Incarceration Nations

by Baz Dreisinger

  “Me live inna Jamaica now but used to be inna Brooklyn,” the young man says, adjusting his Yankee cap.

  “Otisville?” I ask, referring to the New York prison where I teach. It’s part guess, part read-between-the-lines.

  He nods. “Six years, all over. You name it. Otisville? Elmira? Riker’s was worst, yuh see me? So much fighting. But still, America is Club Med next to this place. Seen?” He cocks his head to the side.

  Carla arrives, salt-and-pepper dreadlocks tied like a rope down her back. She’s all business, giving me a curt wave and marching with determination to the gate.

  “Come, come, we’re late,” she calls to me. “Let’s move.”

  “Find out when my brother comes out, seen?” scattered-teeth cries as I follow Carla.

  A copy of my passport is affixed to the concrete wall at the guard station, just below the dress code. My phone is deposited in an enormous safe, atop a mountain of Nokias. The officer checking me in produces a ruler and, in perfect cursive, imprints my name in a giant sign-in book.

  Through metal detectors that beep wildly we make our way outside to a courtyard area where khaki uniforms hang on clotheslines, flapping in the breeze. A sign on the fence reads Thank You Lord for Another Day.

  Em-press!

  Shor-ty!

  Whi-tie!

  Pssssst!

  Prisoners holler at me from every angle.

  Me like you!

  Me waan talk to you!

  Em-press!

  It’s a first, these catcalls in prison. Universally, the prison interloper is stared at, occasionally waved to, but she always half-exists in this land of the buried alive. In GP I am decidedly present. It’s unnerving, landing me in the heart of this hell in a far more immediate way than I’ve ever experienced before—there’s simply no looking away. Chaos bubbles to the surface like oil from a curry pot. Prisoners here are resurrected from confinement for only four and a half hours a day, and during those hours they are, clearly, very much trying to live. Din is indomitable; everything and everyone is on display. The place is essentially a massive football field encircled by minuscule, medieval-looking cells.

  Carla’s assistant, George, whom I’d later meet in her office, would detail his three years inside those cells.

  “It was quite a revelation to me, to say the least,” he declared. “Three to five people in one tiny, tiny space. There is no toilet; you must urinate in a water bottle. If you have to defecate it can be a real problem. You notify cellmates that you have to do so and you use a newspaper. But only if you’re a badman or recognized inmate are you given that privilege; otherwise, they will tell you to hold it inside until you are let out of the cell. This results in many prisoners defecating on themselves or becoming ill.

  “On the cell floor is room enough for two, so the other persons build a hammock. ‘It’s gonna cost you,’ the tailor told me when I arrived. Without a hammock, see, you stand to sleep. Mind you, you cannot lie down beside a man—Jamaica is a very homophobic society.” This is an understatement. In 1997 comments made by the commissioner of corrections about condoms for prisoners led to a guard strike and prison rioting, during which sixteen people were killed. The commissioner resigned. Separate sections were created for prisoners labeled as gay. A culture of fear paralyzed HIV-prevention efforts behind bars.

  “Sometimes men will stand up night after night, until they reach family who can help,” George recalled. “And yes, I did witness many stabbings, sometimes for a simple thing like stepping on someone’s toes.”

  Shor-ty!

  Em-press!

  Hssssssst!

  The soccer ball whooshes through the air, and Carla greets the prisoners in their khaki uniforms as they rush up to us. The guards try to silence the prisoners’ calls while they usher us to a concrete cottage off to the side of the cells, and the door slams shut behind us.

  Silence.

  We enter GP’s version of the Luzira library: a computer lab. About twenty-two men spend four hours a day here, five days a week. They cease typing to smile at me; some look no older than sixteen. “Education Is the Way to the Future” reads one poster on the bright green wall.

  “Come, let me show you something,” Carla says. She opens a small door off to the side and voilà! It’s a closet—no, a radio station: Free 88.9 FM. At the mike, surrounded by posters of Gregory Isaacs, Michael Bolton, Shaggy, and Kenny Rogers, is Serano, one of the musicians featured in Songs of Redemption, a recent documentary about the music program. He reminds me of Wilson, an uncanny combination of old man and little boy: tiny in stature, his dreadlocks tied up under a peach-colored bandanna and Yankee cap, he sports crisp white Nike Air Force Ones and a shimmering watch that seems twice his size. Twice, even, the size of his outsized smile, which saturates the room.

