To Understand Your Convicts, Know Your Legal System

To Understand Your Convicts, Know Your Legal System

"You know what I hated most about prison? The guys who pretended they wanted to get out." -Jeremy Renner character in 'The Town'

That simple quote paints a broad picture of the incarcerated in the U.S. One should appreciate such a concise line for its density and ability to present a full sub-total at a pivotal point in a good movie. The execution of such good drama should also warn you of the falsity of the statement. Nobody wants to stay.

Most people accept their sentences, estimate survivability and hope to not die in prison. I know of no amount of de-socialization nor institutionalization that renders an inmate void of desire to get out of prison. Numerous degrees of resignation and/or denial exist in inmates, usually proportional to their sentence as a fraction of their life expectancy and their mental fortitude, as necessary adaptations to a shitty environment. None of these mental contortions leads to a state of institutional denial where a person feigns interest in leaving yet prefers prison life. Resignation is not preference.

What incarceration offers is a break from the relative motion of non¬-incarcerated life. An onerous timeout whereby a person is beat down the Mazlow hierarchy to a survival routine, and social needs become a glow below the horizon. The effectiveness of prison is the acute sensation of arrested motion contrasted with outside life - trials, tribulations, money, social interaction, pleasure, pain and the general "What's next?" joie de vivre of western social existence. The glow below the horizon is always visible and it is disingenuous to believe that that glow holds no allure, especially in contrast to prison.

Now there is a class of social predator inmate that the author of the quote is likely referring to. Natural born to the socialistic environment coercion of the less adapted, these true convicts are scumbags comprised of naked hostility and greed who exercise extortion, intimidation and violent whim to distinguish themselves disproportionately to the suffering they cause; the prison ambitious that step on the rank and file to appear taller. Without law school intellect nor military comportment they ply the trades of prosecutors and cops, from the other side of appearance - same game, different arena.

The arena outside prison uses the “what’s next?” dynamic of modern life as camouflage for the manipulation game. Coy and righteous, it flows from U.S. courthouses in high rhetoric, the silk tie barbarians protecting you from the hoodlum barbarians. Converted to prison denim barbarians for your supposed protection, you are expected to believe they are best acclimated for prison and do not wish to return to the outside. Bullshit! They are the competition locked out of the ivory tower and incarcerated to keep them from breeching the moat. The class of inmate you are expected to believe wants to remain in prison is the social equal, in their respective environment, to the cop, prosecutor and judge. Each pulls levers of coercion to elevate themselves by extreme victimization.

“Every cop is a criminal, every sinner, [a] saint. Just call me Lucifer because I’m in need of some restraint.” – Rolling Stones, 'Sympathy for the Devil'

So, as nice as it is to imagine people so fucked up that they want to stay in prison – oh! How easy to rationalize a clear conscience; “they belong there and want to stay there” – they do not exist. What exists are people getting progressively more fucked up while genuinely wanting to get out. This truth is manifest in the continuation of the lead quote. Mr. Renner concludes: “If this thing goes sideways I’m going to have to hold court in the street. I’m not going back [to prison],” a concise and accurate way of saying that the dynamic conclusion of dying in a shootout is preferable to the arrested motion of life in prison.