by Olivia Rodrigues ’21 and Matty Jackmauh ’22, Contributing Writers
In just about every tale, there’s a good guy and a bad guy. As children, we learn that the princess is the “good guy” and the evil stepmother, the “bad.” We flip through comics in which the brave superhero, the “good guy,” defeats the “bad guy” archnemesis. We are taught that the cop is the “hero,” whereas the guy who breaks into the house is the “villain.”
Before taking 20 & 21st Century American Prison Writing, we perceived the penal system with this “good guy,” “bad guy” mentality. Prison was nothing more than a scary place filled with a bunch of scary bad guys. Like many other Americans, we figured that the people inside of these institutions deserved their 25 to life sentences. The crime that a person committed, whatever it may have been, became their most defining characteristic. Whether it was conscious or not, incarcerated people became labeled as robbers, murderers, or rapists, and their status as ‘human’ fell secondary to their crime.
Over the course of the semester, we read books, articles, and essays that demonstrate the negative effects of this label. Defining people by their worst act harms the offender in ways that may not be immediately apparent. Through Professor Larson, we were introduced to the American Prison Writing Archive, a site complete with thousands of essays written by currently or formerly incarcerated people. We read autobiographical pieces by Assata Shakur and George Jackson. We delved into novels written by Malcolm Braly and Patricia McConnel. Through reading these texts, our image of incarcerated people as inherently “bad guys” melted away. These perceptions were replaced by the realization that incarcerated people are just that, people. They are humans who do a bad thing and as a result, get put into cages for the rest of their lives. Often times, incarcerated people experienced traumatic childhoods filled with rampant sexual abuse. They often were encouraged by their peers to be tough, which meant committing offenses that led them to a life of incarceration. While there is choice in a criminal decision, there is also, for the vast majority of incarcerated people, a societal expectation to end up in prison. This, we did not consider prior to taking Professor Larson’s class.
As we started reading
Mother California
, a memoir by Kenneth Hartman, his story seemed just another of the many prison stories we’d been exposed to in the media; a young criminal entering the system in his teens with reform seemingly far out of reach. At 19, Hartman was sentenced to life without parole in California after drunkenly murdering a homeless man, starting him on his 38-year path to reform. The first half of the book focused on the gruesome and base reality of Hartman’s deepening involvement in the prison social system, and how continued violence and drug use acted as his only propellant. As he moved from prison to prison and his sentence dragged on, Hartman began to see the prison system for what it was and what it had turned him into. On top of this recognition of wasted time, Hartman had been repeatedly misdiagnosed with HIV, putting his mortality at the forefront of his mind. In considering time and himself, he outgrew his desire for nominal power within the ranks of the other and sought to find his humanity. Through the love of his wife, guilt for the life he took, and a newfound devotion to rehabilitation, Hartman achieved sobriety and used the remainder of his time seeking to improve the system in which he had spent so much of his life. Not only has Hartman won awards for his achievements in the genre of prison writing and is still a prolific writer, he is also responsible for the creation of the Honor Yard Program, a separate section of the California State Prison in Lancaster for those incarcerated who abstain from drugs and violence, who “simply want to do [their] time, away from the bullshit and the madness” (170,
Mother California
).
It is easy to overlook self-directed rehabilitation within the penal system, and meeting Kenneth Hartman ensured we wouldn’t soon forget. Although we’d just read his book and were tuned into the realities of mistreatment and misrepresentation within the prison system, it seemed so distant behind the pages of a book. It added tremendous gravity and reality to the fact that Hartman was released and has become the man that stood before us, fielding questions from a college literature class. Reading
Mother California
allowed us to track his personal development from former convict to an award-winning author and an incredible, passionate human being.
Now, you might be asking yourself, beyond reading our beautiful article, where can you read further about the experiences of incarcerated people? Well, that’s easy. Read the books aforementioned, visit the American Prison Writing Archive, seek out stories. That said, we can also tell you a few places you shouldn’t look to further your prison knowledge. Probably the most glaringly obvious example is pop culture. In true fashion, media typically creates salacious and overdramatized content when it comes to prison portrayal. People tend to be most interested in the life of Piper Chapman (aka Piper Kerman), as opposed to the more typical horror stories that incarcerated people face. As a population, we are so highly inundated with shows such as
Cops
and
Beyond Scared Straight
that depict people during their worst states, or in a light intended to scare and/or entertain. Shows like these are one of the many reasons why Americans unjustly fear incarcerated people and see the prison system as a necessary measure for the criminals we see on TV. So, we encourage you to check out a different perspective.
