Blogs

-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.

            Eastern State Penitentiary is a foreboding reminder of a dark past.  I stand in my cell, wishing for a place to sit. But, considering my two options, a toilet or a metal bed frame, I decide to remain standing. The walls are chipped and there is gravel on the floor. This building showcases the remains of decades of trauma. I pace. Back and forth, around in circles. I soon realize I am making quite a racket with the heels of my shoes, so I try to stand still for a bit. I feel a strong temptation to grab my phone.

            Thirty minutes alone in a cell, and I couldn’t even do it.  How can I imagine the sentences dealt out during the prison’s prime? When it opened in 1829, the building stood tall. A fortress of innovation and reform. With a castle-like appearance, and top-rate appliances like heaters and plumbing, this penitentiary seemed like the most humane reform center of the time.

            Prisons of the day were brutal. They all practiced a similar mentality of locking each prisoner up with all the others, regardless of how dangerous the people were. This resulted in petty thieves and children being locked up with murderers and prostitutes. As one can imagine, this resulted in much corruption.

Jessica Bernal

ESEM- Play in The City

Penitence: The Face of Prison Reform

          In the early 19th century, America was still a fledging country in the world. Just a century from having Independence, yet it expanded and thrived quite expeditiously. The Industrial Revolution made a big impact on the country and it engaged several people to immigrate to America and start a new life full of opportunities. As a result in the increase of population and wealth, crime rates also boomed. Crime in the 19th century was at a high peak and consisted of robbery, assaults, and murders.

         America, just embarking on itself as a new country, hadn’t thought nor dealt with its most vital issue of the moment, criminals. Who would capture them? And exactly how would they be punished? Notorious criminals were walking around the dark-lit streets with no apprehension. During the 19th century, there wasn’t an effective approach to penalizing delinquents. If they were caught, those who caught them in the act would probably also be the ones penalizing them some way or another. At times, most delinquents would also either be transported to another country or hanged publicly to enforce stop to all crimes to citizens of towns.

Before I truly read the “hopelessly hardened” about the Eastern State and step into this “groundbreaking” penitentiary, I was so convinced that the prisoners lead hard lives in the cells and behave so well in order to get out of the hopeless darkness and damp. Born in a family with father as judge and mother as lawyer, I was always told how desperate lives in the cells are- prisoners can’t fall asleep on rock-like beds, have limited time to see their family and once a prisoner told my mom that he only wanted a blanket in the winter and the chilblain he got in prison prohibited him from doing anything. At that time，I thought the penitentiary is so cruel that it is not a place for helping people to confess and change，but an inferno that destroys humanity. So I was so pleased and optimistic when I get to know that Eastern State is a pioneer in reforming incarceration.

Phoenix

Mlord

Play in the City 028

Hopelessness

Eastern State Penitentiary is a crumbling heap of rock and iron. While, in its heyday, it was a marvel of prison technology, the methods are today understood to be cruel and inhumane. Cells were designed to cut off all interaction, except with the guard, who wore wool socks over their shoes so as to minimize the sound of their footfall, and with the preacher, who attempted to convert them to Protestantism. There was nothing to do except work, and if one attempted to communicate with other prisoners, he or she was punished.

ESP was a marvel of technology. It had a revolutionary heating and plumbing system not present even in the White House at that time. Thick walls prevented prisoners from speaking to one another, for ESP was not intended to be an ordinary prison. Rather than just house criminals, it would isolate them, induce self-contemplation, and lead to repentance. ESP was a pioneer in the pursuit of reforming prisoners through isolation. Its creators believed that prisoners in solitude would come to terms with their crime, repent of their sins and go on to live more wholesome lives. The design of ESP forced prisoners to spend time examining their own hearts, and, ideally, to pray for forgiveness. It provided prisoners ample time and silence to think over their wrongdoings.

