PRIVATE BUSINESS, PUBLIC FAILURE
Violent stories from the inside
Prison isn’t meant to be a place of redemption. Prison is a consequence. It is what happens if you violate society’s norms.
Damien Grant, former inmate
I’m not a violent person but I’ve discovered there is a euphoric release when tension is broken by the primal unleashing of fists. It can feel good to bash another person and in the moment you don’t feel being hit.
During my 16 months in prison I was involved in a few scraps. They weren’t all of my choosing but some were. It is hard to trust my memories after two decades of merlot and nicotine but I don’t recall being traumatised by them. It was part of my confinement and prison was a consequence of some spectacularly poor life choices.
What the current outpouring of hand-wringing about fight clubs ignores is that most inmates involved are willing participants.
The over-riding emotion inside is frustration. You cannot control what you do, who you share your cell with, what and when you eat or even when you can use the toilet.
Exercise is one way to relieve the tension but mashing someone’s nose with your fist, or getting yours splattered in kind, is far more effective.
Once the ritualised chest beating and abuse is over the surface tension is broken and life goes on. Fighting is natural, even normal and it can feel cathartic. That young men with an appetite for risk, exactly the demographic who find themselves in prison, choose to unwind by smacking each other isn’t cause for alarm.
There are some vulnerable inmates who get into serious trouble but this isn’t unique to the penal service and is often a result of the individual in question choosing not to seek the safety of segregation.
There is a trade-off between keeping prisoners safe and allowing them to interact. Corrections can avoid all violence only by perpetual segregation and as someone who has been in isolation there is no greater mental hell.
The sanctimonious handwringers demanding prisons be as safe as a kindergarten create an environment where prison staff will restrict the opportunities for interaction at the expense of the unseen mental torment of their charges.
Also missing from the various rebukes of our penal archipelago is the accommodation options available. A resident who eschews aggravating the authorities can find themselves enjoying the relaxed environments of a minimum security prison farm where the incentive to behave is intense.
Equally lacking is an appreciation of the nature of those of us who go to prison and the carnage, broken lives and misery we left in our wake to get there. There are some lost souls but many lack selfawareness, empathy and remorse. Prison cannot teach these things but it can disincentive the sort of behaviour that can get you there.
There is a common misunderstanding of the nature of prison. It isn’t meant to be a place of redemption, although that is an option, and nor is it meant to be a place of isolation, although it serves that purpose.
Prison is a consequence. It is what happens if you violate society’s norms.
If we strip the consequences element of prison it will cease to fulfil its primary purpose, that of influencing behaviour.
The over-riding emotion inside is frustration. You cannot control what you do, who you share your cell with, what and when you eat or even when you can use the toilet.