The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1977 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1977
Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 8 9 10 11 12
ISBN: 978-0-226-21883-0 (ebook)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-38977-6 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-38977-4 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jacobs, James B
Stateville.
(Studies in crime and justice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Illinois. State Penitentiary, Joliet. I. Title. II. Series.
HV9475.I32S824 365'.9773'25 76-22957
ISBN: 0-226-38977-4 (paper)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Stateville
The Penitentiary in Mass Society
James B. Jacobs
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago and London
STUDIES IN CRIME AND JUSTICE
Editorial Committee
Sanford H. Kadish
Norval Morris (Chairman)
James Vorenberg
Stanton Wheeler
Marvin E. Wolfgang
To My Mother and Father
Contents
Foreword by Morris Janowitz
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: THE AUTHORITARIAN REGIME
1. The Search for a Stable Equilibrium, 1925–36
2. Emergence of Personal Dominance, 1936–61
3. Challenge to Institutional Authority, 1961–70
PART II: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW EQUILIBRIUM
4. Emergence of a Professional Administration, 1970–75
5. Intrusion of the Legal System and Interest Groups
6. Penetration of the Gangs
7. Transition of the Guard Force
8. Overview: Restoration and Beyond
Appendix 1: Participant Observation among Prisoners
Appendix 2: Tables
Notes
Index
Foreword
This is a historical and sociological study of a penitentiary; specifically, it presents fifty years of transformation and change of a large state prison. It is both a richly descriptive account and a powerfully trenchant analysis. The author has engaged in a careful historical examination of the archival records; he has pursued direct and prolonged participant observation with great skill; and, in addition, as a lawyer he has uniquely augmented his research by an elaborate assessment of the changing administrative and legal codes affecting the prison. Thus this book is a lasting contribution to the study of social institutions. But, in effect, it is also an analysis of contemporary society, since the prison and its internal life are a reflection of the state of the larger society. In the language of contemporary social science, this book is a contribution to macrosociology.
Sociologists have a rich tradition of exploring the social organization of the prison. The Chicago school of sociology was not limited to community studies; as in this case, it applied its perspective to a variety of institutions. Thus, this research builds on and enriches Donald Clemmer’s pioneering book The Prison Community, published in 1940. The literature on prisons contains some of the most outstanding research monographs in sociology; and let there be no misunderstanding: the vitality and the enduring core of sociology rest as much on its classic monographs as on its grand theories. For the individual sociologist, the prison is a manageable research site, one whose organization can be understood and mastered. At the same time, it is an encompassing and complex institution; it is an entity worthy of intensive research; to research a prison is to investigate a rather complete social system.
The intellectual power of this monograph results from James Jacobs’s ability to use the prison as an indicator of the social organization and moral values of the larger society. This is best done by examining the prison on a trend basis over time. The internal social stratification of the prison has reflected and continues to reflect the stratification system of the outside society. The conception of prison management and the organizational goals of the prison in turn are outgrowths of the struggles and accommodations of civil society.
Because he presents an overview of the various “phases” of the institutional life of the prison during a half-century, Jacobs is able to record both the internal changes and the transformation of the larger society. Stateville is not necessarily the typical prison—there could be no single typical institution. But the trends in the history of Stateville are those which have operated throughout United States society. In the simplest terms, the prison has moved from an institution at the periphery of society, remote, isolated, with distinct boundaries, under the control of personalistic and authoritarian leadership. It was an organization with a strong emphasis on informal and interpersonal mechanisms of control. Over time, it has shifted more to the center of the larger society; its boundaries have become more permeable and its older control mechanisms have given way to more rational, bureaucratic, and legalistic arrangements.
Jacobs presents a developmental analysis in which a series of stages are identified that are common to social movement and institutional change. The “old order” of authoritarian control was followed by a period of mild reform, and mild reform only produced increased tension and hostility between prisoners and administration. The next phase was a more marked reform of the older system—which in turn produced more tension, disruption, and violence. In the pattern of the natural history of societal and institutional change, the subsequent phase was a counterreformation—a search for and the emergence of a new format of greater stability and mutual, if uneasy, acceptance by the contending parties.
There can be no doubt that a dedicated band of reformers initiated the efforts at institutional change. Among those who were active before and immediately after World War II were academic sociologists and their students who entered prison administration. Their contributions were important, but they were without deep or lasting influence. The changing mood in the nation—the increased emphasis after 1945 on “humanitarian” goals and the strong belief in the potentials of rehabilitation—served to keep alive the goals of transforming the prison. However, the popular movements and the agitations of the 1960s set the process of institutional change in motion. These social and political movements served to politicize the prisoners and increase the tensions between inmate and administration.
