Category: Act 5

Setting:

The scope of this investigation has left inner space and returns to a world bigger than the ego of one author. The camera has zoomed out so far that individuals have disappeared completely, and artificial lines make nations out of landforms without asking anyone’s permission. Whether you envision them as a unified man, sitting at a lonely desk in a lonely office on a lonely Sunday, or as a collection of masks dancing around an Oak Tree in an Ozark or Ouachita forest, the voices do not stay silent.

EXAMINER

What is McPherson’s role in the history of criminal justice in Arkansas?

MR. PROVE-IT

This is a good question, but I think it is jumping ahead. It seems like it might be more useful to ask about the role of McPherson’s Unit in the history of criminal justice in America first and then talk about how the local issues of Arkansas impact it?

MR. WHINEY

Isn’t that interesting Mr. Prove-it, I had you figured as someone who’d suggest starting from the most immediate sense of location and then expand from there, moving from tangible to abstract construction of place.

MR. PROVE-IT

Well, in a world where theory was worth a damn, I could see myself making that argument.

I ain’t here to argue that the concrete facts about McPherson don’t start right here in Arkansas, but a lot of the bullshit ideas about what prisons are in the United States start with the assumption that a prison here is a prison anywhere in America, and that if you have seen one you have seen ’em all. I WAS…

(MR. PROVE-IT stresses the ‘was,’ dragging it out to draw attention to the fact that it lives in the past and not the present.)

…thinking, it might be better to address these larger-scale notions about what prisons are in America before we start discussing the specifics of McPherson’s Unit women’s correctional facility at 302 Corrections Way, Newport, Arkansas.

But now I think I’m gonna pull a page from your playbook and challenge the idea that either the national or local scale could be considered independently from each other in the first place.

Let’s see what happens if we try to look at both at the same time, Examiner?

EXAMINER

What is McPherson’s role in the history of criminal justice, in Arkansas/in America?

(Mr. PROVE-IT and MR. WHINEY, bot adopt more jubilant tones after EXAMINER’s response.)

MR. PROVE-IT

Well, that sounds a little funny, but let’s run with it.

MR. WHINEY

When it comes to thinking about carceral facilities as physical places existing on Planet Earth, on American soil, in communities inhabited by other Americans just like us…

(MR. WHINEY realizes that not even he is sure about which “us” he is talking about at this point and attempts to clarify.)

…just like the other people who are living in America…

(MR. WHINEY has dug himself a whole and decides to abandon it.)

….well, most people just choose not to think about prison in America, wouldn’t you say?

(not wait for MR. PROVE-IT to respond. MR. WHINEY continues)

The abstraction of prison is something that people have essentialized into the way they imagine society because they view it as the only possible deterrent to criminal behavior. It is essential that most people continue to imagine a theoretical construct instead of a real physical one when they think about prisons in the world, or else the fantasy, of who prisoners are, and how they deserve to be treated, might get complicated or even shattered.

For these people: people for whom prison is never likely to become a physical reality, it must feel necessary to envision an environment with inhumane conditions, because incarceration must appear to be a worse prospect than living in society generally. This makes thinking too closely about the conditions of incarcerated people an undesirable and unnecessary activity for anyone who feels served by the existing judicial, economic and political structures—

MR. PROVE-IT

—Thinking about prisons sucks.

MR. WHINEY

Yes indeed, thinking about prison “sucks.”

(MR. WHINEY stumbles over the pronunciation of the word, “sucks.”)

For many Americans, it is important to know that prisons, or correctional facilities, exists, but it is just as important that they exist as a dark myth that can serve to deter future criminal activity.

MR. PROVE-IT

Well, that brings up a question that makes a mess out’a all of this, doesn’t it?

What is the function of a prison in the first place? What do folks expect a place like McPherson’s Unit to do for the good of the rest of us?

Mr. Whiny, yr saying that purpose of prison is to prevent future criminal activity, but if that’s true, then why did people ever stop using harsher penalties for criminal activity? You know, penalties like cutting off the hands of thieves, or flogging masturbators? After all, the dead can’t commit no crime, right? When we think of “deterring factors,” modern prisons are a cake walk compared to the nightmares of the past.

MR. WHINEY

That last sentence is certainly true, but it also answers the questions it is trying to ask. One of the continuing struggles faced by institutions of criminal justice is that there seems to be a hard limit to how effective harsh penalties can be in deterring future crime.

The difference between no consequence and some consequence has proven historically measurable, but the point where harsher consequences equals fewer people engaging in criminal behavior appears more tied to people’s faith that the existing system of justice is fair and protects their personal interests, than it is to the severity of the consequences for breaking the law.

MR. PROVE-IT

That is a big claim there. Are you just making this up on the spot or are you basing this on some kind of research?

MR. WHINEY

(MR. WHINEY does not lose a beat.)

It is important to question the credibility of sources, especially when we are hearing arguments that support our own ideas about a subject.

But, in this instance, it doesn’t even matter if I can prove my claim or not, because the reason I began to elaborate upon this position in the first place is to establish it as a theoretical position that exists and exerts influence over the application of criminal justice in America.

Some people have believed it, and thus it has impacted the way criminal justice is administered. Other positions and theoretical frameworks have also played a role in shaping our justice system. Theories such as: prisons exist to punish bad people; or that prisons exist to disenfranchise and criminalize minority populations; or that prisons exist to rehabilitate and reeducate disposed members of society that have lacked access to more legitimate means of social integration as well.

Arguments have been made on behalf of all of these positions and all of them have held more or less sway at different times, but the actual physical buildings, made out of concrete and steel, do not just reform quickly because someone thinks it is a good idea.

MR. PROVE-IT

(growing skeptical and accusatory in his response.)

Are you going on another long-winded rant only to say that an actual prison, and the way it ends up running, is not based upon any one person’s ideas?

MR. WHINEY

Especially so in a pluralistic representative democracy.

MR. PROVE-IT

See, that sounds like you’re arguing for that muddled “post-modern complexity” crap that you accused me of when we were discussing whiteness.

Sure, there are different attitudes that have gone into the making of each prison in America, but there are no fucking prisons in America made out of gingerbread cookies and kindness. What is the point of discussing the function of prisons if we do not present specific answers and how they have or have not lived up to those ideals?

MR. WHINEY

Maybe there is none, and we probably should move in the direction of discussing specific examples soon enough, but it is important to keep in mind that even the best laid plans tend to bend and sway in the slow-moving world of public policy.

Whatever function incarceration is supposed to fulfill in society, it does so in the face of all the other collected expectations for it, even the ones that operate counter to that original purpose.

MR. PROVE-IT

Blah, blah, blah. Make this relevant to McPherson’s Unit.

MR. WHINEY

McPherson’s Unit is the long-term correctional facility for women in the State of Arkansas.

