Play in the City 2013

Walls, dark color, looks like a dungeon, in a place which is a little bit isolated, there is Easter State Penitentiary. The auditory tour was saying ESP is different because it keeps each inmate alone, and let them reflect on themselves, and reform. It sounds like ESP is the saver of these souls. But walking in it, I did not find it a different prison. I would say it is a better decorated prison-it is like a dungeon from a sci-fi movie. Maybe it is better than the old prisons in the aspects of cleanliness, structure, and order. However, the dark, narrow and depressive cells may not be the best place to for penitents to contemplate or to reform.  Staying there for a couple of minutes, I thought about some random stuff. I thought about what I was going to do next, and how we got here. I thought about the voices in the auditory tour. I thought about Zadie Smith because we were going to revise the paper about NW, and about how I would feel in this cell etc. But eventually, the feeling went to bore, and all I wanted to do was go out. Not to mention imagining myself an inmate who has to be here for years without communicating with anyone. How would these inmates react?

Anne Birk is a Danish criminologist who says that the purpose of Danish prisons “is not to make the inmates’ lives as miserable as possible. Instead, Danish prisons strive for the goal of normalization. The prisons are designed to closely resemble life on the outside,” an idea she calls “re-socialization.” (Toll) The normalization in these prisons, “is not about normalizing the prisoner; it is about normalizing the prison conditions.” (Toll) American prisons have almost ten times the amount of prisoners that Denmark has. (International) It is estimated that tens of thousands of these American prisoners are in solitary confinement. (Goode) Solitary confinement supposed purpose is to confine uncontrollable prisoners, but in many cases those prisoners would function equally as well in less controlled environments. In fact, “isolation [is] likely to produce mental illness as remorse.” (Goode) This makes isolation itself a perpetuator of isolation, “If you treat people like animals, that’s exactly the way they’ll behave.” (Goode)

American prisons should restrict inmates in the same way citizens are restricted when they function in society. Isolation by its nature does not provide any form of “re-socialization” (Toll), and only encourages the prisoner to reach more into themselves instead of a community.

The Quaker Vision

Eastern State Penitentiary will be a place of silent reflection.  It will be a place where criminals can think about their crimes and truly be penitent.  A prison unlike all others in operation; instead of storing criminals just to remove them from society (Bowditch 3) or abusing them into reformation, Eastern State Penitentiary will be a place that encourages penitence and a reconnection to God and goodness.  

The exterior of the building, with its medieval appearance, tall walls, gargoyles and turrets, should instill fear of the world behind it (“General Overview”).  The interior, however, is reminiscent of churches or cathedrals: tall vaulted hallways; arched windows and skylights.

There are strict rules for the running of Eastern State that will allow prisoners to realize the ugliness of their ways and rediscover the good within themselves most effectively.   Prisoners will have only themselves, guards, and God to communicate with; the entire prison will be silent.  They will not be abused in any physical manner, as the goal is not to harm them but rather to bring them back to goodness and into society.  

As I walked into Eastern State Penitentiary, it was hard to imagine anyone living there. The place was in ruin, stable but very obviously crumbled and corroded. Aside from the audio tour guide’s voice in my ears, the hallways were quiet, with some rooms restored to how they would’ve looked during the prison’s prime. They were almost Church like, as intended by the building’s designer, and much more livable looking than how I imagine today’s prisons. Imagining the silence that accompanied the space, though, it was easy to see why so many of the inmates were incredibly unhappy in their time at Eastern State.

Eastern State Penitentiary was founded in 1829 by a Quaker group called the "Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons”  (General Overview). It was revolutionary for its time, a prison meant to change prisoners for the better instead of merely locking them up. Its silent, penitentiary atmosphere was coupled with impressive accommodations for its prisoners: heat, decent food, and better plumbing than the white house had at that time. They were even taught “honest work (shoemaking, weaving, and the like)” to carry with them into the outside world (General Overview). The only catch was that the prisoners had virtually no contact with anything that could distract them from their own thoughts. They ate alone, exercised alone, and had access to only one book, The Bible. They never saw any of the other prisoners, and their only company was a window on each ceiling called, “The Eye of God.”  

