A 2020 report published by the Stanford Law Review examined whether formerly incarcerated people who had witnessed violence should qualify for disability benefits. Ninety-two percent of survey respondents witnessed nonsexual violence while incarcerated, which has been linked to depression, anxiety, violence perpetration, and future victimization. A separate study of 124 formerly incarcerated people found that witnessing violence in prison made them antisocial and emotionally distressed long after their release.
This empirical data shows how prisons can promote continued violent behavior instead of rehabilitation. In an environment where prisoners and staff alike experience violence, trauma can only grow worse for everyone.
My first vivid memory of a prison fight is set on the rec yard at Polk Youth Center (now Granville Correctional) in 1999.
The Dorm One and Two yard was no more than a small dust bowl with weights, a basketball court, and a horseshoe pit. The prison store, or canteen, was behind a window at the back of the building. I stood in the canteen line behind Strawberry, a ruddy-faced white guy with a thick build. His small nose angled up, almost like a pig’s snout. He bought a pack of Newport cigarettes and shook one out to light up.
Smoke, a bald and burly thug with midnight skin, approached to ask Strawberry for a cigarette. Before Strawberry could consent or refuse, Smoke tried to snatch the whole pack. When Strawberry recoiled, Smoke popped him in the jaw. Strawberry fired back without hesitation, hitting Smoke in the eye. Both raised their fists to square up.
I stood transfixed. Adrenaline trembled my own hands as if I waited for someone to swing on me.
Onlookers made room for them to parry in a circle, bobbing like boxers anticipating a blow, but neither man swung.
As a bully, Smoke didn’t think Strawberry would resist. He had only prepared to take the cigarettes, not fight for them. But Strawberry showed that he was willing to fight, and not necessarily for the cigarettes, but to prove that he wouldn’t back down. Sometimes such a reputation made sure no one would try to take his cigarettes ever again.
Finally Smoke dropped his guard. “You got it, white boy,” he said, then walked away.
Someone in line behind me muttered, “Can’t let nobody take your shit, dog. If you let one guy do it, er’body’ll test you.”
The canteen operator banged on the window to get my attention. “Buy something or get the hell on. I ain’t got all day.”
During the past 25 years, I have pulled time in two county jails and five North Carolina prisons. From yard to yard the normalcy of violence permeates prison culture, but it was never normal for me. Prisoners fight over NASCAR races, poker, chairs, phones, disrespectful words, and much more. Despite the frequency of prison violence, it is rarely random. The prisoner is bombarded by constant pressure from peers and staff. Violence, in many ways, serves as the final release of that pressure, unleashed on whoever stoked the smoldering embers of rage at the wrong time.
Violence among prisoners is expected. But it’s also employed as a tool of control by prison staff.
While serving 30 days in the hole at Central Prison during ’05 or ’06, the sound of banging jarred me awake in the middle of the night. Someone was kicking a steel cell door down the tier.
“Yo! Police!” He shouted between kicks. “The nurse ain’t bring my seizure meds after chow!”
Another prisoner hollered, “I’mma give you a seizure if you don’t lay yo’ ass down, fool! We tryin’ to sleep. Save that mental health shit for noon time.”
I hurried to my cell door to peer out of my window just as four officers wearing stab-proof vests and riot helmets stormed in. I didn’t expect a peaceful outcome, but after a dozen days of twenty-four hour lockdown, watching a cockroach scamper across the concrete floor gave me something to get excited about.
Cell lights came on at six a.m. Officers passed out breakfast at six-thirty, lunch at noon, and dinner at four-fifteen. Cell lights went out at eleven p.m. My days in the hole were spent waiting for food and for the lights to click on or off. I understood how it could drive somebody stir crazy — crazy enough to bang on a steel door all night long. And I was lucky. Some of the guys I was housed with had been down there for years without release. Thirty days was enough to make me lose my mind.
The banging stopped when the officers hopped up a flight of stairs. I pressed my cheek against the window and strained to look, but I couldn’t see far enough down the tier. I could only hear.
“What’d I tell you about kicking my door, McNealy?” A gruff voice asked.
Expressing ownership of the prison was a declaration meant to keep prisoners in line. It could be likened to the era of chattel slavery when Master owned everything on the plantation, but slaves owned nothing. In such cases, ownership was reserved for the powerful, not the powerless.
“I need my meds, Sarge,” McNealy whined. “The nurse — she never came.”
“It ain’t flyin’ this time, McNealy. We’ve been though this with you before. You’re gonna learn about kicking my doors. Pop cell one-oh-three,” he commanded into his walkie-talkie.
“C’mon, Sarge…” McNealy pleaded over the electronic din of his cell door sliding open. “I just need my meds. I ain’t makin’ trouble.”
The officers rushed inside as soon as the cell door opened. Rubber-soled shoes squeaked against concrete, fists smacked flesh, and grunts expelled pain. McNealy begged for his life, yet the beating continued.
After a minute or two they jerked McNealy out of his cell and dropped him on the unswept mezzanine floor. His hands were cuffed behind his back. One eye was already swollen shut. Blood leaked from his nose and mouth. His motionless body lay twisted.
Officially, officers would classify the incident as a “use of force” or “cell extraction.” Per prison policy, such dutiful actions required a medical screening afterward, so McNealy might get his meds, if he was still alive, and at the expense of a modern day lynching.
Two officers grabbed McNealy’s ankles and dragged him down the flight of concrete steps. His head bounced heavily off each solid stair like a basketball. When they reached the bottom, a thick smear of blood painted a trail on the floor to the front of the cell block.
I never saw McNealy again. Don’t know if he lived or died.
That night I learned that steel doors are more valuable than a prisoner’s life.
After recollecting so many visions of violence, I lay in my bunk wondering: What’s the solution?
Judging from my experiences, hopelessness creates the angst that leads to violence. Many may disagree — as is their right — finding instead that prisons are dangerous because the criminals in them are dangerous. In my opinion, such a view disregards the rehabilitative purpose of incarceration.
I know what it feels like to wake up every morning thinking that I will die in prison. For decades, life held no purpose for me. Life without parole is a de facto death sentence. Any prison term longer than 25 years is a de facto death sentence for most. We inhabit prison walls waiting to die, not for release.
Eliminating merit-based parole in favor of mandatory minimum sentencing schemes caused this condition of hopelessness and exacerbated violence in prison by removing hope for earning early release. Returning to a system of parole, where earning release is the goal, is the only incentive that can transform prisons into houses of hope instead of dungeons of despair.
- Source: Benjamin C. Hattem, 2020, “Carceral Trauma and Disability Law,” Stanford Law Review, 72 Stan. L. Rev. 995.