious, too exposed, naked before any eye that might seek him out, seek to negate, torture, reject him further. Then, one day, across the crowded street, in the foggy bar, his eye meets another eye - contact is made: another crim, soneone who knows, and whereas once they may have been foes they grip each other by the arms, turn shoulder to shoulder, stamping with guns or stolen money their mark upon their formless flux of so-called freedom. And when the police catch them, when someone asks: 'what made you pick them up', the cop shakes his head and replies: 'I don't know, just something about the way they looked'!
Eddy Withnell is a prisoner in Fremantle Prison and a Ph.D. student at Murdoch University.
REFERENCES
Goffman, E. (1971) Relations in Public, Great Britain: Penguin,
Hall, E.T. (1966) The Hidden Dimension, New York: Doubleday &c Co., p. 134.
Withnell, E. (1983) Doing Time: The temporal reality of the Criminal's existential world', AJCS, I.i.
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