As the number of women incarcerated in the state continues to rise, McPherson’s Unit will go from being THE facility, to being just one of the facilities for the long-term housing of incarcerated women in the state. As that happens, it will be important that people keep questioning the value of putting an increasing number of women into long-term incarceration. We must pay attention to the women that we incarcerate and why we incarcerate them. Where do these women fit into our models of criminal justice? Who are we protecting by locking these women up the way that we do, and what ends do we hope to see in society by doing so?

MR. PROVE-IT

That is a good call to bring gender back into the conversation if we are going to get specific about McPherson’s Unit or women’s incarceration. There’s a lot of confusion outside of prisons about who the women who fill these prisons are. To answer that question for Arkansas, we can look the State’s Department of Corrections data for the fiscal year of 2015. According to the records they provided us, the top 10 current population offenses committed by women are:

1. Manufacturing/Delivering/Possession of Controlled Substances – 186 women, serving an average sentence of twelve years, three months, and eight days.

2. Murder, First-Degree – 95 women, serving an average sentence of thirty-five years, six months, and sixteen days.

3. Forgery – 70 women, serving an average sentence of seven years, one month and four days.

4. Robbery – 62 women, serving an average sentence of thirteen years, ten months and twenty-four days.

5. Aggravated Robbery – 48 women, serving an average sentence of twenty-six years, one month and sixteen days.

6. Theft of Property – 48 women, serving an average sentence of thirteen years, one month and zero days.

7. Failure to Appear – 45 women, serving an average sentence of seven years, seven months and ten days.

8. Residential Burglary – 40 women, serving an average sentence of eight years, nine months and four days.

9. Possession of Drug Paraphernalia for Meth or Cocaine – 36 women, serving an average sentence of five years, seven months and twenty days.

10. Battery, First-Degree – 32 women, serving an average sentence of eighteen years, three months and three days.

(MR. WHINEY takes a beat to collect his thoughts before responding.)

MR. WHINEY

That is a widely diverse list. How does it line up with your expectations for what women were being incarcerated for?

MR. PROVE-IT

Well, it’s no shocker that so many women are in prison in Arkansas for drug-related offenses. That goes along with what I hear the most those few times that prison statistics make the news.

I was a bit surprised to learn that the average sentence length for the most common drug offenses is over twelve years. That’s suspicious. Like there must be some mitigating circumstances that are not immediately obvious. Like maybe there are some intense outliers who got busted with kilos. Otherwise it is just fucked up brutal sentencing for drug offenses. Also, I didn’t expect murder to be number two.

MR. WHINEY

That was a little surprising, wasn’t it? It caught me off guard too, until I considered the lengths of sentences.

I agree with your suspicions regarding the drug sentencing, but even at 12 years it is almost a third shorter than the average sentence of a woman facing murder charges. It is only logical that crimes with longer sentences result, over time, in more women incarcerated for that crime, even if the yearly rate of conviction for the crime was significantly less. And since only one woman has been put to death in the State of Arkansas (at least since the death penalty was resumed at the end of 1976) it makes sense that even just a few murder convictions a year add up eventually.

MR. PROVE-IT

(give a gruff but thoughtful sigh.)

I guess in that context, it might be more surprising then that the average sentence for first-degree murder is only thirty-five-and-a-half years. I wonder how they calculate that; do they just assign a 99-year sentence for life?

MR. WHINEY

That is a great question, Mr. Prove-it, and one that I am sure a number of experts in the ADoC office of Public information are capable of answering. Maybe we should have asked one?

(There is a noise like whole milk being spit against a microphone, followed by uncontrollable laughing that cannot be placed with one voice or another. After the laughter and labored breathing subsides, the conversation continues.)

MR. PROVE-IT

Oh Mr. Whiney,

(MR. PROVE-IT stops to sigh loudly and catch his breath.)

…I didn’t see that joke coming. I guess you want me to explain to our audience why that question is so funny?

MR. WHINEY

If you would be so kind…

MR. PROVE-IT

Well…

(stops for a beat to collect his thoughts and decide where he should begin.)

…When Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett started this investigation, he did so with the delusion that he was going to put different voices of people involved in the criminal justice process in conversation with each other: incarcerated women, guards, local citizens, state politicians and members of the Department of Corrections.

At first, he was fairly successful. Everyone he’s tracking down was happy to talk about the history of McPherson’s Unit, and its role in Arkansas: state politicians, members of local historical societies, reporters, the families of inmates, members of State Board of Corrections, you name it. However, that all changed after he made a single request for some statistical information from the Arkansas Department of Corrections Office of Public Information and a request to the warden of McPherson’s Unit to for either an interview or a facility tour. He/we/the investigation then hit a major snag. They sent him the requested information—the top ten list revealed above—but they requested that he fill out a special Department of Corrections Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Artists don’t usually ask to get permission for their work. They just start doing it. Benjamin had not been required by his university to submit to IRB supervision and so he did his best to provide the ADC the information requested. A week after he submitted his IRB to the Arkansas Department of Corrections, he received the following information in an email:

(reads the email out loud to the audience)

“Good Evening Mr. Garrett: Your proposal ‘Understanding Incarceration/Understanding McPherson Unit’ has been very thoroughly read, reviewed and discussed by an Arkansas Department of Correction IRB (Internal Review Board) Committee and I am sorry to inform you that your proposal has not be approved.”

Since that email, no one employed through the Arkansas Department of Corrections has responded to any of our communications.

MR. WHINEY

That was very thorough. We do not know if the denial was based upon the results of a background check or a failing to submit the correct paperwork. No one will tell us. The Department’s response—or lack thereof—has had the effect of radically changing the scope of this investigation, and it has definitely altered what information will be presented and how that information will be discussed.

MR. PROVE-IT

That is true, but it makes us sound like we’re on a vendetta against the Department of Corrections for derailing the biggest project we have ever undertaken.

MR. WHINEY

Stating it as such does little to counter that possibility.

MR. PROVE-IT

Probably not. Nor does that fact that we buried this information more than halfway through our investigation. BUT…if they did shut us down out of past political affiliations, then it is unlikely that that slight was going to shift our focus in a more favorable direction. I guess—

3RD RESPONDENT

Duuudes, like, what is going on here?

(A new voice has interjected itself into the conversation. Both MR. PROVE-IT and MR. WHINEY are caught completely off guard and let this new perspective establish its own tone.)

I can totally dig that this journey through the…time-space continuum…was destined to feature, like eh, an episode or something of inner space exploration…

(3RD RESPONDENT says “inner space exploration” like he is actually traveling to the far reaches of the cosmos, and lets his consonants linger in every word.)

…but y’all are, like, turning the premise of this whole dealio into a heavy dose of inner drama. I’d ask you to, I don’t know, wind the old watch back to jam on that question about why these women are doing time and let your ego train off the rails for a little bit so another engine can use the tracks, but…dudes, from the peanut gallery over here, it seems like this train is the only one in town, man.

MR. PROVE-IT

Who the fuck are you?

MR. WHINEY

Indeed, Mr. Prove-it, what voice is this that interrupts us now, just as we were finally getting to the place of this place-based investigation?