Eastern state was built as a place for prisoners to come to terms with their crimes, to pray in solitude for forgiveness. Now all that remains is an eerie building, a skeleton of the failed experiment: Eastern State was more torture or prison than reform center, which effectively tried to break prisoners down mentally with silence and solitude. Imagine how much smaller, lonelier, life must be when one’s only hope for diversion comes from the guards, the preacher, or the thin hope of making contact with other prisoners; solitary confinement can quickly make a person go mad. It is understandable, then, why inmates worked so hard for the rare opportunity to communicate with the other prisoners. In the end, the goals of the prison unrealized and the rules ignored or out dated, Eastern State Penitentiary was nothing more than an experiment that failed.

Silence can be a choice but it can also be forced. It is hard to tell for which of these reasons a person is silent. I can be silent when asked a question because I don't know the answer, because someone/thing has intimidated me, or because I choose not to answer. I can't expect anyone else to know why I am silent unless I, paradoxically, tell them by breaking my silence.

I think that when dealing with silence, we can only expect to get back what we give, to a conversation, a class, or a society. If I do not talk to someone in a conversation, I cannot expect them to keep the conversation going on their own. If I do not contribute in a class, I cannot expect someone to do my learning for me. And if I do not vocalize what I think is wrong with society, I cannot expect change.

I expected Eva, as someone arrested for murder, to want to explain her situation in order to get out of some of her punishment. I have grown up with our legal system, with "innocent until proven guilty," and with "you have the right to remain silent." Eva cannot expect to get anything out of the legal system if she does not speak. The legal system expects voices, not silence.

If I am using my voice, I feel like I deserve a response; I expect it. If I talk to someone, I want and expect them to respond. The choice to be silent is not an open, easy one, because society, from individuals to the government, expects us to be vocal. Fulfilling expectations is a much easier choice than is defying them.

I could see the lonely walls, which have witnessed too much. I could see the abandoned floor, which has been victim of pacing and madness. I could see the abused door, which has been the tool of solitude and punishment since 1829. I could see the Eye of God, but didn’t feel as if that could save me. I felt the bulge of my smart phone in the back pocket of my jeans. Resisting the urge to check if I had any messages, I sighed and looked around the room for the umpteenth time. My time in the Eastern State Penitentiary was merely a fraction of what the prisoners in the past had spent; however, in this day and age, with technology and our decreasing attention spans, it felt as if I was in there for months.

Our dependency on technology makes it difficult for us to stay still for long periods of time. These days, it is almost impossible to go a day without consulting some kind of machine or device. Letters have been replaced by emails, which have been replaced by text messages. Instead of waiting seven days to receive a letter from a friend, we now only have to wait seven seconds. We have developed an intolerance of anything that takes longer than a few moments, and this is why half an hour alone in a nineteenth-century prison cell seems like such torture to my generation.

I thought it was interesting that one of the questions asked at the end of class on Thursday was whether or not Gayl Jones was intentionally trying to make the reader uncomfortable with her graphic language in Eva’s Man.  For me, the detail and word choice of the story was definitely very challenging to read in one sitting.  The graphic detail is overwhelming and part of me just did not want to recognize that, while this is fiction, the story is very real.  That being said, I don’t think that Jones had any obligation to filter the story so that is would be an easier or more accessible read.  The reason it is accessible as it stands now is because it tells the truth.  We discussed this topic earlier on in the semester, whether or not is the responsibility of the author or the reader to make decisions about accessibility.  I personally think that I would not have had such an intense reaction to the story if it had been filtered.  As difficult as it was to read, would the story have had as much of an impact if it hadn’t told to whole truth?          

We talk about talking, but never listening. (Do we ever even listen about listening? Lectures on the virtues of listening are still yet more talking, and not listening. This regretably, is yet another one of those, though it will, hopefully, make me shut up at some point and listen to y'all, instead of filling silence because I need to fill it.) The problems we have with class discussion are usually put at the doorstep of talking, not really at the lack of listening.

Likewise, much of the dialogue surrounding the silence in Eva's Man has been about Eva's refusal to speak. We talked about possible reactions to what she could have said on Tuesday. I wasn't in class on Thursday, so maybe you did talk about her audience's refusal to listen. I hope so, because hypothosizing about why someone isn't making themselves vulnerable is fine, but unpacking who is making them vulnerable and why is important, too.