Setting:

In Northeast Arkansas, the dragonflies swarm in springtime. Rice grows, roads flood, and people pass through when they are able. There is no curtain to open, but the conversation continues. This time the masks are painted, and you imagine they all have names.

EXAMINER

(The voice of EXAMINER is still cold and passionless. If time has passed, you cannot hear it here.)

What is McPherson’s Unit?

MR. PROVE-IT

(Mr. PROVE-IT’s tone is gruff and sarcastic, like a man protecting himself from injuries he doesn’t know he carries.)

Thank you, Examiner.

This does seem like a more relevant question than why at this point. Before we turn this question over to Mr. Whiney to complicate into fifty questions and a mess of ambiguity, let’s get what we know on record:

McPherson’s Unit is a correctional facility located four miles northeast of Newport off Highway 384 in Jackson County Arkansas.

MR. WHINEY

Correctional facility?

I thought you were the voice that was supposed to spare the euphemistic language.

(MR. WHINEY knows he is being antagonized, and while he may believe his response is unjaded, the audience is not fooled. Even optimists protect themselves sometimes.)

MR. PROVE-IT

It ain’t me resorting to euphemisms here. My job is to stick to the facts, and the fact is that McPherson’s Unit, according to the state, is a correctional facility.

Now, what in hell is a “correctional facility” except a prison in softer language? That is a conversation worth considering. But whatever the answer, Arkansas has “facilities,” “centers,” and in the case of long-term incarceration, it has “units.” McPherson’s is a unit. Actually, it is THE, capital T-H-E, unit for women’s long-term incarceration in the State of Arkansas. According to the Arkansas Department of Corrections online inmate population search, as of January 4th, there are 922 women residing in McPherson’s general population, and 40 women residing in the McPherson SPU (Special Programs Unit) built to house inmates “who have serious mental illness.” The facility itself is listed as containing a “Unit Capacity: 971” and having 931 employees.

Those are the facts, right?

MR. WHINEY

You know that we are going to have to talk in detail about almost every sentence in that paragraph, right?

MR. PROVE-IT

I reckon I do.

(MR. PROVE-IT realizes that it takes a special kind of patience for MR. WHINEY not to immediately jump all over the rhetorical assault of a “Special Programs Unit” but hopes that by delaying that conversation, both of them can give the consideration that mental health in women’s incarceration deserves. Instead, it will silence that conversation, and leave the audience with questions that will have to be answered elsewhere.)

But, pretty please, can we get some general facts out in the open first so we can look at the individual issues later, one by one?

Mr. WHINEY

(With a sigh, MR. WHINEY capitulates to MR. PROVE-IT’s demand to keep things focused on the physical structure of the prison.)

The original structure of McPherson’s Unit (since modified and expanded) was built as a 600-bed facility in 1998. The building mirrors a 600-bed men’s facility, the Grimes Unit, built across Corrections Drive. The two facilities together form a carceral super-complex that includes a farm and an industrial production facility so prison labor can be optimally exploited.

The McPherson’s/Grimes’ super complex was built according to the specifications the Wackenhut Corporation, but the physical building itself was paid for, and owned by the State of Arkansas.

MR. PROVE-IT

That is weird, right?

That the State of Arkansas paid for and owned a building it would lease to a private prison company?

I mean, it spent 38 million in tax-payers’ dollars to build a prison according to a private company’s specifications. That is like the definition of corporate well-fare, isn’t it?

MR. WHINEY

I won’t argue that is not, but an argument could be made that this was the only model that would allow for the state to maintain oversight over its first foray into privatization.

After all, if Wackenhut owned the infrastructure and then failed to live up to federal regulations for the operation of a carceral facility, then the state would be on the hook to either spend tax dollars helping them get their facility up to code or else start over with an entirely new infrastructural project. Since Wackenhut did fail spectacularly to provide services that would pass federal accreditation, it seems like the state was right to be cautious.