3RD RESPONDENT

Who cares who I am, man? Or, like, especially, who you are, dude? Or why you don’t have answers to questions that should, like, have been totally obviously going to make “the Man” clam up, man?

Because, like…come on…I think y’all know you could have said a lot of this personal stuff to, like, I don’t know, a therapist, or maybe a spiritual guide, or AA sponsor…and then the usefulness of an investigation into a women’s only ice box, could, you know, be about that place, instead of the one inside your own mind, man.

MR. PROVE-IT

Ice box?

(MR. PROVE is honestly confused by this new voice’s lingo which feels like it might have crawled out of one of those 70s sexploitation movies referenced earlier in the investigation.)

3RD RESPONDENT

Yeah man, haven’t you ever read Cleaver’s Soul on Ice?

MR. WHINEY

Speaking of distractive commentary…

3RD RESPONDENT

Alright man, chill out…I feel you man…but cosmically,

(At this point 3RD RESPONDENT lowers his voice to nearly a whisper, as if he has leaned in to get real with the other voices.)

it seems to me like you guys are so afraid to say anything real that, you know, you take every opportunity to, like, just turn the gaze back on to yourselves. If y’all don’t have the faith to just let the words out, man, maybe you should stop pretending like this is an investigation of anything but your own insecurities, dude.

MR. PROVE-IT

Insecurity Dude, you are annoying as shit, but I can see why you have picked this time to make yrself present. There is some real shit here that we need to get to, and I think we should take the first part of your challenge to heart. We need to have some faith in our audience’s ability to evaluate the value of our voices for themselves.

(Stiffens his voice.)

McPherson’s Unit? Women incarcerated in Arkansas/America?

INSECURITY DUDE

Well that is groovy but…

MR. WHINEY

—Agreed, Mr. Prove-it.

(MR. WHINEY doesn’t give a shit and presses on past INSECURITY DUDE’s continued mumbling.)

Analysis of the top 10 convictions of women incarcerated in the State of Arkansas raises many questions that will require more careful consideration than amateurs like us will accomplish. Yet, it also raises fair questions, even for someone who may not have considered these issues at all.

MR. PROVE-IT

I know, right? I mean, Failure to Appear sounds like bullshit. It means that somebody was out on parole or probation and then missed a court-date, so the length of punishment is mostly tied to a different crime. But if we were so chill about these women being out in our local communities, why would we think that putting them back in prison, and having to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to keep them there for an average of more than seven and a half years is a good idea?

MR. WHINEY

(MR. WHINEY busts out into a statistic from who knows where.)

—$23,000 dollars a person in the State of Arkansas in the year 2014.

MR. PROVE-IT

I get that folks feel like there’s got be some consequences for breaking the rules; and if people are skipping court dates because they are doing terrible things, then it would make sense to put them back in jail for doing the bad shit. But life happens. And failure to appear just means they didn’t show up, not that they were doing something bad while on parole.

It doesn’t make any sense that folks can complain about government spending and then happily fork over so much to lock up people that they were comfortable living next to the day before.

MR. WHINEY

It is a mystery, especially when we add in all the increased physical, mental and social health risks associated with incarceration; especially incarceration like what happens in McPherson’s Unit, that houses minimum- and maximum-security inmates in the same building. Prisons, as in our monolithic institutions of social order, create so few opportunities for restorative justice and so many opportunities to reinforce social injustices and inequalities.

MR. PROVE-IT

Hold on a moment…

(Pauses for a beat)

…I think I know, but I can never be too sure with you: What is restorative justice? Isn’t justice…Justice?

MR. WHINEY

(growing flustered at having to back track)

Of course it’s not.

Restorative justice is based on the idea that the social response to crime should focus on healing and restoring what had been criminally violated. Restorative justice solutions include things like making vandals clean up vandalism and become active volunteers in the communities where they were vandalizing so they have a reason to respect the people whose property they damaged. It is about asking what can make the world more whole again after it has been damaged by violence or disrespect. It is an alternative idea to retributive justice, which is the old “Eye for an eye” model that prioritizes making all things equal in injury, or a preventative justice model, which focuses on increasing security measures and creating an environment in which breaking the law seems unfathomable.

Rarely is any justice system dedicated whole heartedly to just one of these models, but there are some practices that might make sense in one model that are completely contradictory to another. An advocate of retributive justice might advocate for the death penalty, for example, while an advocate for restorative justice might argue that it only prevents the perpetrator of a murder or other violent crime from dedicating their life to working toward healing and helping those they have harmed—

MR. PROVE-IT

(interrupting MR. WHINEY’s rambling.)

—Thank you, I think that clears it up for me just fine. Clearly, there are some serious scholars out there that probably can address what alternatives models of justice might look like right?

MR. WHINEY

Definitely! And that is a bit of a tangent for us at the moment anyway, because the only reason it ever even comes up is when people start a conversation about incarceration as a practice of criminal justice from a place that thinks prison is the only way that societies have ever handled criminality. If they are a little more knowledgeable about the history of criminal justice, they might instead be operating from the idea that prisons reflect the most enlightened means of handling criminal justice that society has ever conceived, but the basic principle is the same.

MR. PROVE-IT

Ok…

(Slowing things down a beat again.)

I agree that this ain’t the time to dive too deep into prison alternatives, ’cause we have a lot of history to cover. Maybe we can suggest that our audience consider viewing the documentary 13th, if they have an interest in hearing a diverse array of scholars and public figures discuss models of incarceration past, present and future.

MR. WHINEY

A great suggestion, especially since that documentary goes to such great lengths to consider perspectives across political and theoretical perspectives. For the sake of an investigation into the conditions of McPherson’s Unit, it seems unnecessary for us to be concerned with alternatives when we need to be focused on what actually is.

MR. PROVE-IT

Well, alrighty then! Let’s talk about McPherson’s Unit.

Setting:

Newport Daily Independent, Newport, Arkansas, January 16th, 1998. “It was a celebration for a new prison complex which brought Gov. Mike Huckabee to Newport Thursday. He said he had mixed emotions about the facility.”

MR. WHINEY

The history of prisons in the State of Arkansas is not pretty, and the history of women’s incarceration in the state is downright reprehensible—

MR. PROVE-IT

(Interrupting.)

—This better not be an attempt to enter back into abstraction, Mr. Whiny.

MR. WHINEY

(Continuing as if uninterrupted.)

—Demarking the space between abstraction and reality is your realm of expertise, Mr. Prove-it, but in this instance, it feels foolish to attempt to represent a facility like McPherson’s Unit divorced of its historical context.

MR. PROVE-IT

I get it. It’s possible that McPherson’s Unit is a better prison than the prisons before it, and still fail’s at being better than nothing.

MR. WHINEY

(Chuckling at MR. PROVE-IT’s stark skepticism.)

