Jan. 23, 2012

Jack Henry Abbott

Jack Abbott sold himself to Norman Mailer as the “Super Convict.” Mailer turned the letters Abbott sent him into the best-selling book, In the Belly of the Beast, and assisted Abbott in gaining parole in 1981. Six months later Abbott stabbed a waiter to death in a New York restaurant.

 by J.J. Maloney

Jack Henry Abbott started as a boy in a training school, worked his way up through the system-—getting in trouble here, being transferred there, getting into more trouble until, ultimately, he spent virtually all of his life in some form of reform school or prison.

When it became known in 1977 that Norman Mailer was to write The Executioner's Song, about Gary Gilmore, Abbott, who was incarcerated in the same Utah penitentiary, wrote to Mailer, suggesting that Mailer could make use of the observations of someone like Abbott, someone who had lived in the world Gary Gilmore inhabited.

Mailer began to correspond with Abbott, and apparently began to care about him. Abbott wrote long, grandiloquent letters, in which he discussed his fantasized perception of himself as a Super Convict. He claimed to have been subjected to more brutality than other convicts, to have risen higher above the situation than other convicts, to have been more philosophically correct than other convicts.

Mailer bought it; for his own reasons, he wanted to believe what Abbott was saying. And, of course, there was some truth in many of the things Abbott said about prisons. 

May 16, 2010

Dartmoor Prison

   Opened in 1809 to hold French soldiers captured during the Napoleonic Wars, Dartmoor Prison became Great Britain’s version of Devil’s Island for the most hardened of British convicts.
by Robert Walsh

“There are two ways to enter Dartmoor Prison, and it is far, far preferable to work there.” – Anonymous

Her Majesty’s Prison, Dartmoor (known simply as “The Moor” to prisoners and guards alike) is the oldest, and by far the most notorious prison still in use in the Great Britain. Located in the middle of the Dartmoor National Park, it is also considered the most difficult prison to visit. It’s reputation as being a punishment prison for intractable  repeat offenders, coupled with various riots, murders, spectacular escapes and notorious inmates, make the word “Dartmoor” synonymous with brutality, harsh living conditions, even harsher discipline and a long-established (and well-deserved) reputation as the hardest time a British convict could do.

Dartmoor was designed by well-known architect Daniel Asher Alexander and constructed using local labor and local materials, especially the Dartmoor granite used in building the cell blocks. It was opened in 1809 and intended to hold French prisoners taken during the long-running Napoleonic Wars and as a replacement for their previous accommodation, the filthy disease-and-rat infested prison ship (known as ‘hulks’) then anchored 17 miles away in Plymouth Sound. Along with French prisoners, it also held U.S. prisoners taken during the War of 1812.

After the end of hostilities with America and France, the prison was closed down in 1816. During it’s time as a military prison it held between six and 10 thousand prisoners of which over 1,500 were to die, mostly from cramped conditions, harsh treatment, malnutrition, and disease.

Devil's Island

An essay on the history of the most famous and dreaded prison of all time.  Recommended reading for those who think a "get tough" policy on crime is a new idea, or that it works.

by J. J. Maloney

As American politicians embrace a continually tougher stance on crime -- demanding longer sentences and tougher conditions, in the belief that such measures will cure the problem of crime, we might want to reflect back on the toughest penal colony of all time, Devil's Island.

The average American convict takes a perverse pride in having served time in a maximum-security prison. To many men it is a rite of passage, just as having served in combat is a rite of passage for others.  Yet no American prison has ever been as tough as Devil's Island.

The most infamous prison in history, it was a desolate place of exile in French Guiana (Devil's Island was actually a small island off the coast of French Guiana, but the main prisons on the mainland, over time, became known collectively as "Devil's Island". Just as we have school children (and adults) who have never heard of Hiroshima, there are many more who have never heard of this most dreaded of all prisons.

During its existence as a penal colony (1884-1946), more than 56,000 prisoners were transported to French Guiana from France. Of this number, perhaps one-fourth returned to France. Many of those who evaded death in the jungle camps did so by escape—a feat that became increasingly difficult as the years passed.

Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City

The story of the disastrous 1954 riot that leveled much of the Missouri State Penitentiary and left four convicts dead and 30 wounded.  One of the dead inmates was a police informant, and seven men were convicted of that murder - after claiming to have been tortured.  One legendary St. Louis defense attorney fought for 29 years at his own expense because he believed his client to be innocent.

by J. J. Maloney

On Sept. 22, l954, Donald DeLapp was a 19-year-old convict at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City serving a four-year sentence for armed robbery. He was in solitary confinement on the third floor of E Hall, a dreary old cellblock originally constructed in l889.

The convicts had been through a brutally hot summer - farmers in Missouri still talk of the "drought of '54". Rats and other vermin crawled around the solitary unit. An occasional snake crawled up through the piping and dropped into the shower.

The convicts slept on straw tick mattresses which, as they aged, exuded a fine, powdery dust that hung in the aching heat, causing convicts to lay motionless on their bunks to avoid stirring up more dust. The sweat dripping from their bodies caused rivulets of mud.

The food, never good, reached a new low that day when rotten watermelon was served. DeLapp, the kind of guy who would later break his hands punching cement walls when frustrated, went off: "I broke the water pipe off my sink," DeLapp later said.

"When they came up to fix it I broke out and turned Hoover (William Hoover, 23) loose. One guard hit me over the head with a club, but I was just interested in getting the keys, and I ran down to the end to keep another guard from throwing the lever box" (which would lock all the doors remotely and keep the keys from working).

The convicts on E 3 were turned loose, then they captured the other two floors in the building, which allowed them into the prison proper.

The riot exploded like a bundle of gas soaked rags.

Missouri State Penitentiary

A first person account of what it was like to serve time in the maximum-security prison at Jefferson City, Missouri.

by J. J. Maloney

When I was sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, in February 1960, there were 2,500 men inside "the walls." The white convicts slept three to a cell (except for several hundred in the one-man cells). The blacks slept as many as eight to a cell.

Stabbings and killings, robberies and rapes were common. Dope was easier to get in prison than it was on the streets. There were men in prison who were said to make more money each year from dope and gambling than the warden was paid. There were captains on the guard force who owed their souls to certain convicts.

You never knew whom you might have trouble with. The reasons for murder and mayhem made little sense to anyone except the convicts. So hundreds of men either carried a knife or had one they could get to in an emergency.

You wonder if you have an enemy in the "population." If you have, he has the advantage: He got there first, he made friends, he knows the prison. He has a knife; you don't.

{Ed. Note: The average person doesn't give much thought to the subject of AIDS among prison inmates, but as the number of American convicts grows exponentially -- so does the problem of AIDS in prison.  Each year approximately 1,000 convicts die from AIDS.  Even more alarming is the fact that the number of female convicts testing positive for HIV has been growing at an alarming rate:  88% from 1991 through 1995, while the rate for male convicts rose only 28.1% during that same period.  The following Bureau of Justice Statistics report deals in depth with this topic.}

by Laura Maruschak