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

• Author: Dolovich, Sharon
• Position: III. What Makes K6G K6G? B. Creating a Safe Space in the L.A. County Jail 3. Community Creation into IV. 'They've Got It Too Good': The Law-and-Order Objection C. Identity Theories: Looking to Sexual Difference 4. They Can't and Won't Redux, p. 1046-1087

3. Community Creation

   The L.A. County Jail is enormous, housing as many as 19,000 people at any one time, (322) the vast majority of them men. (323) Male detainees who are classified to GP may be sent to any housing unit corresponding to their security level (i.e., low, medium, or high) at any of seven facilities. (324) The sheer size of the system means that most people newly arrived in their assigned housing units will know few if any individuals there. They will, in other words, be locked up night and day in close quarters for extended periods with strangers. This experience can be a scary one, especially given the (deserved) reputation of the Jail for volatility and violence. (325) In these circumstances, convincing hypermasculine performance is an effective means of self-protection, as is gang affiliation. (326)

   By contrast, people classified to K6G have no need for these self-protective measures to feel immediately safe on arrival in the dorms. K6G is small, with an average of 350 to 400 people in three or four dorms (327) at any given time. (328) Once classified to the unit, K6Gs are automatically returned to it on subsequent stints in the Jail. Thus, unlike GPs, who upon admission to the Jail could be sent anywhere in the system, K6Gs who land in the Jail know exactly where they will end up. There are always some first-timers. But K6G's extremely high recidivism rate means that most of the people admitted to K6G will have been there before, likely more than once. (329) At the same time, as with the Jail in general, there is relatively high turnover. (330) The combination of these several factors--high recidivism rate, high turnover, and automatic reassignment to K6G on return bids in the Jail--means that when K6Gs come into the Jail, not only are they not frightened or anxious as to what awaits them (since they know exactly where they will end up), but chances are they will be met by many familiar and even friendly faces when they get to the dorms. As a consequence, K6G has, almost by accident, become a comfortable and even welcoming community for many of its residents.

   Prior to the start of my research, both observation and casual conversations with residents suggested this community aspect of the unit. I therefore decided to probe the issue in my interviews. Two questions sought to determine the extent of the web of personal acquaintance that binds people in the unit. The first asked: When you got to K6G [for the first time], was there anyone you already knew? (331) Of the twenty-four subjects to respond to this question, fifteen answered in the affirmative. (332) The second question was directed at those who had been in K6G before, and asked: Do you hang out with your fellow K6Gs on the outside? Of the twenty-four subjects to answer this question, thirteen answered in the affirmative. (333)

   A further question asked interviewees to characterize their experience of coming back to K6G on a return stint. Specifically, the inquiry was framed as follows: Some people who have been in K6G more than once say that coming back to K6G is like coming back to a summer camp or a clubhouse, and others say it is just like any other jail. What do you think? (334) In response, a small minority took the view that "jail is jail." As one person put it, "it's just coming to jail. I know half these people [but] I don't want to see them." (335) But the majority of respondents provided answers suggesting a very different picture--and keep in mind that what is being described here is a return to incarceration.

   * A lot of times when a person comes in, they're off the streets.... Everybody says "new fish." Zoom, everybody is at the front door, who is it, who is it? Is it somebody I know? And then when they walk in and some of them, they're all getting hugs like it's a big old family reunion. (336)

   * [S]ome people come back and they feel like it's home, I mean ... [i]t's not like any other jail. Why? Because any other jail they don't have [K6Gs]. [In other jails,] [t]hey do put us aside, you know what I mean, sometimes. Sometimes they don't. But in here, you come back to people that you know out there in the streets, and it's like coming back to your own people, to your own family. (337)

   * Some come in there and it's like Christmas to them.... I'm not from here, and I've noticed a lot of them come in here, they all know each other. They know each other from being incarcerated so many times, and from going into [K6G]. So, it's like, hey, they come in and they all cry because they haven't seen each other in a long time, or they cry when they go home. (338)

