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When sun shines on Puget Sound, her surface shimmers like sequins on a ballroom gown and makes waterfront real estate prices seem almost reasonable. Most land along the sound's mainland and multi island shores is privately owned. Some small plats belong to Indian nations whose ancestors once used its plenty, some to the federal government for shipyards and military use, some to the state for public recreation. One island in the South Sound, named McNeil for a Hudson's Bay steamship captain, belongs entirely to the state. Two thirds of Its 4,40o acres are forested, a pristine wildlife refuge. One third is a medium custody correctional facility, the last operating prison in North America accessible only by boat.
In 1977, when I first visited McNeil Island, the prison compound was a century old federal penitentiary, an ugly scar at the forest's edge. Dirty yellow and noncolor buildings with dingy barred windows stood on a hill above the dock where passenger ferries came and went twenty four hours a day, carrying prison employees, inmates, and authorized visitors. Before going inside the fence, I looked east across the sound to the sleepy town of Steilacoom and the mainland dock where corrections officers check passengers' credentials. Freedom was a twenty minute boat ride away. Snow clad Mount Rainier, skirted with thick stands of fir, cedar, and hemlock, loomed above the town and sound. At sunset on sunny days, the mountain blushes pink for a time, then disappears into darkness.
How, I wondered, did men housed inside the fence cope with the incongruity of nature's beauty and prison's anguish?
I was on the island as a visitor with students from my Tacoma Community College Family Relationships class, most of whom startled a bit when the prison gate closed behind us. One of my students worked in the prison as a correctional officer and acted as our guide. He'd heard about the class, or perhaps my teaching style, and believed it would help him in his daily interactions with inmates. I'd never before met anyone who worked in prison, never known anyone sentenced to do time, never given prison or inmates, or their interactions, much thought. That made me a rather typical American.
Another officer Joined us in the wide, high ceilinged corridor, and off we went into the dismal, almost dead interior of the old cell house. We were subdued, reverent even, but our hard soled shoes announced our presence as we climbed steel mesh stairs and walked cell block tiers. We glanced into cells that were bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, and sometimes kitchens for men clever enough to rig electric wires to simple pieces of metal perhaps a contraband fork to cook stolen meat. (Plastic utensils have since replaced metal ones in most prisons.) Their crowded, dank cells, built for five men, had been double bunked and housed ten by then, and they reeked of overused toilets, under washed bodies, and despair.
Somewhere, on one of those tiers, we viewed what my student called the lala cells. Lalas trade sexual favors for food or other commodities from the prison store, or art items created by inmates for sale and trade. Such men are generally called punks or any number of slang terms for their sexual role, but they will remain lalas in my mind. Though my student guide had prepared me for meeting them, I felt uncomfortable. We were looking into cells that were their homes, and into a world of gender roles unfamiliar to me. The ]alas were playing cards; at the very least, we were intruding in their card game. Other cards, presumably from a worn deck, served as makeshift hair rollers, preparation for their late night dates. Some lalas wore lipstick, blush, eye shadow. They were accustomed to visitors walking by, and they paid us little heed even when our guide said the Avon representative who sold them their cosmetics often achieved top sales recognition in her region.
The prison administration obviously honored their gender roles by permitting such sales inside the fence. In fact, makeup bothered me less than the sight of adults sitting around playing cards during what I considered the work hours of the day. I had no understanding then of what "doing time" meant, or how few jobs were available inside the prison fence.
From the cell house we went to prison industries, to me a much more appealing place. Daylight filtered through fly and dust specked windows. Men worked at physical tasks: welding, electronic repair, furniture making. My dad, a carpenter by profession, had been adept in many crafts. As firstborn in a family of girls, I had a special bond with my father, a typical birth order characteristic. Dad taught me to see the artisan in all work. Those men, working with their hands to create or restore useful items, gave me an odd sense of all being well in spite of the setting.
Those prison workrooms were male places, with Marilyn Monroe pinups, machine noise, and torch flames. Men wore safety goggles, work gloves, sturdy clothing, and boots. I felt less uncomfortable there than I had in the cell house, but I was still out of my realm. Over the years I taught in prison, I beard numerous inmates say visitors walking past their cells and classrooms made them feel like they were monkeys in a zoo.
I now know only a handful of incarcerated adults ever get hired for prison industry jobs. Those who do are generally longtermers whose money goes home to support a family. They have their own inside fraternity and shun any they consider homosexual.
We made the rounds the prison hospital and chapel, an open barracks like living unit for those who'd climbed the privilege ladder, the mess hall, staff dining room, mail room, administrative offices. We heard stories of some famous men who'd done time there: gangster Mickey Cohen for tax evasion; Teamster president Dave Beck, convicted of racketeering; auto thief Charles Manson, who later was convicted of the heinous Tate La Bianca murders. An officer dangling chains from his hands told us about a man soon to be famous, at least inside the federal system, for information he had revealed in an attempt to lighten his sentence. The body chains were meant for him, for his transport across the sound, where he would be met by federal officials and flown to another institution.
"He's wearing a snitch jacket," the officer rattling the chains said. "Nowhere's safe for him now, and he knows it. Snitches make their own death row."
The male students in our tour group asked pointed questions about the move, including how many guards would accompany the prisoner into an airplane lavatory, and whether the cuffs would be removed while he urinated. The question reminded me I needed to use a restroom before we boarded the boat for the twenty minute crossing to Steilacoom and our parked cars. I was reading door signs when one man asked if the officer would demonstrate the body chains on me. Without my agreeing to what my students considered a great laugh, the officer cuffed my wrists, snapped a chain around my waist, and knelt to put ankle bracelets in place.
I remember a chill swept over me, and my stomach churned. Did I gasp for breath before the chill gave way to heat so intense it felt as if I stood in flames? I had the odd feeling my hair had caught fire. The officer must have seen alarm in my look or felt it radiating from me. "You claustrophobic?" he asked.
I hadn't considered myself so, but I seemed to be in the throes of a panic attack. "Take them off. Get me out of them." My need for the restroom escalated to near emergency. "Just get the damn things off."
Key's lost," someone joked.
But it wasn't funny, not to me. It felt as though my essence, my spirit, had disappeared. My students' chatter, once we were outside the fence, seemed removed from me, like the noise of a radio in another room. The ferry approached, seagulls called, a blue heron waded in the shallows. Mount Rainier loomed. All was well in my world, but the lost feeling lingered. The memory lingers still. Perhaps it served a purpose, though I didn't know then I would teach inside the prison fence, eventually on the island, or how many times I'd see men and occasionally women in body chains. Hundreds of men and several women told me they had experienced emotions similar to mine. It goes far beyond the humiliation of being handcuffed, which is bad enough, they say. It's worse than the finality of prison: it's the loss of self.
Body chains shackles serve their purpose in just that way. Officials responsible for transporting prisoners need them to be subdued for reasons of safety the officials', the public's, the prisoners'. It is an officer's duty and obligation to manage prisoners with dignity, but dignity takes a backseat to public safety every time. Even pregnant women must endure cuffs and chains, though most jurisdictions now cuff their hands in front of their bodies as added protection should they trip and fall forward.
My moment in shackles underscored a valuable lesson my mother lived by and taught: look at the person, not the chains. (She said look inside the person, or some such, but the message remains the same.) Her teachings, and Dad's, followed me through life and quite possibly prepared me for my unusual career as a correctional educator, and my return to McNeil Island thirteen years later.
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