Today, Manda and I visited Alcatraz, a.k.a. (especially to fans of Sean Connery’s body of work) “The Rock”.
For your information, I was able to refrain from exclaiming in my best Scottish accent, “Welcome to the Rock!” for the entire trip. Thank you very much.
The audio tour featured the voices of former guards and prisoners from Alcatraz (which shut down in 1963), so it lent a lot of authenticity and realism to the tour. When a story was told about something that happened there, the guys all said something to the effect of, “Oh, yeah, I remember that day. I was…”
A view of San Francisco from the island. It looks almost close enough to swim to. Manda was thoughtful enough to wear a black-and-white striped shirt. Fortunately, so far as I know, no former inmates were there that day.
What struck me about the Rock was several of the quotes they had peppered around the place to the effect of, “Alcatraz has perfected isolation.” Despite the fact that they were there with other prisoners, the real torture of Alcatraz seems to have been the fact that the inmates felt so alone. They commented that the worst night of the year was New Year’s Eve, because they could hear the parties taking place in the city.
Now, so far as I know, our prison system in the U.S. is unashamedly retributive (as opposed to restorative); that is, inmates owe a debt to society and so they ‘serve their time’ until that debt is paid (said debt having been determined by a person who is empowered to judge what amount of punishment is ‘fair’). Little concern is paid to what happens to the convict after they’ve ‘done their time’. In this sense, the prison systems are entirely capitalistic in nature – viewing justice in economic terms.
But look at what prison does to a human. It isolates them. It cuts them off from their community. And in a Mosaic talk I recently listened to, the speaker said, “Whatever disconnects us kills us.” A lack of community reduces us to animals. It robs us of our humanity. And this is what I saw at Alcatraz. The worst punishment was the degradation of beautiful images of God (however tarnished and tainted by their own personal choices) even further than they’d already degraded themselves.
After Alcatraz shut down, most prisoners were transferred to the SuperMax prison in Florence, CO. One of the former wardens called it “a clean version of hell.”
Can’t we do better than this?
i told you, i didn’t mean to wear the striped shirt that day. and btw, it was navy and white, in my defense.
i think this post is very interesting. i wonder what the prision justice fellowship or whatever it is called does to reach out to the inmates and all of that.
um… I think Manda commented on my computer… just to be clear