A variety of external groups entered the prison and sought to participate in the decision-making process. James Jacobs highlights the penetration of the prison in the 1960s and 1970s by Black Muslims, by street gangs of the city of Chicago, and by civil liberty and legal groups, as well as by educational and social welfare agencies. These kept up the pressure for change and heightened the internal tensions. But the basis of real transformation came from the judicial review of prison administration and prison procedures. In the late 1960s the courts started to apply their definition of due process and equal protection to the lives of the inmates. They sought to extend to the prisoner essential aspects of the rights of citizenship.
The result was the emergence of a new set of legalistic and bureaucratic rules and procedures for guiding the day-to-day activities of the prison administrators and their staff. Under these conditions, it was understandable that unionization of the guards took place, since they were
searching for a set of rules and procedures as well as an occupational ideology to defend their position in the prison system. Out of the legalistic emphasis, a new equilibrium emerged, accompanied by strong administrative control and by a decline or a constriction of tension and violence in the prison. The new equilibrium was based on important elements of the rule of law, but it was also based on a rejection of some administrative practices of the period of marked reform.
James Jacobs makes use of the notion of mass society to analyze and understand the transformation of the prison. The term “mass society” refers to societal movements which seek to incorporate each and every person into the political and legal systems of society. Mass society, as used by James Jacobs, draws on a specific formulation of the term; it does not focus only on increase in scale and complexity and on the growth of impersonality in an advanced industrial society. It is rather a concern with the efforts to create a moral and legal system appropriate for contemporary society. The concept emphasizes the extension of the rights of citizenship throughout the social structure. Jacobs, as a legal scholar, is aware that the rights of citizenship—that is, particular elements—extend to the prison population as well. And the history of Stateville documents this transformation. A more legalistic, more bureaucratic prison system hardly creates a utopia, but it supplies a new basis for the social order of the prison.
Among the most brilliant aspects of the study is the analysis of the limitations and difficulties of the new organizational format. Stateville is still a prison. There are inherent limitations in the application of the rule of law to a prison setting. The guards and administrators find themselves under pressure to redefine their goals and practices, but it is easier to resist than to adapt.
But basically the application of the rule of law hardly guarantees that the prison will be more effective as an institution of rehabilitation or social education. It does mean that prisoners will existentially, and in the immediate moment, be treated more equitably and more humanely. The rule of law can at best create the preconditions for effective programs of rehabilitation and social education. But juridical review cannot guarantee them as an effective right, because there is not a foundation of knowledge on which to base such programs. At best, the juridical intrusion into the prison serves to permit the responsible penetration of external groups into the life of the prison and to increase the likelihood of contacts between the inmates and the agencies of the larger civil society. Attaining the major goal of reducing the size of the prisoner population depends, not on prison reform, but on a fundamental transformation of the agencies of education and employment which manage the transition from youth to adult status. But the broad sweep of Jacobs’s analysis indicates that, in essence, the legal system—not the concept of the social sciences or psychiatry—has transformed the prison thus far. His analysis raises the persistent question of the extent to which limits have been reached in the effects of this particular approach.
There are those among the sociologists who assert with a shrill cry that there is a crisis in sociology. While it is not clear what is meant by this phrase, it does seem to imply that sociology has not been able to influence decisively the course of sociopolitical change. Only the philosopher kings among the sociologists could have expected it to do so. But if the phrase “crisis in sociology” has any real meaning, it implies that the intellectual standards of the discipline have been undermined or that its vitality—its ability to continue and to expand its intellectual traditions—has been shattered. In my view, volumes such as this by James Jacobs underline that there is no crisis in sociology. It is a rich and exciting study. It draws on a powerful intellectual heritage, and it is able to add the legal dimension to the participant observation study of social institutions. It is the grand tradition which declares that the work of a single man or woman can make a real contribution.
This study is a breath of fresh air in a period in which there is extensive debate about evaluation research and policy analysis. The conclusions of this book tell no one what is to be done. A body of data has been presented and a framework utilized for interpreting these findings. The reader is better informed, whether he be a professional prison administrator, a member of the citizen public, or a student of society. Being better informed, he himself can proceed to formulate his view and to make his decisions on a sounder basis and, it is hoped, more effectively. This is the ongoing task of social research on controversial topics, and this is what James Jacobs has admirably accomplished.