MR. PROVE-IT

You could be right, but it also sounds like the folks responsible for implementing the project went into it assuming the who thing was a bust to begin with.

I am no fan of privatization and think that anyone attempting to make money by keeping a human being in bondage is a fucking slaver, plain and simple. Therefore, it is no skin off my back…

(MR. WHINEY cringes audibly at the sound of word skin. The AUDIENCE can almost smell his stomach turning.)

…that Wackenhut might have been set up to fail, but a libertarian might argue that privatization in Arkansas was never given a real shot, don’t you think?

MR. WHINEY

While the etymology of the term “no skin off my back” has no links to slavery and didn’t come into existence until the 20th century, your forced proximity of the two concepts is nauseating.

(Pauses a beat to pull it together.)

It is important to recognize that our personal biases do limit the extent that we desire to attribute either the State or Wackenhut responsibility for the failure of the public-private partnership of corrections in Arkansas but ultimately it was the inmate litigation that put enough pressure on Wackenhut for improved services that led to the company pulling out of its contract and leaving a prison in state hands.

But I think we are getting ahead of ourselves in this creation myth.

MR. PROVE-IT

Let’s not mislead anyone by mythologizing a provable history.

To keep with knowable and reviewable facts, the McPherson-Grimes complex cost the State of Arkansas 38 million dollars to build, a contract awarded to the Nabholz Construction company, and designed, according the vision of Wackenhut’s private prison model, by the firm Cromwell Architects Engineers.

MR. WHINEY

(Interjecting before MR. PROVE-IT can continue.)

As an “idea” person myself, I find it easy to get lost in the names of politicians and companies that I never intentionally interact with in my own life. But it is important, especially when trying to situate a real public infrastructure in its actual historical context.

Names are important, because too often when we think about things like prisons, we lose sight of the connection between what a constructed environment is, and why it was constructed to be that way. There are reasons that McPherson’s Unit exists in the physical form and location that it does and understanding those reasons requires looking at, listening to, and questioning the people responsible for making it that way.

MR. PROVE-IT

Thanks for that pep rally there Mr. Whiny, but do you mind if I continue?

(MR. WHINEY remains silent until MR. PROVE-IT continues.)

So, McPherson’s Unit was built as part of a privately managed prison complex by Wackenhut, but the deal they made with the state was that they had to run the facility up to the same standards mandated to state-run facilities. However, the Wackenhut contract was set at a cost of $13,000 dollars a year per inmate, which worked out at the time to be about ten bucks a day less than what it was costing the state to incarcerate people.

MR. WHINEY

That seems like a recipe for cut corners and inadequate services.

MR. PROVE-IT

Of course, it was!

Which is why Wackenhut pulled out after their very first lease expired.

MR. WHINEY

So, to Summarize, Nabholz broke dirt in Jackson County on August 1st, 1997 and completed the McPherson-Grimes complex in less than six months, ahead of schedule and almost two million dollars under the originally proposed budget. Wackenhut had their facility operational and started putting prisoners in its bunks by January of 1998.

By the middle of 2000, reports of rampant sexual misconduct have begun to surface.

By August 2nd of that year a former guard has pleaded guilty in court to sexual assault on a prisoner.

By December there is an FBI investigation into allegations of brutality and abuse in both facilities under Wackenhut’s management.

By February of 2001, Wackenhut has decided not to renew its lease with the state, citing the extraordinarily high cost of women’s medical expenses and increased wage demands from guards. This decision just happens to coincide with the Arkansas Department of Corrections issuing citations of both of Wackenhut’s facilities for dangerous staff shortages, unsanitary living conditions, and lack of work and educational program development.

On July 1st, 2001, the entire complex was returned to state management.

MR. PROVE-IT

The Wackenhut privatization project was a shitshow.

MR. WHINEY

Indeed, but the management problems created under Wackenhut were not slow to go away under state management.