Samuel Brewster stayed in his cell, with cold walls and endless silence. On the ground, lied some cloths and other component parts of pairs of shoes, but he did not want to make the shoes. He just sat to the wall. Twenty minutes, or more time passed. He did not know. Suddenly, he stood up and rushed at the door, with hands knocking heavily at the iron door: “I! I will not make another pair!”(Buried Lives, 106) He angrily repeating his words again and again, but no one answered. He knew, maybe he would be brought to the dark room, but he did not care. No one talked to him. Isolation, this was the most terrible thing he met here. In such an isolated cell, so silent that seemed there was only one man, that was him, in the world. Meals arrived on time, but they could not change anything except told him another day came. He did not know how many days passed or how many days left, actually he just wanted to listen or talk or other ways of communicating. He had something else such as making shoes or reading to do, but he did not want to follow the rules made for prisoners, for shoes a month, it seemed enough for him. He was not interested in the words in the reading material because they could not change the situation here, could not bring more voices here. He was bored with the repeating days the endless silence and the useless books or shoes, trying to break the situation by ‘denying work, damaging work supplies, destroying cell furniture, rebuffing and manipulating religious counselors , and attacking overseers’. (Buried Lives, 107)

When analyzing the architecture of Eastern State Penitentiary, I must distinguish the layout of the cells from that of the prison; the cells were designed with penitence in mind whereas the prison was designed to effectively monitor and control the lives of the prisoners. In each cell, there is a long skinny window. This window encouraged the prisoner to look toward the heavens and contemplate his relationship with God. The architecture of the cell further highlights this window. With an arched ceiling and bare white walls, the cell did not distract the prisoner from his own thoughts nor did it allow the prisoner to escape the light pouring in. Though the cell is dank and cold, light reaches every corner of it in the daytime. Separating the cell from the rest of the prison are thick walls and small doors. Both the walls and the doors illustrate a meeting point between the design of the cell and that of the prison. The thick walls made it harder for prisoners to communicate with each other and more difficult for prisoners to escape. The doors also emphasized the importance of both penitence and control in Eastern State Penitentiary. When walking through the small doors, prisoners had to duck their heads and were humbled before fully entering their cells. Moreover, the wooden door, which extended past the door frame, sealed the prisoner into his cell. In contrast to the individual cells, the prison was not designed to reform prisoners, but to enable constant surveillance.

I sat on the dusted ground, cold like an outdoor bench in the chilliest winter day. The difference was I could heat the bench after ten minutes, but not these tiny square inches under my body. The huge cement monster was sucking all my warmth. I liked the silence, though. It let me feel the texture of the wall, watch the skylight’s dramatic effect on the tiny hair on my skin, and think about thoughts in my head. I wanted to sing, but it would be embarrassing with the presence of two cellmates. So I sang inside my head. The voice was not mine, but a darker and more ethereal version of the singer’s, seeping into me along with the coldness. I may have unconsciously opened my mouth and made a sound, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

Eastern State Penitentiary was created by the Quakers in order to make the prisoners better people. The Quakers believed that, if treated in the correct way, the prisoners would reflect on themselves, see that they were wrong, and repent for their sins.This did not happen. Prisoners began rebelling almost as soon as the prison opened.

Eastern State, from the outside, seemed orderly and exactly like a prison that others should (and did) try to imitate. On the inside, however, Eastern State was edging towards chaos, with not many things going correctly. In Eastern State, it was never quite clear who ruled the prison, the guards or the prisoners. This grey-area dynamic made it close to impossible to keep the prisoners under control. Indeed, some of the guards did not even try to make it clear that they were in charge, and did things like play chess with the prisoners while they were supposed to be walking the halls.

Prisoners were never meant to be punished; the Quaker reformers thought that isolation was enough to make the prisoners feel remorse for what they had done. But the guards did resort to physical or emotional punishment when prisoners acted up.

Eastern State tried to strip prisoners of any individuality they may have retained. There was meant to be no one to talk to besides a minister who would come to the cells to try to reform or convert the prisoners.

-Can’t you see that it’s changing? We’re living in a time of Enlightenment, and we’ve got to keep up!

-But why the prisons?

-Who better to reform? The human man has so much potential! We’ve got to focus on preventing crimes rather than punishing for them.

-So are we not going to punish criminals? Are we just going to release them back onto the streets?

-No, not at all. We’ll give them time to reflect on their crimes, and make peace with God. Don’t you see? They’ll be reformed!

The building is falling. The rooms are cold, so cold, but the ruined walls give the illusion that they had at point been warm. In fact, the audio tour conforms that this relic was always too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, despite the fact that it boasted one of the first central heating systems, but the broken windows and holes in walls seem to excuse its current temperature. There is a subconscious justification that it is cold in here because the building is old and broken; not because it was always this way. This place was built more to make people penitent than comfortable.

-We’ll have to keep them in isolation, to prevent the insincere from contaminating the reforming. It will keep them away from the crimes that have become so rampant in older prisons as a result of the convicted intermixing and causing trouble.