University of Virginia Library

Society's Children — 'Can't Forget Those Bars'

By Raymond A. Foery

Mr. Foery is currently a VISTA volunteer
in New York city. A 1967 graduate
of the University of Notre Dame,
he spent a year studying American literature
at Emory University, Atlanta,
Georgia, before entering VISTA in
August of this year. In the following
article he offers his opinion on one
frustrating aspect of the VISTA volunteer
working in a rehabilitation
program in a New York city prison.

They are so young - that's the most
frightening thing you notice at first.
They don't look like hardened criminals,
like bank robbers, murderers, or
even good rapists. And yet, while
visions of Edward G. Robinson and the
great old gangster movies dance in your
brain, you suddenly realize that here
they are, on this island, in a maximum
security prison. They look so out of
place; not just because they don't look
like Al Capone (he was white - these
are mostly black and Puerto Rican) but
because they have that spirit, that
buoyancy that is youth. Most of them
are under 21.

Riker's Island House of Correction is
one of six New York City prisons. Of
the sex, it is the largest and best
equipped. It occupies an entire island in
the East River, directly across from LaGuardia
Airport,
Eastern Airline shuttles
from Washington and Boston fly
over Riker's daily; the pilots seldom
point out the sight. The borough of
Queens lies directly across the bridge to
Riker's. Queens, as any New Yorker
knows, is one of the last bastions of
lily-white closed housing in the metropolitan
area. George Wallace did well in
Queens, far better than he did in Manhattan.
Most of the residents of this fair
borough don't even know that Riker's
Island, with its population of nearly
3000 non-whites, actually borders their
well-kept mini-lawns. Those that do insist
that Riker's is actually closer to the
Bronx, New York's poorest borough.
The irony is that many of the inmates
at Riker's come from the Bronx; few of
them have met any of their Queens
neighbors.

The island (it actually is called "the
rock" by residents) is at least not as
grim and grey as those old "Big House"
movies. Some effort has been made by
the administration to brighten the place
a bit. Flowers grow along the sidewalks,
the grass rivals the once green Lawn at
the University of Virginia, and the
benches in front of the reception center
are painted gay, kindergarten colors. Inside,
there is a gym, an auditorium
(where a group called "The Theater for
the Forgotten" puts on periodic productions),
and a library. But beyond
these small concessions to a pleasant
facade, Riker's Island is a cage. And
like all cages, it really doesn't make
much difference what color the bars are
painted. The constriction is the curse.
And not only are the inmates
constricted, they are also constantly
watched. Every movement, almost
every sound, is monitored. They are
counted, one by one, sixteen times a
day. They are awakened at 5:30 in the
morning and locked in by 9:30 at
night. They are, in general, not rehabilitated;
rather they are held by the city,
clutched by the society which they
have, supposedly, wronged.

Their crimes, though, were not really
spectacular ones. This is to say that
they were not felonies. These are not
killers or train robbers or plane hijackers.
These young men have all been
convicted of misdemeanors. A parking
ticket is a misdemeanor. So is possession
of marijuana, a social wrong for
which many of them are serving time.
Others are in for such things as petty
thievery, assault, and possession of a
deadly weapon (in some cases, a pen
knife will suffice for this charge). For
these dastardly deeds, committed by
seventeen-year-olds, the law insists upon
an institutionalized and highly impersonal
punishment. The law usually
insists a lot more strongly if the young
offender happens to live in Harlem than
if he is picked up on the campus of
Queens College. It, has become well
known (though little ameliorated) in recent
years that the legal processes in
this country are perhaps the most bigoted
and most racist institutions we
have. And with Nixonism creeping into
the bloodstream of the already sickly
political animal, hope for any rapid
change in the situation is quite slim indeed.

If, as a blue covered catechism held

by a black covered nun once informed
me, "they also serve who stand and
wait," then these young men have well
served that society which has consigned
them to their fate. To ask an inmate on
Riker's Island what he did today
smacks of insult; he did today what he
did yesterday, and the day before that,
in an endless progression of meaningless
days and marked-off months. Only the
anticipation of parole makes the sunset
of each day look somewhat hopeful.