  “Hello!”

  “I’m a fan,” I tell him. Indeed, when I watched the film his voice mystified me. Like Jah Cure’s, every note wrings out soulful pain.

  “See, my people,” he says into the mike, “we’re here talking about The Secret—and suddenly I-and-I am an example of how this manifests, seen? I-and-I want to reach people with my music and here, this lovely lady appears right before me. Will it to happen, my people!”

  He segues into the sound track from the film. We make small talk, but I’m distracted by the reggae music, parachuting my spirit out of this dead zone. It’s just the opposite of what Daughtry, who designed GP, would have wanted. “No sounds but of the hammer, the axe or the saw,” he wrote in an 1844 report envisioning Jamaica’s first modern prison.

  Carla leads me to the neighboring “cultural center,” another concrete hut next door to the computer room. I stand before a stage decorated with a mural of Bob Marley and contemporary reggae songstress Queen Ifrica. Massive speaker boxes hulk in the room, guitars hang on the walls, and a man plays the bongos. Prisoners in the music program record and release songs, and Carla had earlier told me that she is vigilant about getting them royalties, but the Jamaican music industry is a vexed, complex beast. Who actually profits remains consistently vague, and hand-to-mouth economics prevails.

  An officer takes me into the recording studio off to the side of the stage, where an old Vibe magazine rests on the mixing board.

  “We want to build it much bigger,” he explains. “I am a musician, too. I am all in favor of this rehabilitation. Love working with the inmates.”

  On the way out, we pass the school area—“Almost-sorta highschool level,” the officer tells me. Colonial-style rules and regulations hang on the door: No Sagging Pants, No Indecent Language, Maintain Proper Hygiene, Pants Must Be Worn at Waist. Just before Carla leads me to freedom, a final sign catches my eye. None Shall Escape, it reads.

  ———

  A friend waits for me in the parking lot to drive me back to New Kingston. “So much trouble in the world,” croons Bob Marley, from her car stereo. Singing along, I come to the depressing conclusion that music in prisons is the sweet sound of a salve. Because ultimately Uganda’s prison library and Jamaica’s prison music studio add up to the same thing: a Band-Aid on an amputated limb. Only a tiny minority of prisoners is lucky enough to profit from them, and weighed against everything else that these incarcerated people suffer, their fundamental impact remains minuscule.

  But isn’t some impact better than none? Band-Aids can’t cure but they can stop the bleeding. So it is with writing and music and other arts-behind-bars programs, as study after study has indicated. A 1983 one, for instance, revealed a 74 percent favorable parole outcome rate for prisoners who participated in a California arts-based education program. Youth who were part of a Diversion in Music Education program in South Africa had a 9 percent recidivism rate six months after participation, which dropped to zero percent after a year. A study of New York’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts program reported numerous positive impacts on participants, including a higher level of positive coping, declining anger levels, and fewer infractions; ultimately, participa
nts were assessed as being more dependable, socially mature, and willing to sacrifice individual needs for the welfare of a group. Music educator Willem Van de Wall wrote extensively about the power of music behind bars to promote feelings of belonging and loyalty; Israeli music professor Laya Silber reported on an Israeli choir that helped female prisoners listen, form new bonds, and accept criticism.

  Envisioning Serano’s outsized smile, I recall a scene in the film Songs of Redemption during which he delivers a breathtaking performance in the cultural center, then runs offstage amid rousing applause, locks himself in the studio booth and begins to sob irrepressibly. “It’s too much,” he cries. “Jah knows … the music started to create a soul, being someone again, feeling like a person.”

  The arts are cathartic. Humanizing. But the arts are also beautiful. Prisons are not beautiful, whatever gorgeous music or prose might emerge from them. And at the end of the music or writing or art class, the instructor—me—gets to exit to freedom, reflecting on the wonderful class and brilliant, grateful, adoring students—the same students who, meanwhile, must return to the treacherous realities of their cell blocks. Isn’t it all a cruel tease, giving someone a taste of personhood again, but only for a few hours a week?

