Detention It Isn't

A Student's Experiences in Jail

We, as high school students, generally take our lives very seriously. We live and die by the marks we scrounge for daily; we equate the petty betrayals of everyday social circumstances with those of Judas and Brutus; in essence, we live life in a government-funded fishbowl, separated from many of the extremities that exist outside of adolescent life. Ironically enough, for one student, this intercession of real life caused him to be transported from one government-funded fishbowl to another, one of an entirely different purpose and nature. This student, for the sake of this article, shall henceforth be referred to as Joey Lawrence. Whoa. Joey Lawrence had committed an illegal act, discussed in an earlier issue of HTP (“Can I Tell You that I Never Really Had a Gun” in v3i3). Because of this criminal violation, while most students were “maxin’” and “relaxin’” on their summer holidays, Joey Lawrence was placed in jail. One can clearly see how going to jail, surrounded by those even more hopeless than the worst delinquents in high school would corrupt the emotional “Eden” of high school life.

Describing his initial encounter with Ontario’s prison system, Joey states that “the day that seemed the harshest was the day that they actually came and arrested me at school.” In this case, the mental collision that must occur when one realizes that high school is not reality, was mirrored by an actual event, as agents of the law intruded upon Joey’s “sanctuary” of The Woodlands School.

Joey Lawrence became quite familiar with the prison system in Ontario, spending time in four different institutions. A matter of great importance regarding jail time is the nature of those spending their time in the same institution along with you. According to Joey, his “dorm mates” ranged from “petty thieves to people who stabbed people in bar fights to drunk drivers.” Considering the fact that Joey was convicted on minor charges, his cell-mates were determined not by the type of crime they had committed, but by the time at which they were processed. Since Joey was sentenced to less than two years, he was placed in provincial custody, and was therefore kept away “from the meaner guys [that] tend to be in federal custody.”

Since many of Joey’s fellow inmates were sentenced to two years, he was able to witness the developed social structure of prison life. Essentially, “your friends were the guys who wouldn’t do anything nasty to you overtly. On the first day, I had already eaten, so I gave away my meal; that person became my friend. Save your food. Save your cigarettes. They become big bargaining chips.” Essentially, in prison, the principle of self-interest, only occasionally apparent in the outside world, becomes elevated and intensified to an almost absurd level, where friends can be bought and sold with pudding cups and du Mauriers. Joey also witnessed the strong racial divide that exists in prison. Commenting, he states: “the racial tensions are great (meant as a measurement, not as a quality). To talk to somebody who was black, you’d have to have somebody who was black with you.” Again, tensions and issues existent in the outside world are stripped down to their essentials and magnified in prison life. As it is popularly stated, one can judge the quality of a society by looking at its prisoners, as prison social structure presents an magnified portrait of society on the outside. Also present in prison is a strong “see no evil, speak no evil” ethic. If fights occur, no matter how many people are in the same room at the time, inevitably, there are no witnesses.

A major element of prison culture is inextricably linked to drugs, as poverty, crime and substance abuse are all interrelated, and as many of those in jail are there on drug convictions. Joey was shocked by the amount of drugs he saw while in jail, a supposedly clean environment, stating that he “saw more drugs per square inch in jail than I’ve ever seen in the entire world.” Clearly, the screening measures taken by prison authorities in order to keep drugs out of jail are ineffective; this is a major flaw in the system. The purpose of the prison system is not only to punish and separate, but also to remold minds and alter behaviour. How is this to be accomplished when inmates have a crutch from the outside world to fall back on? Of course, in order to prevent drugs from entering the system, one must first discover how they get in. Joey, during his stay, found out: “They “hooped” it. It’s the easiest way to get something past the guards. It seems quite repulsive to me, but that’s what they do. They take it, they ram it up their asshole, and in they go!” Drag queens, or “queenies” as they’re known in the lockup, “hoop” drugs, intentionally get arrested for lewdness charges in order to get into prison for a short stay, and then deal the various substances to the inmates. “When the queenies show up, they’re everybody’s favourite person for a while,” Joey says. With the realization of the prevalence and permeation of drugs in the prison system, Canada’s drug policy seems quite silly. We place drug addicts and users in prison, where there are more drugs, more easily available than anywhere else, and we remove the consequence, since, obviously, what incentive is there to avoid drugs if you’re already in jail? Clearly, a more effective screening process is essential to increasing the effectiveness of our prison system, especially regarding drug abusers.

Joey Lawrence also had the opportunity during his incarceration to be placed in a work-release program. Working in a church in Clarkson, he was, in his own words, “a galley slave. I cleaned up everybody else’s messes.” He worked from 8 am to 7 pm everyday, with his only reward being that he was not in jail. Asked if he felt this was sufficient compensation, he answered “yes.” What is it about prison that makes it such a dreadful experience? All anal rape jokes aside, there must be some quality that makes jail horrific. According to Joey, that dreaded aspect is boredom. “When you’re locked up, there’s nothing. You do nothing. You languish. That’s why people hate it. The things that surface, the drugs, violence, the weapons, are all a product of boredom.” Even inmates’ attempts to better themselves are restricted by the code of banality enforced in jail. Reading material was, according to Joey, very well screened: “there was nothing that had any violence or romance or anything like that in it.” However, in one of those surprising editorial moments that seem too good to be true, there was a TV in prison that the inmates were allowed to watch. Even in prison, the boob tube is allowed free reign over people’s minds where books are not. In addition to TV’s control over inmates’ perception of the outside wold, it also controls their perception of themselves. No timepieces are allowed in prison, so time is measured according to the TV schedule.

Joey Lawrence, more qualified than most people due to his jail time, is uniquely able to evaluate the effectiveness of the Canadian prison system, since he can speak, not only from the perspective of a normal citizen, but also as an ex-con. As far as he’s concerned, the prison system “is the best we can do with what we’ve got. We have absolutely no idea how it is that one would convince somebody to be different than they are.”