Indubitably. McPherson’s Unit, even upon its conception as an understaffed and criminally mismanaged private prison, was leaps and bounds ahead of the historical precedent of women’s incarceration in the State of Arkansas, from statehood until its construction.

MR. PROVE-IT

That’s a big claim for our readers to swallow.

Y’re tossing a helluva accusation out right from the start: “criminal mismanagement.” I love it.

MR. WHINEY

On the contrary… …I think criminal mismanagement is provable as a step up from what came before. It implies that the mismanagement was socially recognized as a crime instead of the legal methodology of handling women who fell outside of social gender conventions.

MR. PROVE-IT

Snap. I do believe they call what you are doing, “throwing shade.”

(It might feel frustrating to MR. WHINEY, but MR. PROVE-It loves the snarky sass that MR. WHINEY has brought to the table, or the tree, or the desk, to set the stage for a serious tear down of what has passed for criminal justice in the State of Arkansas. In a sense, his playfulness is intended as an invitation to the AUDIENCE. It might be time to get out your popcorn.)

But I think you better break it down if you want the weight of yr ideas to pack their punch in full. I can see now why you want to start from the beginning. Please, take it from the top.

MR. WHINEY

Arkansas entered the union of the United States in 1836.

This situated it as a developing state, developing its own criminal justice system on the heels of the great penal reform movements of the early 19th century. These reform movements saw the biggest shifts in criminal justice theory since the beginning of the European Enlightenment. America, being the new world-wide civics project, was a testing ground for social theories and institutions across disciplines, and two models of incarcerations were put into practice here for the first time that would go on to define debates about criminal justice for over a century: the Pennsylvania model and the Auburn model.

The Pennsylvania model, predictably enough, was named after the state that first put it into practice, specifically referencing the carceral model adopted at the Eastern State Penitentiary on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and then shortly after at Western State Penitentiary outside of Pittsburgh. This model of incarceration reflected strong Quaker principles of silent isolated reflection—separating the criminal from the social factors that enabled his…

(MR. WHINEY stops himself mid-sentence as he realizes his use of a gendered pronoun was not unintentional, but a symptom of a larger problem with the theoretical history of incarceration.)

…early prison models all assumed a default male gender of their prisoners. Because sexism yes, but sexism at roots much deeper and more blatant than linguistics or ignorance.

The disciplining of women was a patriarchal duty expected of men: The man was to keep his daughters in line until they were married off and then became the responsibility of their husbands. This is far too significant a factor in the history of women’s incarceration to stash away in a digressive tangent. Hmm…I know that we need to talk about this in much greater detail, but perhaps not in the middle of our previous conversation about prison models that impacted incarceration in the State of Arkansas. Should We—

MR. PROVE-IT

(interrupting.)

—Hold up there, Mr. Whiny! I say this is a damn fine time to discuss the utter lack of thought that went into women’s incarceration in the theoretical construction of how prisons came to be in the United States!

After all, if we waste our audience’s time, explaining both models, and then come to the realization that neither model ever considered women as people, or citizens, who will be incarcerated…well, wouldn’t that make us guilty of suggesting that these “good-ol’-boy” theories are more important to the history than the existence of women as people? That’s some grade-A bullshit for “trying to set a record straight.” What better evidence can we offer for why women’s prisons have historically failed to be anything but disasters of abuse, violence, and “mismanagement?”

MR. WHINEY

Wow, Mr. Prove-it. Touché.

I think you just concisely defined why that should have been our first historical consideration…

(MR. WHINEY pauses a beat to consider again all that MR. PROVE-IT had to say.)

…Now that it is stated, I can think of little more to say…

…except, maybe, we should add that the bondage and incarceration of women was institutionally in practice during the Enlightenment, it was just not a practice of criminal justice. It was practiced through the asylum as medical and moral treatment, because if men were failing in their patriarchal duties to control the women in their lives, they had to construct a physiological reason they could blame women for it. If we center gender in the history of incarceration, it is very clear that the institutional practice of restricting women’s freedoms has been about codifying their status as property. It has occurred at such a fundamental level that it long predates the institution of prison. With a bunch of white men sitting around in ivory towers, it seems an inevitable consequence of patriarchy that women’s incarceration, as a criminal justice issue, would be deliberately hidden for so long.

MR. PROVE-IT

Well, I think that is a pretty important comment to add.

I agree with you that, in a list of institutions designed to control women, the prison is a relatively new one, but you are coming up short on the importance of race in yr story. Women’s incarceration was a carefully crafted and vital part of the slave trade. It specialized in turning black women into raw sexual objects, breeding animals, physical laborers, domestic laborers, and the cohesive glue that held communities of slaves together.

The incarceration of women is bigger than criminal justice and we can’t back away from that. To do so would be letting mainstream white-feminism off the hook for ignoring the messy conversation of women behind bars, AND letting social justice movements off the hook for playing along in a reform game for a criminal justice system designed around the assumption that prisoner’s rights were only ever going to be an issue of what rights white male prisoners deserve.

MR. WHINEY

Look at you Mr. Prove-it, using intersectionality to take both me, and the historical models of prison to task.

Congratulations, sir! And your points are well received:

It is important to consider the realities of women’s incarceration in the United States because the reality of women’s incarceration was not a reality that was ever considered in the theoretical or physical construction of women’s prisons.

Historically this is easily proven, but it is also present in the architectural construction of the Larger McPherson/Grimes complex. The company designing this facility created a mirror model in which two identical facilities were built directly across from each other. One, Grimes Unit, for men, and the other, McPherson’s Unit, for women. It was assumed that, if kept separate, all other aspects of incarceration would be kept equal for both the women and the men—

MR. PROVE-IT

(Interrupting.)

—That “separate but equal” mentality sure is a fuck job isn’t it.

MR. WHINEY

Mhhmm…

(MR. WHINEY has a dissertation he thinks he could probably write about MR. PROVE-IT’s interjection, but decides instead to ignore it.)

…Even if one day humanity finds a method of incarcerating women and men in prison-like conditions that are equally just and effective, it must be considered that that model will not be based off a historical model that only ever considered the needs of incarcerating men.

MR. PROVE-IT

Ok, that is all true.

But you are continuing to ignore the role that race has played in the history of incarceration in the United States and in Arkansas specifically.

MR. WHINEY

Not by intention, and we can change that right now.

Both the Pennsylvania model and the Auburn model were developed at a time when the vast majority of people serving time in state penitentiaries were considered white. This was not necessarily because of an increased criminality of white people, but because very few people that were not identified as white were given the benefits of full citizenship into the United States of America.

Most indigenous people were treated as foreign combatants who were not even subject to the protections guaranteed by the treaties that were signed in their name. White settlers violated the terms of treaties, often with little more than a slap on the wrist, and sometimes in the employment of prominent territorial governors and plantation owners. Indigenous efforts to defend or retaliate against these aggressions were paraded through Colonial to Revolutionary to Jacksonian America as savage massacres that called for overwhelming retaliation. Even the slightest hint of criminal behavior in an ingenious person, group or nation became justification for the forced deportation and slaughter of entire populations. Many of the forts built throughout the territory of Arkansas were designed to serve as concentration camps to control the forced movement of indigenous people through the territory.

