If You Don't Laugh You'll Cry: The Occupational Humor of White Wisconsin Prison Workers by Claire Schmidt (review)

Claire Schmidt's If You Don't Laugh You'll Cry: The Occupational Humor of White Wisconsin Prison Workers is a funny book, but it is also a serious one and, as the title suggests, somewhat sad. Schmidt outlines the ways in which humor is used by corrections officers (COs) and other personnel in the Wisconsin prison system to maintain control and uphold the institution, subvert and resist those same institutional norms, and, most importantly, preserve their sanity.

Many of the stories documented in the book are quite funny, and in this respect Schmidt has succeeded in one of her stated personal goals, which is to show the funniness of her grandfathers, whose stories are included in the book. The book is also serious and sad, however, because the context for this humor, which she and her collaborators characterize as sick and often offensive, is the racist and classist systems of justice in which both prisoners and workers find themselves and from which they are unable to escape. The result is an extraordinarily detailed, in-depth study of occupational humor as it emerges in a context about which every American should be concerned: the US prison system.

The book is divided into three parts. The introduction provides statistics about the deplorable state of the justice system, emphasizing that disproportionate rates of incarceration for people of color, the poor, and those with mental health issues represent institutionalized biases, issues that are exacerbated in the Wisconsin system. After building the case that the justice system is racist and oppressive, Schmidt argues that the mass media, press, and political authorities use stereotyped images of abusive, racist, and even violent corrections officers as substitutes for this oppressive system, blaming individuals in order to avoid discussions about systemic change. In fact, Schmidt argues that this strategy is actually an extension of the class warfare embedded in the justice system; corrections officers are a relatively voiceless and powerless population with limited educational and economic opportunities. They are frequently ambivalent about their identities as prison workers, and they use humor to mediate this fraught occupational identity with other salient identities and viewpoints. Schmidt explains that "humorous storytelling . . . allows individuals to separate themselves from their institutional context and negotiate their own subjective position" (p. 7).

The rest of Part 1 is about the ways in which working in prisons shapes and affects Wisconsin prison workers' relationships with family members and outsiders, as well as their views on race, gender, sexuality, and class. Schmidt considers whether working in prisons makes one racist. While she does not definitively answer this question, she does note that most white Wisconsin corrections officers come from rural backgrounds and have limited exposure to diverse populations, while the prison system incarcerates a disproportionate number of people of color, the poor, and people with mental health issues. Workers therefore use humor to do boundary work between their occupational identity and their private lives: telling funny prison stories at home, for example, negotiates work and domestic spheres, while telling jokes about race and sexuality mediates corrections officers' rural, white, and hetero-normative backgrounds and the lifeworld of the prison, particularly for newcomers to the occupation.

In Part 2, Schmidt argues that humor functions to uphold institutional safety and norms, since workers depend on humor to do their jobs. Specific functions of humor include stress management, the release of aggression, the alleviation of boredom, and the negotiation of moral ambivalence. Humor is also used as a teaching tool; to test and strengthen relationships among co-workers; to reinforce group identity; and to identify like-minded people—people who are able to laugh about inappropriate, sick, or taboo topics. Humor also functions to de-escalate situations with inmates, to illustrate "non-racism," affection, or respect. It may also be used as a form of protest, for example by illustrating the...