Two models of the prison: accidental humanity and hypermasculinity in the L.A. County jail.

• Author: Dolovich, Sharon
• Position: I. Introduction through II. GP and K6G: Two Models of the Prison C. (Gang

Contents I. Introduction II. GP and K6G: Two Models of the Prison A. K6G: The Basics B. Life in K6G C. (Gang) Life in GP D. GP's Hypermasculinity Imperative E. K6G: No Gang Politics, No Hypermasculinity Imperative F. Clarifying the Terms: Violence, Safety, Humanity III. What Makes K6G K6G? A. Apples to Apples? Levels of Criminality in GP and K6G B. Creating a Safe Space in the L.A. County Jail 1. Relatively Impermeable Boundaries 2. Trust, Communication, and Mutual Respect Between K6G's Residents and Its Supervising Officers 3. Community Creation 4. A Possible Fourth Factor: External Attention 5. Accidental Humanity? C. Identity Theories: Looking to Sexual Difference 1. They Can't 2. They Don't Want To 3. They Don't Need To 4. They Can't and Won't Redux IV. "THEY'VE GOT IT TOO GOOD": THE LAW-AND-ORDER OBJECTION 108 V. TOWARD INCREASED HUMANITY IN PRISON: LESSONS FROM THE L.A. COUNTY JAIL A. Lessons B. Strategies VI. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

The Los Angeles County Jail (the Jail) does not typically spring to mind as a place with lessons to teach about humane prison conditions. For one thing, it is a notoriously volatile and even dangerous institution where severe overcrowding, chronic understaffing, and strict racial divisions rigidly policed by the detainees themselves create conditions ripe for riots and other forms of violence. It is, moreover, massive: on any given day, as many as 19,000 people (1) are held in the eight facilities that make up the Jail system, and every year, over 160,000 people come through its Inmate Reception Center (IRC). (2) This sheer enormity creates almost insurmountable management challenges and makes it difficult to ensure even minimally decent conditions. In some parts of the Jail--especially Men's Central, the oldest and highest security facility in the L.A. County system--a combination of crowding and a decaying physical plant has created unsanitary conditions in which infections thrive and spread. At the same time, innumerable stresses on the system have greatly diminished the availability of rehabilitative programming, (3) leaving thousands of detainees with no productive pursuits for weeks, months, and even years. Among other effects, these various structural features combine to make life in the L.A. County Jail stressful and scary, even for those individuals fortunate enough to escape physical harm. (4)

This is not a promising place to look for insights on how to make prisons more humane. Yet this Article does exactly that. In particular, it considers what we can learn about humanizing the modern American prison from studying a small and unorthodox unit inside L.A. County's Men's Central Jail. (5) As a formal matter, this unit--known as K6G--is the same as every other in Men's Central, but for one key difference: its residents are exclusively gay men and transgender women. (6) In reality, however, life in the unit contrasts dramatically with life in the rest of the Jail. Most notably, whereas the Jail's general population (GP) is governed by rules created and violently enforced by racially stratified gangs, KGG is wholly free of so-called gang politics and the threat of collective violence (a.k.a. riots) that gang rule creates. KGG is also relatively free of sexual assault, no small feat given that those housed in this unit would otherwise be among the Jail's most vulnerable residents. (7) Although very far from ideal, in these and other ways, life in K6G is markedly safer and more humane than elsewhere in the Jail.

A close study of K6G's unusual environment strongly suggests that at least some of the destructive pathologies endemic to the Jail's GP are not inevitable, even in a facility with the deep structural problems that L.A. County confronts. These problems--including overcrowding, violence, gang control, and a "perverse" sexual culture in which the strong prey on the weak (8)--are not unique to L.A. County. To the contrary, many jail and prison administrators nationwide to some degree face the same issues. A clear understanding of how the K6G unit operates, what distinguishes it from GP, and how to explain the differences may thus have much to offer those committed to making life in custody safer and more humane, not only in L.A. County, but in prisons and jails all over the country. (9)