Thus, even though Newport, as a city, remained unincorporated at the time of either the Choctaw relocation, which was occurring twenty miles to its northwest through Batesville Arkansas, or at the time of the Creek and Chickasaw removal through the old Memphis to Little Rock military road to its south, the legacy of the Trail of Tears painted the relationship between the white American settlements of Arkansas and the various nations of indigenous peoples that predated those settlements. S0, while the fledgling state was heavily involved in the incarceration and deportation of indigenous peoples throughout Arkansas, it was never for the purpose of serving Justice.

MR. PROVE-IT

And of course, there is the incarceration of slavery.

MR. WHINEY

Yes, it is impossible to talk about slavery and not talk about the incarceration of human beings.

Arkansas was established as a slave state at a time in US history when the institution of slavery was the defining artifact of southern economic and cultural identity (Not just the southern economy, the whole world economy, but no one else but the south was willing to acknowledge it). If the South imagined itself to be a descendent of the European Aristocracy, it was because the plantation filled the role of the fiefdom or noble estate. Slavery was the serfdom that enabled it. After legal ownership, physical bondage is the next most defining condition of slavery, and the ways in which African and indigenous slaves were held in bondage could not be considered anything less than incarceration, even if its horrors might far exceed what the word has come to mean today.

MR. PROVE-IT

In other words, you are saying that forcibly holding folks against their will, in conditions designed to make them question their own humanity, was A part of slavery, but only ONE part of its inhumane practice?

MR. WHINEY

Exactly. How much the practice of slavery impacted models of penal incarceration is debatable up until the time of the American Civil War. After all, judicial prisons were for citizens with certain rights protected by the Constitution, not for slaves. That all changed with Emancipation—

MR. PROVE-IT

(Interrupting.)

—Just like how men, within patriarchy, were supposed to be able to keep their women in line, slave owners were expected to take responsibility for the discipline and punishment of their slaves—

MR. WHINEY

(Interrupting back.)

—Expectations that the white men of a community were going to take personal responsibility for the discipline of everyone except themselves within their communities extended past the Civil War into Reconstruction and beyond the turn of the century in the form of the KKK and organized lynching. Criminal justice in the South has only a limited and recent history of belonging within the confines of governmental authority.

MR. PROVE-IT

(MR. PROVE-IT pauses for a beat to consider all of the ideas that the investigation has put forward together.)

It’s funny…

(MR. PROVE-IT says ‘funny’ like doesn’t mean funny.)

…we started off talking about the role of prisons in the history of capital-J “Justice,” and how it feels like folks have this idea that prisons have been THE institution of social order for forever. But when we look at American history, and especially the history of “Justice” in the South, the prison over time has had only a nominal role in serving justice, and a much bigger role in preserving economic and racial order.

MR. WHINEY

Which is why discussions about the relatively recent rise of rates of incarceration in America, starting in the mid-1970s onward, can be so misleading.

The expectation that prisons were going to serve as a deterrent to criminal behavior, instead of clandestine, and often racially motivated, mass violence, is also a relatively recent social phenomenon.

MR. PROVE-IT

(Attempting a more enlightened tone.)

You know, its starting to sound like we’re arguing that—compared to history—prisons might not be the most terrible means of enforcing justice.

MR. WHINEY

Well…certainly the people who have advocated for them throughout history would agree with that position.

It may come as a surprise to learn, but prison reformers have been considered radical philanthropists and humanitarians at the time they were advocating for their ideas.

For example, both the Pennsylvania system and the Auburn system…

(Mr. WHINEY realizes that this is the third time that he has mentioned the Auburn system and he has still never explained it. He pauses for a moment to consider laying it out now, but decides to hold off, hoping that, eventually, MR. PROVE-IT will notice the absence and bring it up himself.)

…well, early models of incarceration, were designed specifically to accommodate the needs of white male citizens, and what institutions of corrective oversight would push them back into the mold of a model citizen, which of course was white and male. It should be pointed out though, that it was a pretty radical idea at the time that criminality was not an innate trait and that it could be addressed through corrective actions at all.

MR. PROVE-IT

Ah, come on, it couldn’t have been that radical.

Isn’t Christianity a religion based upon the concept of forgiveness? Civilizations around the world have had legal codes that allow for guilty parties to make amends for their crimes and continue to function as productive members of society. The idea of a criminal justice system based upon reforming criminals ain’t no American invention.

MR. WHINEY

Fair enough, but prior to the Pennsylvania model, judicial incarceration was either an act of holding criminals until they faced judgment and punishment—basically the role of jails today—or else they were workhouses, galley ships, or places where prisoners were to economically work off their debts to society.

While that concept of economic restitution is still present in many of today’s prisons, and was enshrined, in part, in the Auburn system…

(MR. WHINEY smiles as he finds a reason to attempt to explain the Auburn system that feels natural and not forced.)

…the two American models were the first to institutionalize and architecturally situate the reformation of a prisoner’s soul into policy and stone.

MR. PROVE-IT

Maybe now that we’ve talked the shit out of the historical failings of prison theory to address issues of gender and race, it is time to finally layout those Pennsylvania and Auburn models for our audience?

(MR. WHINEY smiles and lets out a laugh.)

—Wait, what is so funny?

MR. WHINEY

(Mr. WHINEY’s ignores MR. PROVE-IT’s question, leaving the answer as unspoken joke shared only with the AUDIENCE.)

Well…actually I think you are speaking in hyperbole if you claim that this brief and unsubstantiated conversation about the historical failings of prison theory is “talking the shit” out of the issue.

But you might be correct that we may have given as much insight as our amateur and fragmented perspectives will allow. Our culture’s continued insistence that models of social order that are rooted in the oppression of specific groups can be easily universalized and “solved” with equity and justice for all is one of the fundamental aspects of our problem. Especially when those answers revolve around deciding there is nothing that can be done about them and we should just go along with how they have been done before.

MR. PROVE-IT

I can’t argue with that, but we keep name dropping something we haven’t explained.

I bet our editorial self is gonna make us present some kinda concise and organized version of these two models much earlier in this investigation, or stick them in an appendix or some shit, despite the fact that we’ve given clear reasons why we’ve refused to do so thus far. You know what, fuck that! Fuck you…editor voice…that insists on remaining invisible and changing things without anyone’s knowledge! We are not going to explain those systems here at all.

(MR. WHINEY’s previous plan to sneak in his explain the Auburn system has come crashing down around him. MR. PROVE-IT has made the issue personal and MR. WHINEY knows he will look like a pawn of the man if he tries to make a case now…But just to be sure…)

MR. WHINEY

We are not?

Setting:

Directions: From Little Rock travel approximately 100 miles north on Highway 67 North. Turn right on exit 83, Highway 384. Travel approximately 2½miles and turn left on 384 S (302 Corrections Drive), McPherson’s Unit is on the right.