  The problem exists on a grand scale, too, and this is the real catch-22 when it comes to prison arts. Band-Aids can make one forget that a nasty wound festers underneath; worse, they can make one pat oneself on the back for having taken care of the wound. Would it be better, maybe—especially in the dramatic prison hells of Uganda and Jamaica—to let the blood flow and have the gash on full display, so the root problem is addressed and true healing can begin? Because that root problem runs deep: thousands of poor people warehoused for small infractions or because they can’t afford a bribe; atrocious conditions that belie even utterance of the word “rehabilitation”; corrupt criminal justice systems and stultifying wealth gaps that produce poverty and crime.

  The list goes on, from Uganda to Jamaica and beyond. Even Jonathan’s outstanding restorative justice program in South Africa is in many ways a mere Band-Aid, too—although it does represent the possibility of an alternative paradigm, capable of transforming justice from a retributive system to a restoration- and restitution-oriented one. And surely there’s room, in this brand new paradigm, for arts programs to work their healing magic. But they can’t stand alone.

  I leave Jamaica as I left Uganda: immensely frustrated. Prison arts programs are certainly well-meaning efforts but they’re also crumbs tossed at a system starved for radical overhaul. They’re smoke screens, obstructing our view of the big picture, which is that when it comes to justice and safety and humane treatment, prisons simply don’t make sense. Big-picture change is not about tinkering with or enhancing what is, but conjuring up bold imaginings of what could be. For all that I love and believe in it, art can be an obstacle to such imaginings because of the very thing it does so well: dazzle us, and then distract us, with beauty.

  4.

  Women and Drama | Thailand

  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. —Martin Luther King Jr.

  As soon as I am back from Jamaica, I check in on my students who’ve come home from prison. Then I make several trips upstate to Otisville to touch base with the ones still inside. I’m joined by a colleague, Lorraine Moller, a theater professor who’s produced plays in American prisons for years, particularly with incarcerated women. As we wait for security to carry us to the classroom, where she’ll guest-teach, we shake our heads over the fact that women now represent the world’s fastest-growing prisoner demographic.

  “You really should go to Thailand, and see what the princess is doing about that,” she declares, after hearing about my project.

  The princess, Lorraine explains, is Her Royal Highness Princess Bajrakitiyabha, the thirty-five-year-old granddaughter of King Bhumibol and Queen Sinkit. She’s a former prosecutor, Thai icon—and a leading advocate for the rights of women in prison. The story of how this came to be is rather amazing. While studying law at Cornell, HRH returned home to visit a prison in Bangkok. In the midst of her tour a prisoner stepped out of line, prostrated herself before the royal visitor, and begged her, Come back and help us. Before stunned onlookers, the princess vowed that she would. Five years and three degrees later she launched the Kamlangji Project, Thai for “divine influence or action,” which establishes “model” women’s prisons around the country.

  HRH also spent several months at John Jay, studying criminal justice, which is how Lorraine came to know her, and during that stay visited a New York women’s prison.

  “I’ll reach out to her people,” Lorraine says.

  Shortly after she does, we’re offered an invitation to visit Thailand as official guests of the Kamlangji team. We don’t have many details, but we gather that the agenda involves touring prisons and leading some sort of drama workshop in the flagship facility. It will be an opportunity to consider a grim triad that is having catastrophic consequences in Thailand and all over the world: women, drugs, and prison.

  More than 625,000 women and girls are incarcerated globally. The number of American women in prison has risen by 823 percent since 1977; 70 percent of the 80,000 women currently behind bars in the States are in for nonviolent offenses, a reality echoed in many countries, where women, generally speaking, serve time for theft, fraud, and drugs, all crimes closely correlated with poverty. In Thailand about 21,000 of the 25,231 convicted women in prison are in for drug charges and a mere 550 or so for violent offenses. About 18,000 of these women are serving at least twenty years, and forty-one are on death row. The numbers, in other words, are dramatic and bleak—surely the reason why the princess simply could not look away.

