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Fighting Each Other
By D. P. O’Keefe
There’s a lot of tension in prison. It’s an Alpha male v. Alpha male, Gorillas in the Mist kinda thing. Anthropologically, it’s a gold mine of behaviors and actions—a place where David Attenborough would love to visit (the cafeteria, perhaps) and say: "These are prison inmates," in that wonderfully inflected accent of his.
In studying us, one would find more arguments and fighting than in a male control group. This is because when you cram this much testosterone into this overcrowded an environment you can laugh at the control group the way a commuter train full of rock concert-goers laughs at a commuter train full of Wall Street weenies. It’s just not the same. We’ve grown to be two different social groups. And in ours, while fighting is not the norm per se, it certainly is a normal event.
I was a Wall Street weenie for two years. Yet I’ve been in prison for 18 months and I’ve already fought another inmate.
The prison’s administration sees this kind of thing—and in order to reduce its occurrence, they place such high punishment on fighting, it makes it worth it to the inmate to avoid a fight, sometimes to the point of taking a punch and not punching back.
For a fighting "ticket" (a "Class A" offense—right up there with "hostage taking"), an inmate is placed in segregation for upwards of a week, is confined to his cell when he gets out, and receives another loss of privilege (such as phone or mail) on top of that. And visits during which physical contact between visitor and the inmate (a kiss, a hug) would have been allowed are suspended—and must be conducted via telephone behind plexiglass for two years!
Yet the fighting still goes on. Pride, testosterone, and tight space all add to a volatile scenario in which a fight can break out over something as innocuous as a card game.
In my case … well, mine was an exception. I was put in a cell with a man who was so annoying, deplorable and such a low-life that I had to make a decision to either start punching him or punching myself for putting up with him. I opted for the former, so they sounded the goon-squad alarm; by the time they arrived, I was finished with him and was just about dressed and ready for segregation.
But for that I lost contact visits with my fiancée for two years. I spent eleven days in segregation. Afterwards, I was confined to my cell for 20 days and I lost the privilege of telephone usage for another 20.
Was it worth it? Was it worth shutting up that vermin? No. Nothing is worth being cut off from touching your loved ones for two years. As for the rest … well, eleven days in segregation could be taken as privilege or punishment depending on how social a gorilla you are, and the other stuff was just a nuisance.
I’ve seen fights that weren’t fights—and that’s how most of them go down in here. Two men find themselves challenged by the other so that there is no way to back down. Consequently, a fight (or better put, a "skirmish") ensues. No one really gets hurt—but the "Class A" tickets are issued anyway and the severe punishments are handed down. These fights usually happen between younger inmates.
There is zero tolerance for fighting in Connecticut prisons. Even "self defense" is dismissed as avoidable. "Which," as David Attenborough would say, "is a crock of manure." Really. I’m supposed to stand there and let some 80-IQ pituitary case hit me until help arrives? Some of the high-tech goon squad haven’t run a foot race in 20 years—and I’m relying on one of their hearts not giving into ventricular fibrillation en route to save me. I could be ground chuck when all is said and done. But hey, I would be able to have my fiancée kiss my mutilated, disfigured face for two whole years. Somehow I think that’s wrong.
But back to anthropology and prison. Prison fighting is unstoppable. It’s part of the natural order of things. An ugly natural order, but a natural order nonetheless. And until mankind finds a cure for war, terrorism and border skirmishes, he’ll not find a solution for fighting in here either.
And that you can take to the bank.
D. P. O’Keefe is a humorist incarcerated in a Connecticut maximum security correction facility.
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