MR. PROVE-IT

No, they weren’t, but no matter how you spin it, McPherson’s Unit’s time as a private prison was short lived and fraught with administrative problems that brought on reprimands and federal oversight that would last for almost a decade.

MR. WHINEY

A sword forged with bad steel…

(MR. WHINEY trails off and then continues with renewed fervor.)

…And we haven’t even begun to discuss how this facility, as part of the larger complex, was the enlightened reformation of Arkansas’ re-forged Department of Corrections, built in response to an institutional history of constantly resurfacing penal corruption, racist terror and slavery that goes back longer than Arkansas was a state.

MR. PROVE-IT

(growing increasingly flustered)

No, we haven’t.

And while all that heavy shit is a vital part of the story to tell, I am beginning to fear that just trying to state facts in answer to “What is McPherson’s Unit?” leads to a mess of circular logic that’s got the voices in my head muddled and sounding dangerously like yrs, Mr. Whiny.

In the interest of fairness, and to give my mind a fucking break, how would you like a crack at this?

MR. WHINEY

(MR. WHINEY’s ego has grown inflated with MR. PROVE-IT’s consternation. He wears his pride like arrogance in his response.)

My dear Mr. Prove-it…You must already know my answer to your question about the question that we are trying to answer.

The only simple solutions to complex problems are politically charged efforts at manipulation. They are the snake oil of con-artists trying to convince others to surrender their critical-thinking skills to the assumption that the explainer’s expertise is sufficient to make the best decisions for everyone. They want us to believe that there is nothing to be gained from struggling through the murky, conflicting, and sluggish streams of information that shape and inform a complex rhetorical situation.

In the case of McPherson’s Unit, and what it is, I could put forward any number of true answers: a building; a complex; a prison; an institution of justice; an institution of injustice; a physical manifestation of patriarchy’s failed effort to enforce its expectations of feminine identity; a security blanket that lets the good folks of Arkansas sleep at night, while serving as an ominous warning to the bad ones; a continuation of the legacy of slavery and white America’s dependence upon racial and class stratification; a final barrier between social order and chaos; a representative system of violence and neglect that demonstrates humanity’s inability to consensually address its fears and anxieties; a goddam waste of government’s time and tax payer’s money. McPherson’s unit could be all of these things in part and none of them in full.

(MR. WHINEY is really talking like a white man now. He is standing on a soapbox with other people’s problems to fix.)

This is not to disparage all the facts we have presented about the events, the people, and material resources used to construct what exists today as McPherson’s Unit women’s correctional facility. Instead, I just wish to point out that trying to string isolated facts together into a shared existence will always be an act of interpretation. Like a series of ones and zeros, they can remain meaningless, or be combined to form systems with the power to carry men to the moon (although only men and only white ones). But facts, like numbers, only have the power to do so when there is a common language that allows viewers of those symbols, or facts, to organize them into a shared understanding.

For example, you could walk into a grocer and ask for T-U-N-A in English or Spanish and still walk out with something edible, but depending upon whether you like fish or the fruit of a cactus, you might be more or less satisfied. Similarly, 000011 could be the number eleven or the number three, or it could be a shade of blue that is 93% black. We cannot talk about the significance of facts without talking about ways we come to understand them.

MR. PROVE-IT

(Incredulously)

You are right Mr. Whiny, I absolutely should have known better than to ask you for a brief and direct answer to anything. However, by combining both of our arguments together, I think we can say that it is going to take more than a short introduction of facts to introduce what McPherson’s Unit is, but hopefully we have introduced enough ideas and possible answers here to show why it is important.

MR. WHINEY

Witty repetition of words into different meanings is my aesthetic style Mr. Prove-it.

It seems rather out of character for you to be the one to ignore the thinly delineated conventions of identity that we have rather artificially constructed here, that allow us to continue this discussion as a dialog.

MR. PROVE-IT

(Stated dryly in response to MR. WHINEY’s haughty self-importance)

Go fuck yrself.

Is that more in character for you?