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Celebrating Prison Violence?

            There is a scene in the 1992 film American Me where a Hispanic prison gang pulls a hit on the son of an Italian mob boss.  I shouldn’t go into details if you haven’t seen it.  Just know that a knife is inserted somewhere it shouldn’t.  It is a strong scene, and your dark side can’t help but cheer.  The kid is a spoiled brat in prison on drug charges.  He has no street smarts and little idea what his father does.  It is satisfying to see him pulled down into the pain and sickness of an underworld that has provided him great luxury.  

            This version of divine comedy can make for strong cinema.  We see it a lot in media and pop-culture, also.  You turn on Shark, CSI, Cold Case, or any of the 10,000 cop/lawyer shows on TV and see officers interrogating white-collar criminals or child molesters.  They use impending prison violence to intimidate the suspects.  We all have a good laugh.  But we have to remember that this is entertainment, like Charles Bronson or the Punisher killing people and avenging their families’ deaths.  When make-believe, bloody retribution can quench an odd thirst or lust, we must be careful to not apply it to real life.  Prison violence is not to be celebrated.  When it is, we become criminal hypocrites.

            People are put in prison for a reason.  We consider their crimes egregious and unacceptable.  They are not fit for society and must be removed from the rest of the population.  This country puts a lot of time and energy into making that happen.  We spend $60 billion annually toward correctional facilities; this doesn’t include policing, trials, or legislation.  Every year 13 million people enter prison or jail.  In fact any given day of the year there are 2.2 million people locked up according to ABC News.Violent criminals such as murderers and rapists are the least tolerated because they present immediate danger to civilians.  As barbaric as our species has been, governments have always tried to police violence among their citizens.  In fact, the Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest-surviving tablet containing law, mentions assault in six of the forty discernable laws.  Furthermore, in 1919 Max Weber said, “state has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence,” meaning individuals can not determine who gets beaten, murdered, or takes a sharpened toothbrush to the throat.    

            These actions are unacceptable on the outside and should not be accepted inside .  Physical or sexual assault is never justified in the streets, so it is wrong for us to think it is justified in the ‘yard’ or showers.  Each year, there are over 2,000 reported incidents of sexual assault in prisons, which resonates across America as little more than a chuckle.  We assume they deserve it.  We look at Enron and think ‘crooks’, at sodomites and think ‘monsters.’  We want to see them pay.  Let’s be honest, we want them suffering, bleeding on a concrete floor, spitting out teeth and twitching.    That’s how strongly we feel about their crimes.  We feel as strongly about them as prisoners felt about their victims. 

            Watch a Carmello Anthony home movie or listen to rap song and find out how brothers in the hood feel about snitching.  Is it  worse than molestation in that community?  I don’t know, “like a dead snitch, it’s hard to tell.”    Let me not single out hip hop.  Play a blues or country song and they’ll tell you what to do to a cheating wife.  Morality is culturally relative.  In some ancient cultures man-boy relationships were divine and adultery was punishable by death.  Today, people preach laissez faire capitalism which by certain interpretations would give Wall Street free reign.  What is not relative is that today, in America, our country, assault and battery, rayp, and murder are illegal.  Not ‘okay sometimes, you know, if they should have known better or really deserve it,’ illegal.  You can’t have it both ways.  If murder is wrong enough to send somebody to jail for life, then it’s wrong all the time.          

            Let the U.S. Government, Weber’s violent monopoly, do their job and prosecute criminals properly.  And if you believe Michael Jackson and Bernard Ebbers deserve prison beatdowns as 4_play, write your local congressman and petition to let guards carry shanks and replace the electric chair with Michael Vick’s r__ stand.  Then, quit your job, put on a uniform, and work as a corrections officer.  Otherwise, don’t encourage convicts to repeat the same heinous acts that cost them their freedoms because “this time it’s okay”. You can’t use them to do your vindictive dirty work.  Dostoevsky said, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”  What would he say of a society that lived vicariously through its prisoners?