MORRIS JANOWITZ
Acknowledgments
This book grew out of my studies at the Law School and in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. There are many faculty members at Chicago to whom I owe debts of gratitude, but there are three who stand out as requiring special acknowledgment.
From the summer of 1971, when I began as his research assistant, till the fall of 1975, when I left my postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice to join the faculty at Cornell, Norval Morris was an enthusiastic and unswerving supporter of my evolving prison research. Throughout my highly rewarding association with the Center, of which he was codirector, Dean Morris was an inspiration as a teacher, scholar, and friend. He has been unsparing in his commitment to this project. To him and to the Center I also owe the encouragement which gave me the motivation and the resources to pursue my studies in the Department of Sociology—a decision which has greatly broadened and deepened my thinking about the matters presented in this book.
In my transition from law to sociology, no one was more instrumental than Barry Schwartz, who stimulated me in his classes and guided me through the sociological literatures on prison organization and street gangs. The intellectual heart of this book belongs to Morris Janowitz, chairman of my dissertation committee. I had already been studying Stateville for some time before I became one of Professor Janowitz’s graduate students. My relationship with Janowitz was an intellectual summit of my years at the University of Chicago. Whatever insight lies in the pages between these covers I can trace to the discussions and critiques this teacher and scholar has devoted to my work.
Aside from the three mentioned above I should mention others with whom I was associated at the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice. Franklin Zimring, professor of law and codirector of the center, was a great supporter of this research not only—but not insubstantially—in making it financially possible. As a research associate at the center, Eric Steele was a daily source of intellectual stimulation. The center staff put up with me for years, with only an occasional complaint. I owe Ben Meeker, Helen Flint, Margaret Ochoa, Linda Sue Seth, Frieda Lancaster, and Ann Stern many many thanks. Appreciation is also expressed for the outstanding help of Liz Marx, my secretary at Cornell.
Such are my debts to the distinguished guardians and citizens of the university. But there are those in a very different but no less unique institution to whom I may owe even more in the execution of this research. There were prisoners at Stateville, who even while they were suffering the pains of their misfortune, were enthusiastic and diligent in their assistance and cooperation. I will single out Carlos Hernandez, Bobby Gore, Gregory Brown, Robert Pryor, and Timothy DeBerry for their help, but there were many others. Some of these individuals remain at Stateville and I cannot help but reflect upon their suffering as I acknowledge that without their assistance the book could not have been written.
On the prison staff side I received oustanding cooperation from two directors, Peter Bensinger and Alyn Sielaff; and from four Stateville wardens—Frank Pate, John Twomey, Joseph Cannon, and David Brierton. While at points I am explicitly or implicitly critical of various administrative judgments and decisions, I must emphasize how strong has been the commitment of all these individuals to the improvement of the prison system. No doubt few, if any, of us could withstand the scrutiny of retrospective analysis without faltering. These men are neither omniscient nor infallible, but their integrity has been of the highest order as
has been their single-minded dedication to public service.
There were dozens of people in the various offices at Stateville who tolerated my curiosity, browsing, and searching; and who often called unknown documents, reports, and statistics to my attention. I must thank the entire Stateville staff and, in particular, Louis O’Shea, Robert Penrod, Daniel Bosse, Robert Kapture, Vernon Revis, and Bruce Hall. Standing out above all in his friendship and loyalty is that most remarkable former prison guard and former prison counselor Harold Retsky.
Finally I acknowledge only too well the patience of my family and friends who have listened for so long to what is now—for them—a very well-known history of Stateville.
Aerial view of Stateville
(State of Illinois Department of Corrections photograph)
Introduction
The sociological point of view makes its appearance in historical investigation as soon as the historian turns from the study of periods to the study of institutions. The history of institutions, that is to say, the family, the church, economic institutions, political institutions, etc., leads inexorably to comparisons, classificatons, the formation of class names or concepts, and eventually to the formation of law. In the process, history becomes natural history, and natural history passes over into natural science. In short, history becomes sociology.
Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess
Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921)
The Chicago school of sociology emphasized the thorough empirical investigation of the social world in all its richness. Whether studying Chicago’s Gold Coast, juvenile street gangs, or the real estate profession, the Chicago sociologists approached their subject with the commitment and fascination of naturalists. This commitment most often led to the detailed case study as the preferred strategy of research, although quantitative approaches also were used from the beginning. While the Chicago sociologists are lauded for getting close to their subjects, they were less attached to a particular methodology than to the institutions which they were studying.
Stateville- the Penitentiary in Mass Society Page 1