EXAMINER

How has this history of incarceration impacted McPherson’s Unit?

MR. PROVE-IT

So, you are still listening, Examiner!

Well, we have already decided not to cover the historical criminal justice models of incarceration centered on reforming white male criminals back into productive American citizens up through the Civil War…so, I guess you are really asking for the rest of the story?…

(Waits a beat for a response from EXAMINER and after getting only silence, MR. WHINEY continues.)

MR. WHINEY

…Well both of those two competing models—that we won’t mention again—had one thing in common, they were quite expensive to run on a per-prisoner basis.

They also demanded that society as a whole buy into the notion that the moral reformation of criminals into citizens was a worthwhile cause. It is no coincidence that the backlash against this notion coincided with the collapse of slavery and an influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Creating two new large groups of people that were excluded from the category of white American citizen at the time these movements were losing steam.

MR. PROVE-IT

No, it’s not.

Nor is it coincidence that “law and order” political campaigns, where politicians played to constituent fears and hatreds, sprung up in a fire storm at the end of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th.

MR. WHINEY

In both the North and the South, models of incarceration shifted from reformists visions of individual penitence towards cost-effective models focused on the economic exploitation of the prison laborer.

MR. PROVE-IT

Maybe, but you aren’t seriously saying that the North and South were equal in response to this shift!?!

Yes, racism and xenophobia were and still are prevalent in the North. And yes, the government used them to justify cramming two or three prisoners into cells designed to house single prisoners. And yes, the new, post-Civil War, prisons looked more like those old European workhouses…BUT almost overnight, you saw the South restructure its justice system to fill the labor pool lost by the end of slavery.

Hell, it happened so fast that they couldn’t even build new buildings to house the folks they were incarcerating, and so many southern states turned to chain gangs and “prison farms” that utilized the existing infrastructure of slave plantations.

MR. WHINEY

The 1860s saw the death of the prison reformation movement in the United States that had once been held up as a shining world-wide example..well at least in Europe and the colonial empires—

MR. PROVE-IT

(Interrupting.)

—Then the next 100 years of penal justice in the United States was a dark age for all of the violent and horrific reasons that you can imagine.

MR. WHINEY

True, but we do not need to rely on our imaginations to talk about the process of criminalizing minority racial and ethnic communities in the United States.

The horrors of the convict leasing system employed in many southern states, including Arkansas was a model that saw prisoners rented out to plantation owners in a direct continuation of the practices of slavery, and can be read about extensively in the book Slavery by Another Name, by Arkansas educated historian, Douglas A. Blackmon.

While organizations like the NAACP worked tirelessly for over a century— and under physical and existential threat from groups like the KKK—to challenge these policies in court, sadly, the prison farm, in a form, still exists today in Arkansas, and other southern states. Officially, convict leasing was made illegal at the federal level during FDR’s presidency, but it continued off the books throughout the South, as prisoners were given “permission” to serve their time living and working on the farms and plantations of prominent citizens. In the State of Arkansas, it continued until the state experienced its otherwise unsuccessful reform movement in the 1960s—

MR. PROVE-IT

(Interrupting.)

—Hold on there Mr. Whiny! That is presenting a pretty one-sided view of things.

After all, officially, Governor George Donaghey oversaw the dismantling of the convict leasing system starting with his election in 1908. And don’t forget, or write out of history, the activists who have been doing prison reformation work in Arkansas—activists like Laura Conners, who petitioned the Board of Corrections to dismiss the head warden of Tucker Prison farm in 1921 for the inhuman treatment of inmates.

MR. WHINEY

Yes, but that motion was denied and the legacy of violence and corruption at the Tucker Prison Farm went on to demand national attention, and multiple Supreme Court injunctions, for the next 50 years. We cannot grow soft of our histories of our institutions just because we want to recognize that they were not the cultural monoliths that they are often made to seem.

MR. PROVE-IT

(MR. PROVE-IT is convinced and ups the intensity of his rhetorical tone.)

Fuck, Mr. Whiney, don’t stop there with euphemisms like violence and corruption for absolute unimaginable barbarity.

The Tucker Telephone, a torture device where prisoners had a live electric wire attached to their nut sack—controlled through a rotary phone—is named after the prison farm where it was invented, and went on to be used by American soldiers in the Vietnam war…The brutal conditions at that one prison alone have inspired books and movies.

MR. WHINEY

Yes, it has. Into the 70s Arkansas prisons were run like criminal enterprises with the primary expectation of the state being that the prisons turned a profit off farm labor.

To cut down on the costs of operation, entire prisons employed only two or three guards called wardens. The rest of the staff was made up of current prisoners—called trusties—who were given guns and held responsible for policing their fellow prisoners.

MR. PROVE-IT

The Civil Rights movement took its sweet-ass time making its way into Arkansas’ prison system. In the meantime, wardens acted like kingpins. “Favors” were “earned.” Sexual violence, extortion, and bribery were rampant.

MR. WHINEY

And while there was a brief stint in this time period where the penal incarceration of white women occurred at a separate women’s prison farm just outside of Jacksonville, AR–known as Pea Farm—African-American women were held on location at the same prison farm as African-American men, and no matter where they were incarcerated or the color of their skin, women in prison in Arkansas have a long history of being subjected to sexual slavery at the hands of their jailers.

MR. PROVE-IT

That’s the gods-ugly truth.

And it’s been pretty damn-well documented—even though the conditions at Pea Farm have been nearly erased from history. Apparently, somebody didn’t want it known that the women incarcerated there were taken regularly to Memphis, to be prostituted in brothels there.

MR. WHINEY

The fate of women in penal institutions has never been pleasant, and the State of Arkansas is no exception. The Arkansas Board of Corrections had been run as an exploitative for-profit system since the State Legislature asked it to take on that role with the end of slavery.

It would use up anyone it could get its hands on to keep things running smoothly and equally important, under the radar of the general populace. Like so many other institutions throughout history: slavery, imperialism, war—women’s bodies have so often been treated as objects of reward and trade. It has taken a willful ignorance to keep that role a secret.

MR. PROVE-IT

Which leads us to McPherson’s Unit…

MR. WHINEY

(MR. WHINEY interrupts MR. PROVE-IT’s dramatic pause.)

—Not quite.

Women continued to be incarcerated, for the most part, at sub-facilities of other correctional complexes from the end of the Pea Farm through the 1960s and 70s, but starting in the 60s and continuing into the 80s and 90s, a reform movement began that culminated in a number of federally mandated reforms that saw an overhaul of the entire Arkansas Department of Corrections system.

MR. PROVE-IT

Ah, you want to go into this first.

And introduce a bunch of important characters to the investigation that have some name recognition within both the national and state discussion of privatized prisons.

MR. WHINEY

I know who you are trying to allude to, but before we go there, let’s first address the role of a man named Terrell Don Hutto.