This Article is part ethnography and part policy assessment. First, it provides a textured account--a "thick description" (10)--of life in the K6G unit. This ethnographic account serves as a window into a highly unconventional carceral community and should be of interest to students of contemporary American penology, as well as anyone who wants to know what life is like inside one of the country's largest carceral institutions. (11)

Second, as will be seen, a close study of the internal culture of the Jail, and of the K6G unit in particular, yields valuable insight into the appropriate direction for penal reform. What emerges is a portrait of two very different inmate cultures--the "two models" of the Article's title. The first model, which reigns in the Jail's GP units and exists to a greater or lesser extent in men's prisons and jails all over the country, puts pressure on residents to seem "hard and tough, and [not] show weakness." (12) This pressure, which I call the hypermasculinity imperative, (13) can feed a culture of belligerence, posturing, emotional repression, and ready violence that rewards both indifference to others and the willingness of the strong to victimize the weak. In such an environment, gangs flourish and trauma abounds. (14) The second model, found in K6G, is free of any hypermasculinity imperative. In K6G, one instead finds a surprising sense of relative ease, along with open emotional expression, the overt development of mutually supportive friendships and intimate relationships, and demonstrations of creativity and even levity. One also finds in K6G a collective and determined rejection of any efforts to introduce into the unit either the gang code in force in the rest of the Jail or the racial segregation that goes with it.

What explains the difference? This is the puzzle this Article aims to resolve. At first, the answer may seem to lie in the sexual identity (15) of K6G's residents, who are (or who are pretending to be (16)) uniformly gay men and trans women. And to be sure, the sexual identity of the people in K6G does help to explain the form of life that has emerged, which in turn contributes to the relatively healthy character of the unit. (17) Yet the primary explanation for this character turns out to be much more basic, and not at all contingent on the sexual identity of the people K6G serves. Put simply, thanks to a variety of unrelated and almost accidental developments, K6G is a place where people feel safe enough to relax and be themselves.

In men's prisons, (18) hypermasculine posturing is a mechanism of self-protection employed by people who feel vulnerable to harm; behind bars, people will only relax and let down their guard when they feel safe from physical or sexual violence. Although GP units vary between--and even within--institutions in the degree to which residents feel at risk, there is nearly always a need for men in GP to band together and to collectively project an image of toughness and implacability in order to ensure their mutual protection. (19) And as a general matter, all men in GP must be vigilant to avoid making missteps in the wrong company that, by making themselves seem weak, could expose them to violence as well as ongoing harassment and abuse. By contrast, the relative ease of life in K6G exists not because K6Gs are gay and trans, but because they do not fear being victimized or violently punished by other prisoners for being themselves.

K6G thus suggests a dramatic possibility about the realities of contemporary American penality, one that merits further attention and study: that in American prisons and jails, prisoners' hypermasculine posturing and ensuing pathologies arise not from an inherent preference for violence, but from a not-unreasonable belief that nothing else will secure their physical safety. To put the point another way, in many cases, it may not be the prisoners who make the prison, but rather the prison--and in particular the widespread failure of the system to treat those in custody as people deserving of protection--that makes the prisoners. If prisons and jails do sometimes seem to operate as "monster factories," (20) it may not be because the people the state incarcerates are naturally and essentially monstrous, but because the toxic combination of fear, trauma, and official disregard that can define daily life in custody makes at least some of them feel compelled at times to act that way. (21)

This Article draws on original research conducted in the Jail over seven weeks in the summer of 2007. (22) During that time, I observed the operation of K6G and the Jail more generally, (23) sat in on K6G classification interviews, spent countless hours in the officer's booth overlooking the K6G dorms, and had many informal conversations with unit residents, custody officers, and other staff. (24) I also conducted one-on-one interviews, structured around a 176-question instrument, (25) with a random sample of K6G's residents. (26) The account of K6G offered here is based on data gathered through this process.

In addition, over the course of my research, I learned much about life in the Jail's GP through the formal interviews, through informal conversations with a range of people with direct experience of the Jail's GP, (27) and through direct observation of the GP dorm that, due to its fortuitous proximity to the K6G dorms, served as my control. (28) I also learned about life in the California prisons more generally, both through the formal interviews (since many of my interview subjects had previously spent time in state prison), and through informal conversations with other K6G...