Comments in Response to “The Prison Band”

I would like to respond to two specific issues raised in “The Prison Band.” The first has to do with the phenomenon of rape in relation to “normative” prison sexuality. The second has to do with administrative and societal attitudes about prison rape. Specifically, that denial of the very existence of rape in prison, or its acceptance and rationalization as part of prison’s harshness, may be acting out of unconscious (or perhaps even conscious) sadism on the part of administrators and society.

Sex is a powerful human desire that is hardly extinguished by incarceration. In prison it surfaces in complex and various forms. These run the gamut from homemade faux vaginas called “fi fi’s” used for masturbation by male inmates, through contact between opposite-sex staff and inmates, contact between opposite-sex inmates (when they are housed in the same compound), and contact between same-sex inmates that is either incidental or occurs in the context of some sort of longer term relationship.

Attachment and power appear to be ubiquitous forces in relationships. For most people it appears that attachment is the fundamental force that connects them to others and power is at play within that fundamental context. However, for others, including some prison staff and inmates who have significant antisocial components in their personality structures, the power gradient or place in the hierarchy appears to be the fundamental force that drives their mode of relating, attachment being a secondary consideration, and sometimes not a consideration at all.

Sex for most people tends to occur within the context of an attachment relationship. However, the picture may be different for people involved in the “street life” and in prison. A woman in the “street life,” devalued as property and as a sex object, has a lower position in the power hierarchy. A man in prison who is relegated to the role of “bitch” or “punk” is feminized and thus devalued within the framework of the prison worldview. It makes no difference if he arrived at this state as a consensual homosexual or by the more common route of caving into intimidation or to coercion.

Rape in prison, like rape outside of prison, may in some cases serve the purpose of gratifying sexual desire, but certainly involves issues of power, control, and aggression. Significantly, typologies of rapists developed by clinicians working with sexual assailants commonly differentiate meanings of aggression and of sexuality within the greater phenomenon of rape.

For some rapists the aim of aggression is primarily to obtain compliance of a partner (victim) for the purpose of sexual gratification, and only so much force as is necessary to achieve compliance will be employed. The sexual behavior may often be an expression of a romanticized sexual fantasy, or it may be an impulsive, situationally determined predatory act. For other rapists, sex appears to be the exquisite vehicle for hurting and humiliating the victim, for expressing anger or rage or sexually sadistic fantasies. In “The Prison Band,” there is allusion to some if not all of these categories of rapists.

With regard to societal and administrative attitudes toward rape in prison, people in society view homosexual rape as a particularly terrifying and humiliating aspect of the “mythology” of the prison experience at large. Yet, as the author of “The Prison Band” points out, prison rape is statistically underrepresented, and to the extent that it is acknowledged, it seems to be accepted and rationalized as part of the harshness of prison life.

I would interpret this as acting out toward inmates, and as having meaning analogous to that which is the case when the rape by one inmate

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against another is expressive of sexually sadistic fantasies. Other unsavory aspects of prison life such as crowding, minimal medical care, unsanitary living conditions, and bad food may also be aspects of conscious and unconscious sadism toward inmates. However, in a society that tends to be homophobic and to view sex as dirty, tacit complicity in sexual assault becomes an especial form of exquisite humiliation and punishment.

My commentary on these two issues raised by “The Prison Band” is a gross oversimplification. This is true not only for the issue of rape in the context of prison sexuality and the prison power hierarchy. It is also true of the way in which society and prison administration may act toward inmates as some inmates act toward each other in order to obtain the gratification of control and humiliation. Nevertheless, I hope it may stimulate consideration of how we relate to these issues within ourselves. My belief is that, if we can identify, acknowledge, and work with our own issues around these matters, it will lessen the impetus to act them out institutionally. This, in turn might contribute to more humane prisons, which might have a better chance of reclaiming the lives of some of the incarcerated.

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