MR. PROVE-IT

Well you’re correct that that is not the big name I was hoping to introduce, but it does eventually get us there.

And Hutto is a mighty big name in the discussion of privatized prison. After all, the T Don Hutto Residential Center is a controversial privately run “center” run under the auspices of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office for the detainment of nonresident families and children, none of which have been charged with any crime except illegal entry into the United States.

MR. WHINEY

You are jumping ahead in the timeline of our narrative.

In 1971, Hutto was the newly appointed Commissioner of Corrections for the State of Arkansas with a strong agenda of reform, hoping to build on the work of previous reformers to permanently dismantle the trustee system, but only because it hand been mandated by the US Supreme Court in July of 1970. It was not until Hutto took over in June of 1971 that it became the official policy of Arkansas Department of Corrections to ban inmates from carrying firearms. Hutto assumed control of a department rife with violence and corruption and he worked to increase non-incarcerated personnel and security in all of the state’s prisons, as well as regulating prisoner conditions like bedding, medical care and food service. He began a number of innovate educational and work-release programs and oversaw the separation of maximum-security facilities from general population facilities as well as overseeing the construction fo the first units dedicated to juvenile offenders and elderly offenders. This went a long way to reducing the level of violence in Arkansas prisons in which both the very young and very old were subject to abuse and manipulation from long-term violent offenders.

But rampant violence and sexual assault continued to be a problem in Arkansas state prisons. U.S. federal courts continued to hear cases against the Arkansas Department of Corrections and through a series of cases such as Holt v. Hutto, Finney v. Arkansas, Finney v. Hutto, and Hutto v. Finney, the State of Arkansas’ prisons again went before the Supreme Court where it was determined by the Attorney General of Arkansas that prison officials acted in “bad faith” in their obligations to remedy the horrific conditions of Arkansas prisons.

A lawyer who worked under this Attorney General of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton—

MR. PROVE-IT

(Interjecting.)

—There it is—

MR. WHINEY

—Don’t interrupt—

—an attorney-general-appointed lawyer who worked on the Hutto v. Finney case that went before the Supreme Court, reported that the Arkansas Prison system in the 70s was an absolute “hell-hole.” It took a lot of time and work to fix, and that the problems ran deeper than any specific administrator. When asked, this lawyer described Hutto as “not a bad or evil man. He had a terribly difficult task with limited resources to accomplish it. I would not have wanted his job.”

MR. PROVE-IT

So, I guess it could be said about Hutto’s time as commissioner that Arkansas finally saw the biggest reforms in its history, but not necessarily as a result of his management.

MR. WHINEY

Reductive, but not entirely inaccurate.

By the time Hutto left his position as commissioner of corrections in 1976, Arkansas prisons were experiencing massive changes and much of these changes were being undertaken under the eye of future president Bill Clinton.

MR. PROVE-IT

You mean, Arkansas Attorney General Clinton—who’ go on to become one “tough on crime” governor—who’d go on to become a president who campaigned heavily for a crime bill that would greenlight the adoption of privatized prisons in America, and just happened to provide the funding that paid the way for the Grimes/McPherson Complex.

(Swooping in from the silent void that encompasses everything beyond the voices of the debating investigative narrators, a new speaker asserts his way into the conversation.)

4TH RESPONDENT

—Y’all are killing me, mang!

Show’em the big picture—the illuminati shit.

Hutto gets Arkansas moving in the right direction—by getting the guns out of the hands of the fuckers serving time—separating the meal from the meal worms—literally. Sure! But what is he really up to, mang? Improving conditions? Maybe as a side-effect—but his real project—his real project, mang—is the industrial revolution of a feudal state prison-industrial-complex—BAM!—He was burning down the baronies so the petty bourgeoisie can finally have its day in the sun—

(4TH RESPONDENT continues, almost as if he does not need oxygen to fuel his breathy words.)

The ADC was a shit show of a state-run institution—with a revolving door at the top and dead prisoners pilling up on the bottom—READ about it, mang—THOMAS MURTON, mang—quote, Accomplices to the Crime, end-quote, mang—The truth is out there—and Hutto saw it on those ever-crumbling walls—He saw it and it burned him up—It burned him, mang—working for a, quote, state, end-quote, that was burying its bodies in shallow unmarked graves—instead of cemeteries—Hutto saw it, mang—He saw it—and started formulating his new system, mang—right here in Arkansas—refined it in Virginia—and then signed on with Tom Beasley and Doctor Crants—DOCTOR Crants, mang—Doctor is his first name—no shit—not a title—to start the first private prison company in America, mang.

(MR. PROVE makes as if he plans to respond but 4TH RESPONDENT does not surrender the microphone.)

Y’all think, quote, Clinton, end-quote, pushed Hutto out, mang—for making with his, quote, bad faith, end-quote, comments?—naw—fuck that, mang—Hutto and Clinton were Arkansas Democrats—through and through, mang—right at that time when the, quote, Dems of Arkansas, END-quote, were taking the white hoods off and—finally—picking up the protest signs—You think they weren’t in on it together, mang?—Weren’t—yeah, quote, in collusion, END-Quote, mang—That is some bullshit—Clinton goes on to get crowned, quote, the first black president, end-quote, of the Younited states—by none other than Toni Morrison—fuckin’ TONI MORRISON herself—and what does he do, mang?—but oversee the largest growth ever in the privatization of state and federal prisons—while Hutto’s company rises—it rises, mang—and he becomes—like—the profiteer-in-chief of the private-public partnership.

(Again, 4TH RESPONDENT stops just long enough to create the illusion of an opening before continuing.)

But it doesn’t stops there, mang—Oooohhh no—You think this shit isn’t still going on?—Within just the last three months, mang—CCA—the Correction Corporation of America—has, quote, rebranded itself, end-quote, into—into “CORE CIVIC—so it can, yeah—quote, provide three distinct business offerings—

(4TH RESPONDENT adopts the tone and speech patterns of a robot.)

CoreCivic Safety—a national leader in high quality corrections and detention management—

4TH RESPONDENT breaks robot character to return to ranting)

—that should be, quote, international, end-quote, mang—because their correctional facilities are all over the globe, mang—

(4th RESPONDENT returns to robot voice.)

CoreCivic Properties—offering a wide range of innovative, cost-saving government real estate solutions—

(4TH RESPONDENT breaks character again to start a rant, that begins with a nervous laugh.)

—Ha! Try—We will own and manage all government infrastructure—so the State pays us to manage all their, quote, site-specific management services, end-quote—Fuck that, mang!—and—

(4TH RESPONDENT returns again to robot voice.)

—CoreCivic Community—a growing network of residential reentry centers to help tackle America’s recidivism crisis—

(4TH RESPONDENT finally drops the robot voice for good.)

END-FUCKING-QUOTE—Did y’all just hear that, mang?!?!—they are—like—out to own all government services!—Y’all we’ve gotta help the people, mang—see through this smoke screen, mang—Clinton and Trump are more than golf partners, Mang—this public-private merger is more than forty years in the making, MANG…We’re all Fucked.

