Zookeeper or Mechanic

Prison is the ultimate embodiment of formal social control. John Braithwaite describes formal social control as “sanctions imposed by a remote legal authority.” (Braithwaite, 69) According to Professor Lisa Broidy “the primary goals of formal social control are deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution.”(Handout, Broidy) The debate is over the purpose and effectiveness of these formal social control mechanisms. Are these the right goals and does the criminal justice system, as we know it, achieve these goals?

Before advancing further let us define the four primary goals of formal social control. The goal of deterrence is to prevent crime from occurring. Deterrence approaches this problem by supposing that crime is a rational choice and that by making the punishment bad enough the cost of crime outweighs the benefit. In order for deterrence to work the punishment must be certain, severe and swift. Ideally when other potential criminals see what happens to their deviant brethren they will decide to walk the straight and narrow. The purpose of incapacitation is to prevent criminals from committing further crime. If a criminal is locked away from society then the criminal cannot commit further crimes against society. The term rehabilitation is self-descriptive. When agents of formal social control speak of rehabilitation they focus on reforming the criminal from their immoral ways. The goal of retribution is primarily punitive and remotely restorative. Retribution goes back to the ancient Romans and the judicial concept of lex talionus, or an eye for an eye. The prime example of retribution is the death penalty. Ideally retribution can “make whole” the offender’s victim, but this is rarely the case. With an understanding of the goals of formal social control let us examine the success of each in the context of Ted Conover’s book Newjack.

Table from Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2002)

Incarceration Rate Chart The issue of the deterrent effect of prison is debatable, but judging from the increasing prison population it has not achieved the desired results. According to a fact sheet produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics “The incarceration rate rose from 139 per 100,000 in 1980 to 470 per 100,000 in 2001.” (BJS, Incarceration) A graphic depiction of this rising incarceration rate is depicted to the left. In Newjack Conover is discussing the doctors that performed executions and quotes one such doctor, Amos Squire M.D., as saying, “Each time a person is executed, the effect upon the public is infinitely more degrading than deterrent”(193) By the same token it is hard to determine what the crime rate would look like without a penal system. Would it be higher or lower? Some would say that the real reason people don’t commit crime is the informal social controls that they have internalized prevent them from doing so. The general feeling I got from Newjack is that the threat of prison was not part of the equation in determining if an inmate committed a crime; the single biggest factor was the inmate’s familial background. As Conover says, “It was staggering to contemplate the accrued tales of dysfunction, pain, and violence that had preceded these prison terms.”(223)

It is obvious that incapacitation works on a certain level. If the inmate is behind bars it is impossible for them to commit crimes against society. If prison is viewed from this perspective then Instructor Turner from Conover’s academy days had it right when he said, “The truth of it is that we are warehousers of human beings.”(41) A problem associated with incapacitation is that the majority of inmates will be released from prison no better off and most often worse than when they went in. At one point Conover asks an inmate named Perez what he is up to, Perez responds, “Thinking about the robberies that I am going to do when I get out…A year you plan. You think I’m not going to pull it off?”(291) The sole purpose of incapacitation is to keep the inmates, the animals, from damaging society by removing them from it. As Officer Luther told Conover upon graduation, “You’re the zookeeper now… go run the zoo.”(94)

Among many people it is believed that prison serves some sort of rehabilitative function for the criminals that call it home. Conover speaks of the idealism that many COs feel but do not outward express when he says:

Guards hope that prisons might do some good for the people in them, that human lives can be fixed instead of thrown away, that there’s more to be done than locking doors and knocking heads, that the “care” in care, custody and control might amount to something more than calling the ER when an inmate is bleeding from a shank wound. (209)

An important point that Conover made concerns the availability of programs inside prison. He said that “Inmates are still required to work for their GEDs, but almost all college-level programs ceased…when state and federal lawmakers ended the funding” (61) What this says about the success and failure of rehabilitation in prison is that the COs would like to see it happen but the reality is that there are not enough resources available to institute effective rehabilitative programs. Unfortunately the truth about the rehabilitative abilities of prison are summed up when Conover said, “No one, as far as I could see, improved in prison.”(142) Equally the dreams of many involved with the corrections system, as well as the average citizen, can be best expressed by Thomas Mott Osborne, a man Conover calls the “only hero corrections can possibly have.”(208) Osborne said, “We will turn this prison from a scrap heap into a repair shop.”(Conover, 208) With proper funding for innovative programs rehabilitation and reformation is a viable alternative for many inmates. Ideally COs are mechanics fixing broken people and not zookeepers tending a psychopathic jungle.

The retributive effects of prison are obvious. An eye for an eye, you took something from society and now society is going to take something from you. Conover addresses the topic when a civilian telling him about a theft that occurred confronts him. Conover muses:

It was all about absence wasn’t it – the absence of imprisoned men from the lives of the people who loved them; the absence of love in prison. And also, what you could never forget, the absence in the hearts of decent people, the holes that criminals punched in their lives, the absence of the things they took: money, peace of mind, health, and entire lives, because they were selfish or sick or scared or just couldn’t wait. (157)

There is no denying that prison succeeds in meting out some sort of retribution against the criminal for their crime. The real question at hand is does retribution serve a productive purpose? Does killing a man for killing a man equal justice? Prison does succeed at retribution but should retribution be the goal of prison?

One point that I found very enlightening was that made by an introspective inmate named Larson. According to Larson there were three reasons for most of his fellow inmates being there; first, “They don’t love themselves” second, “they don’t know who they are” third, and in my opinion most important, they lacked “a good model of a decision maker to look up to.”(230) A coroner from Little Rock Arkansas named Steve Nawojcki illustrates the importance of positive role models. Nawojcki says:

While conducting a prison interview with a young man who was about to spend his eighteenth birthday in the prison where the most violent inmates are housed for his part in the robbery and killing of two liquor store clerks, I was told that in order for this kid to have stayed away from the violence, a role model should have intervened with him when he was around four years old. He went on to say that the street dealers and gangsters in his birthplace of Oakland, California heavily influenced his life. He eventually ended up selling crack cocaine on the streets of Little Rock and made thousands of dollars per week”(Gang, Nawojcki)

The importance of positive role models in keeping youths from becoming involved in a criminal lifestyle is not necessarily related to formal social control but if more attention was given to it ideally the need for formal social controls would be eliminated.

The purpose of prison and the criminal justice system is a complex mingling of deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution. No single one of the four primary goals of formal social control can solve the problem of crime. If combined in a manner that seeks to find justice for all parties involved then these goals can be productive. Each of the four goals has its independent problems and benefits to varying degrees. Hopefully in the future the Zookeepers can become Mechanics.

Works Cited

BJS. Incarceration Fact Sheet 2001. 10/27/2002.

Available at: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/d_incrt.htm

Braithwaite, John. Crime, shame and reintegration. New York. Cambridge. 1989

Broidy, Lisa. SOC 313 Handout: Assignment #2. 10/29/2002

Conover, Ted. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. New York. Vintage. 2001

Steve Nawojczyk, Gang Dynamics. 1997. Online, 22 July 2001

Available at: http://www.gangwar.com/dynamics.htm