Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America

Seeking Peace in Prison City

90 Seeking Peace in Prison City introduCtion Despite the extraordinary challenges inside Prison City, every man and woman here wants to do more than simply survive their time inside. This collection of essays is called “Seeking Peace” because every author has managed to find ways to do just that—to discover through meditation , religion, art, or other practices, a way to push back against the predictable hostility of the prison and create pockets of inner calm. What is striking here is the unaided initiative required by incarcerated people to achieve ends that we might assume the prison would take on as its primary charge: to help people who have damaged or ended the lives of others to become people we might welcome back among us. These writers bear witness to the capacity of incarcerated people to seek and secure the changes in themselves that should model for Prison City what that city is all about. Diana Waggy’s “Inspiration” describes the change the author has achieved: once a mentally ill, violent woman, she finds a place of peace, tranquility, humor, and quiet remorse. Waggy’s transformation was aided by one of the thousands of unpaid civilian volunteers who go into American prisons every day to give their time, care, and skills to those struggling to find peace inside.1 But no transformation this drastic can occur without the dedicated effort of incarcerated people to make something positive of the mistakes that brought them to prison. Waggy also sees firsthand the difference between politicians who stump for tough-on-crime policies, and the quiet, daily work actually required to make real changes in convicted felons—work that makes both prisons and the streets that incarcerated people will return to someday truly safer for everyone. Terrence Sampson was jailed at age twelve and sentenced to 30 years in prison at the age of thirteen. He became what one might expect a child to become in order to survive inside. But today he writes, “In order for my life to be meaningful, I have to have a positive impact on as many people as possible. Yes, that is what will give my life meaning.” Like others in this volume, he writes to make his time inside into something positive after the destruction wrought on his own and on others’ lives. “The Evolution of a Dreamer” presents yet another incarcerated American pushing on despite the daily humiliations and dehumanization that prisons are intent on meting out to their wards, and despite the anger and violence that these writers face among the most successfully dehumanized of their peers. Shelley Mac’s “Beginnings” traces the path that many convicted people discover, from lives consumed by drugs, alcohol, and the next escapist thrill, to deeper self-understanding through their first embrace of a spiritual life. The detachment and self-reflection that set the tone here are virtues that have been grasped by an author willing to engage in levels of self-assessment that few of us will ever face, let alone confess in writing; and in the peace that comes from that process, we see what real growth and maturation look like. In this way, this and other essays in this volume are not simply about life in prison, but about how any life can be conducted, by the person living it, into its truest and most fulfilling path. Many prisons offer what they imagine are means to let prisoners work off the energy and emotions that are bound to accumulate and turn ugly among men and women living in Introduction 91 cages: weights, gyms, recreation yards, training programs, etc. But as Michael Crawford’s “The Therapeutic Nature of Art in Prison” shows, the constructive, legal means that will always serve best are those that the incarcerated discover for themselves, in which they can both invest and discover creative curiosity and expression. Crawford describes how deeply he becomes enveloped in the world of his art, and the benefits it brings both to himself and to others. His essay suggests that alongside whatever programs state and federal institutions might mandate, the incarcerated should also be encouraged to develop the constructive gifts they bring with them into the prison: gifts that should be supported as they work to make prison life a viable staging ground for lives on the outside. We can hardly help admiring those who pursue the formidable internal labor required to discover some sense of peace and tranquility inside prisons rife with violence and the violent...