(Between the outrage of the outburst and 4TH RESPONDENT’s slough of accusations, assumptions and assertions, there is a beat of silence while all the respondents collect their thoughts. Finally, MR. PROVE-IT responds.)

MR. PROVE-IT

We get another one of these guys, huh?

Examiner?

Is this really going to be the new normal around here?

Is this really what we need?

Because people were already lining up to take this investigation seriously, so you decide to just…let this conspiracy…theory…mang…into the fray?

Make it a battle royal?

(The AUDIENCE is confused by MR. PROVE-IT’s appeal to EXAMINER to act as gatekeeper, when it seems like EXAMINER has been limited to the role of moderator since the beginning of the investigation, but maybe the intensity of CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG’s claims combined with a growing chaos and confusion about what he wants this investigation to accomplish has dulled MR. PROVE-IT’s understanding of this investigation’s organizational structure.)

CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG

You think your professional wresting reference is witty here, mang?—Just because your favorite video on YouTube is the one featuring a pre-presidential Donald Trump getting stone-cold-stunner’d—straight into the mat—in front of thousands of screaming fans who probably went on to vote for him?

MR. PROVE-IT

Yeah, but that video is kickass. And I don’t care if you have one-billion dollars, or two billion…

(MR. WHINEY, trying not to let his frustration with the current tangential digression show, responds with scorn.)

MR. WHINEY

Gentlemen…while Conspiracy-theory-man,

(MR. PROVE-IT and CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG interrupt to correct MR. WHINEY’s mistake.)

MR. PROVE-IT             CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG

Mang.                                     Mang.

MR. WHINEY

CONSPIRACY THEORY MAAANG’s contribution, at this juncture is of questionable value.

However, we are not here to play respectability politics or discuss YouTube videos.

There are connections between Hutto and Clinton that could lead a rational person to ask some of the questions that CONSPIRACY THEORY Mang raises. Although we would be absolutely irresponsible as investigators—even as amateur investigators, not to offer some balancing counter points and questions.

Clinton WAS the Attorney General that threw Hutto under the federal court bus—by declaring that Hutto’s administration had acted in bad faith to investigate prison abuses, and as a result, pushed Hutto out of his position in the ADC. Turning around to suggest that President Clinton would be the one that paved the way for Arkansas’ first private prison, is a big stretch though. The push for private prisons has mostly held up at the state level, and it is individual states that have been responsible for the biggest and most expensive mergers of government and private industry.

Additionally, the State of Arkansas only experimented with one private prison venture, and that contract was awarded to CCA’s chief competitor—Wackenhut. It seems unlikely that the Hutto-Clinton connection is very strong, or you would think that the contract would have gone to his company.

CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG

Y’all mean to tell me…

(Pauses a beat for dramatic effect.)

…that all it takes—for you…mang—to stop looking—to stop searching for connections between the global and national “manipulators” is lack of immediate—and personal—financial profiteering?—No wonder our financial watch dogs failed so spectacularly in the collapse of 2008, mang—and no wonder they will again within the next 5 years.

MR. PROVE-IT

And 9/11 was an inside job, right?

CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG

(If CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG is aware that MR. PROVE-IT is teasing him, it does not register in the tone of his response.)

No way, mang!

That’s quack science—but—but saying that the CIA had nothing to do with the California 80s crack epidemic—because it can be “proven” that they did not “invent” the crystallization of cocaine—that ain’t the same thing as declaring them innocent, mang— of providing fronts for counter-revolutionary militias throughout Latin America—do you know what I’m saying?—to distribute cocaine in our, quote, urban centers, end-quote—in exchange for weapons, mang.

Even if—and in my eyes, maaaang—that is a big IF—even IF…Clinton and Hutto—weren’t “in collusion”—if they “never” discussed issues of “privatization”—of prisons, mang—as a solution for rampant state-wide institutional corruption—it is undeniable that both their attitudes about the prison industry—in the United States, mang?—were shaped by that legacy of abuse in the State of Arkansas…mang.

(CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG does not make it easy to latch on to coherent arguments, but MR. WHINEY has faith that there is reason to try.)

MR. WHINEY

So, your claim, if I got this right…

…is that regardless of whether it was intentional or not, is that it is likely that the history of incarceration in the State of Arkansas: a History of abuse and neglect, which has largely been ignored on the national scale, has played a central role in in both Hutto and Clinton being open-minded to the possibility that almost anything else had to be better?

MR. PROVE-IT

See, to me, that is the most damning and difficult argument to ignore against government-run institutions of incarceration.

When a prison is state-run, there is a stead-fast belief on the part of most Americans—even those on the left—that the system itself is solid and good. Folks think that all the problems that we encounter with putting that system into practice are the faults of individual bad actors running things.

The mainstream political parties fight tooth and nail over who’s gonna take over—just long enough for the person they put in charge to get overwhelmed by systemic problems—and then blame that person for not being capable of overcoming a system designed for abuse and corruption. You just can’t put people in complete control of other people’s lives and pretend like you haven’t created a time bomb that is just waiting to go off. It seems Terrell Don Hutto might have fallen into that trap, and “slick Willy” Clinton was one of those career government-types who specialized in making sure that the buck always stopped with some other sucker.

MR. WHINEY

Ok Mr. Prove-it.

(Something has just snapped for MR. WHINEY and he has shifted in lecture mode.)

You can legitimately question Bill Clinton’s commitments to accomplish social change and willingness to side-step accountability…but thinly veiled sexual and— frankly—misogynistic side-banter like “Slick Willy” has no place in this investigation…This isn’t 1st grade.

MR. PROVE-IT

(MR. PROVE-IT just got called out on his sexism and lashes back defensively.)

I was not the first person to call him that.

MR. WHINEY

(For all of MR. WHINEY’s faults, letting people off the hook for sexist behavior is not one of them and he has seen reactionary defensiveness like this in the responses of many an otherwise ardent pro-feminist male ally.)

No, you weren’t. But “it wasn’t me” is the official excuse of cowards and enablers of oppression.

And that last “some other sucker” comment is at least as offensive as the nickname or, at least, mentioning them together makes them both worse. In addition to getting us wrapped up in some macho-tough-bro-talk-metaphor relating sex to an extortion game—your comment also had the effect of derailing a productive conversation about the privatization of prison in Arkansas and the United States—

CONSPIRACY THEORY MANG

(Interrupting.)

—that’s not cool, mang.

MR. WHINEY

No, it’s not cool, man.

Because that conversation was really starting to go to some constructive places and illuminate some interesting links to our current investigation.

(MR. WHINEY really lets MR. PROVE-IT have it now, with a scolding that sounds like it could be directed at a 1st grader.)

Which is—SUPPOSED—to be focused on the institution of McPherson’s Unit and the people who have been directly impacted by its existence.

Not our own pathetic male insecurities.