According to the statutes of the
State of New York, youth offenders at
Riker's Island serving "indefinite" sentences
will see the Parole Board after
eight months on the island. The term
"indefinite sentence" is the result of a
fairly recent change in the penal code
which, theoretically at least, allows for
a degree of flexibility in the handling of
young "criminals." In most cases,
though, the change has simply meant
that there is little or no possibility for a
man to be merely sentenced to six
months and have that be the end of it.
With the stipulations surrounding the
"indefinite sentence," he usually finds
himself owing society three years. This
means simply that if he is released after
ten months, he must remain on parole
for two years and two months. To be
considered for parole at all, a man must
have a job, a place to live, and a good
prison record. The job is the real bite.
Despite efforts by both government
and industry in large cities like New
York to provide training for the "hard
core unemployed," the possibility of an
inmate being accepted to a program is a
rare one. Bigotry has many forms, and
one of the most convenient for an employer
is the simple statement: "I can't
hire him because he has a record." And
yet, those who blow the horn of the
land of the free and the home of the
brave try to insist that after a man has
paid his debt, he may return - as an
equal - to society. Well, equality in
American is an evasive term, and some
of these kids will never have their debt
increased. It makes for a cloudy future if
you are eighteen and awaiting parole.

Truman Capote, after his years of research
for "In Cold Blood," remarked
that if it were true (as some have suggested)
that one of the best measures of
a nation's degree of civilization is the
humanitarianism of its prison system,
then the United States borders on barbarism.
For some of us, this is no surprise.
As Arthur Schlesinger said last
June at City College, the politics of violence
has become a viable and vibrant
force in this country's life style. The
inhumanity and violence of places like
Riker's Island simply underscore the
whole theory. For Riker's is largely a
forgotten place, an ignored place, an
unreal place. It is as unreal, in fact, as
were the ghettos of Newark, Detroit,
Rochester, and Chicago before they exploded.
It is one of those eyesores
which white middle class America pretends
not to see, a pretense which only
serves to prolong the existence of the
status quo. But America pretended not
to see Birmingham, Selma, and Watts.
There are ways to make the blind bigot
read braille. To expect that Riker's Island
may someday explode like Newark
is to expect a large miracle. To expect
that America can be made to even see
Riker's Island may be to expect a small
miracle. Perhaps both miracles will become
necessary in order to change the
way a young man is forced to spend his
time after committing the crime of
being born in a ghetto and trying to
take a short cut out of it.

They tell us that things have
changed at Riker's. That's probably
true. Things have changed in the Atlantic
Ocean, too. And while it's undoubtedly
true that the treatment of the
prisoners has improved - there is no
such thing as a bread and water dinner
anymore - it would be hard to detect
any real change in the attitude which
the prison holds toward its prisoners.
Simple statistics support this: of every
ten prisoners that are at this moment
on Riker's Island, seven or eight will
one day return to prison. A rehabilitation
rate of 20 or 30 per cent is hardly
worth the time it takes to count a man
sixteen times a day. For what has not
changed through the years is the basic
feeling that society must hold - and
hold tightly - an individual who has
violated a social regulation. Holding becomes
caging, and the caging of an
individual is an entirely negative
response. Rehabilitation is a positive response,
but the real question is whether
such a positive response can occur in
such a negative situation. Prison
officials throughout this nation might
do well to read and remember but one
section from "The Autobiography of
Malcolm X:" "Any person who claims
to have deep feelings for other human
beings should think a long, long time
before he votes to have other men kept
behind bars - caged... Behind bars, a
man never reforms...I've talked with
numerous former convicts. It has been
very interesting to me to find that all of
our minds had blotted away many details
of years in prison. But in every
case, he will tell you that he can't forget
those bars."

It's hard for us to forget those bars.
But we are only visitors to the cages,
we can come and go as we please. For
those who must stand and wait, those
bars become symbols of the inflexibility
of the society which has consigned
them to remain on that island
until that mythically magic moment of
parole. White they are there, they must
listen to the rumbling of the big jets at
LaGuardia as they prepare to take off
for Boston or Washington of Chicago.
And through their bars, they must gaze
over at Manhattan Island, where the
world is revolving around the navels of
insipid stock brokers dressed in banal
Brooks Brothers three piece suits. And
they, being buoyant and spirited and
basically hopeful because they are
young, must begin to realize, though
perhaps slowly at first, the utter folly
of it all.