  ———

  The morning after landing in Bangkok, I await my ride in the lobby. Buddhist monks in sandals and robes are arriving en masse for a conference, landing me submerged in a sea of orange. My pickup rushes in, late and out of breath. Her name is Pattirya, and she introduces herself with a gentle handshake and profuse apologies for the traffic. Then she guides me to a van marked Department of Justice, where I’m introduced to her other half, Pannaya. Pan and Pat, young, fresh-faced government recruits, will be my escorts through the “land of smiles.”

  “How far is Sukhumvit?” I ask, trying to get a handle on this sprawling city’s size.

  “Very close,” says Pat. “Maybe more than one hour?”

  At the Sukosol Hotel we pick up Lorraine, who’d elected to have the government team arrange her accommodations. Doors are opened by towering Thai ladies in purple robes, hotel hostesses. Sawade-ka, comes their singsong greeting, palms pressed together as if in prayer, heads bowed.

  “Welcome John Jay Delegation” reads the sign at the Office of Justice Affairs, our first stop today. The office is a government think tank, and everything about the place connotes progress and efficiency. The decor is IKEA-chic, with crayon-yellow chairs and cheery plastic flowers. Portraits of corrections officers and HRH adorn the walls, along with inspirational slogans and the agency’s mantra, “Engineered for Good Justice.” In a bright-white conference room, neat lunch trays containing fried chicken, coconut pudding, and shrimp soup are served; Lorraine and I get a crash course in Thai justice.

  The country’s 114 prisons are divided between Central Prisons, housing those serving over fifteen years; Correctional Institutions, housing drug-related prisoners; and a House of Relegation for those considered “habitual offenders.” Six classes of prisoners are classified like misbehaving children: excellent, very good, good, moderate, bad, and very bad. The system is filled to nearly three times its capacity; as in the United States, this is due, quite simply, to a war on drugs. In 2003 the Thai government changed its policy on methamphetamine overnight, classifying it as a first-degree narcotic. This sent the prison system to its highest levels ever, and to near bankruptcy. The government drew up suspect lists of alleged dealers and used financial
incentives to encourage arrests. Informants would get 15 percent of the value of seized assets, arresting officials up to 40 percent. Crackdowns resulted in thousands being killed in the streets; officials claimed these killings were the result of gang warfare but international human rights watchdogs exposed them to be extrajudicial killings by an agitated police force.

  Slowly the government managed to trim its prison population, mainly via use of good-time allowance systems, early parole, and royal pardons, which commemorate royal marriages, birthdays, and so on. One year 37,400 prisoners were released in honor of the king’s birthday. Death penalties can be relaxed via royal pardon as well, and most “lifers” in Thailand in reality serve about a dozen years.

  I struggle to take in the barrage of information, and to process the show-and-tell style in which it’s presented. Government officials tend to toss out prison statistics as if they’re not talking about human life. How can I casually nod my head in approval as slides of the latest in “humane restraint equipment” are presented for our perusal? Charts and graphs depicting royal pardons and sentence-reduction equations especially boggle my mind. Why concoct elaborate sentences only to find pretext after pretext for reducing them?

  I say little, though, in an effort to be polite to our gracious hosts. And for the rest of the day, through torrential rain, the grand welcome tour continues. I bow, receive gifts, and rehearse sawade-ka. Cameras flash as government paparazzi transform each meet-and-greet into a photo op. Lorraine, who’d armed herself with Thai etiquette books prior to our trip, whispers in my ear throughout. Crossing your legs is rude—no one shall see the bottoms of your feet! Accept business cards with two hands! Study them carefully when politely received! Returning to the hotel, I’m exhausted and unsure what to think about what we’ve seen and heard so far, but also tremendously curious about what’s to come.

  ———

  The next morning we arrive at Bangkok Central Women’s Correctional Institution, located in the high-security Klong Prem complex and housing some twenty thousand people. The massive white structure, with icinglike yellow accents, looks like a grand wedding cake, decked out in Thai flags and crowned by a giant, gold-framed photo of the king.