   * They say it's a big slumber party. Like, some people will start crying when it's time to go. (339)

   The sense of K6G as a secure and welcoming community for many unit residents came through in other ways in my interviews. One frequent theme was that of "family." In many cases, the word was used to capture a general feeling of fellowship. As one person put it, "we try to be there ... for each other ... [N]o matter if we hate each other in the street, (340) but, in here, it's just one big family." (341) Over the course of my research, however, it became clear that the word was also being used to describe actual groupings of residents organized into specific familial relationships. (342) These groupings, apparently forged over years of mutual engagement in custody, and even in some cases on the streets, could be quite extensive, with mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. As some of my subjects explained:

   * So, sometimes we have a mother and a father figure. And then you have sisters and brothers. Most of my sisters that I call my sisters or my brothers, we are friends on the street. (343)

   * [She's] my gay jailhouse niece. So, the respect is there. I have a lot of ... sisters, nephews ... I have three gay kids that I call my kids.... And they're very respectful where I am concerned.... [W]hen I come to jail, no matter which one of the three dorms I go into, it's at least five or more in there that calls me Auntie. (344)

   * [I]n a dorm you have people that you call your family ... we have pow-wows. We cook together. We eat. You know, we all go to store. (345) When you go to store you get food and bag of chips and soups and cookies and pastries and stuff like that. So, we all sit, eat, and we just talk. Fall over the bed and lay on the beds and just talk. And it reminds me of my family, because that's how we do. (346)

   By no means does everyone participate in these family groupings. (347) Still, their presence and overtly emotive framework signal to all present that, by contrast with GP, mutual support in K6G is not contingent on hypermasculine posturing.

   The picture just painted of people in custody engaging in public displays of emotion (as at the arrival of "new fish"), mutual concern, and feelings of family or fellowship (expressed, for example, between members of "jailhouse families") indicates that we are very far from the enforced stoicism and calm that reigns in the Jail's GP. With its echoes of life in women's prisons, (348) this account may appear to have nothing to do with the culture of men's prisons, and thus nothing to teach about how to make prisons in general more humane. But this conclusion would be too hasty. The key distinction here is between, on the one hand, conditions that allow people in custody to feel safe and secure enough to relax and be themselves, and, on the other hand, the particular way of life that emerges once those feelings of safety take hold. It does seem highly unlikely that majority-heterosexual units would reproduce to any significant degree K6G's particular cultural norms and modes of interaction. (349) The aim, however, is not to make all housing units look just like K6G. It is instead to create conditions in which people feel independently safe enough to be who they are, and to pursue whatever interests and projects are most important to them, without being forced to participate in pathological and destructive behaviors or feeling compelled to force others to do so. In the end, what is most important about K6G is not the specific ways of life that have emerged in the unit, but the model K6G offers of a comparatively safe carceral space where people feel able to do their time in relative peace.

   The key point is this: thanks to a variety of structural features that emerged from the implementation of the consent decree--the small size of the unit, the high rates of turnover and recidivism, the automatic reassignment to K6G for any new arrivals previously classified to the unit--K6G has evolved into a place to which many people do not feel afraid to go. This is at least in part because, when they arrive, they expect to be greeted, not by a room full of hostile and threatening strangers, but by people they recognize and maybe even know and like. (350) In the absence of any such fear, the gang politics and hypermasculine posturing that define life in the rest of the Jail seem unnecessary and even absurd.

   To be sure, the common identity shared by unit residents, who are all either gay or trans (or, if they are not, are passing as such), helps to create a default sense of community and mutual sympathy in K6G, (351) even among those without prior personal knowledge of, or connection to, others in the dorms. (352) But without the various structures just noted, which have made it possible for the same people to come together repeatedly in the same living quarters, that mutual affinity would have had no opportunity to grow into the sense of community that currently exists. And of course, without the confidence felt by K6Gs that anyone in the unit who behaves in a predatory or abusive manner will be immediately removed, the resulting fear and trauma likely would have impeded the emergence of any community feeling, regardless of how much unit residents might have had in common.

   At the same...