many of the parolees adamantly stated that they would never consider going into PC. Consequently, one of the most effective mechanisms for enforcing segregation in the prison is referring inmates who refuse to abide by the carceral social order to PC.
Expecting prisoners to belong on one side of a segregated space leaves little room for ambiguity, and frames inmates trying to do their time outside of racial boundaries as signs of imminent trouble. Assuming that inmates needed to be on a side also dismissed the possibility of doing time on the mainline without identifying or “running” with one’s sorted group. Resultantly, anyone who was not accepted by the other inmates in their racial group was seen as vulnerable and consequently removed from general population and sent to PC. For example, Steven was originally housed with the Northerners until a rumor spread that he had incriminated a friend while talking to police. When staff learned that the other Northerners wouldn’t accept him anymore, they told him they were going to transfer him to the Special Needs Yard (or SNY, another term for PC), but Steven didn’t want to do that. He wanted to stay in general population by himself rather than go to PC, but for staff that was not an option:
| STEVEN: | I’m not gonna lie to you, even doing my own thing, as I went my own way, I got harassed big-time. I got harassed more by staff going off and doing my own thing than I ever got harassed belonging as a whole, you know? |
| AUTHOR: | Really? Why? |
| S: | Yeah. I don’t know. They fucked with me big time, because they felt that I needed to be uh, [either one of the] dudes that are active (clique up with racial group), [or one of the] dudes that SNY [go to PC]. Me, I choose to do my own thing. Just because one group says that I’m not worthy of what they’re doing, doesn’t mean I have to go over here and kick it on the yard with a bunch of pieces of shit, you know? So I’m gonna do my own thing. I consider myself independent, so I got myself in a lot of trouble to the point to where they wouldn’t even put me with no one else. They kept me single celled. I caught SHU [Secure Housing Unit] time, and thank God I never had to hit a yard full of garbage. . . . I did cages, single celled cages, single celled living for three years five months, and it, to me it fucked me up, you know? What happened is, like I said, I didn’t mess with these people [the Northerners], didn’t mess with these people [the PC yard], didn’t mess with administration, so what they tried to do was kinda like socially isolate me, you know? So I was by myself, know what I mean? Nobody talked to me, nobody gave me no genuine conversation, none of that shit, you know? |
Steven claims that the COs gave him a hard time when he tried to defy the social order of the prison and exist outside of his sorted group. They would not let him stay in general population, and the only way he could avoid PC was by getting himself into enough trouble that they would send him to administrative segregation in the SHU. Consequently, Steven spent the remaining three and a half years of his sentence in solitary confinement in the SHU, where he feels he was punished with social isolation for trying to do his time outside of his assigned category.
In Steven’s story, we can see how thoroughly the logic of the carceral social order guides the management of inmate populations; because staff see it as impossible for inmates to live in the prison without a racial group, they end up enforcing this social order by isolating “independent” inmates in either protective custody or solitary confinement. This removal of independent prisoners contributed to the institutionalization of the carceral social order by keeping space divided and making it impossible to do time without abiding by the racial division of the population. While the COs’ concerns for Steven’s safety are certainly not groundless, they are the direct result of a constructed environment that demands everyone be classified.
Inside punitive institutions like the prison, the carceral social order is implemented not only by categorizing and separating people, but also by socializing and maintaining the resulting segregation. But while prison staff structure and facilitate this segregation through housing assignments, race-based punishments (Spiegel 2007), recognizing informal racial leaders (Walker 2016), and racially dividing shared spaces, much of the enforcement of racial boundaries is carried out by inmates themselves. By the time they are adults, prisoners effectively enforce much the carceral social order themselves by monitoring spatial borders and confronting nonconformists. Most of the parolees were already well familiar with the divides and expectations of this social order before they ever reached the prison. Probation youth, however, are still being socialized into this. In their facilities, institutional staff members take on a much more direct role in maintaining the separation between sorted groups.
Policing Space
SJEA’s influence in shaping the carceral social order became clear through the ongoing policing of students’ physical space. During student breaks six to eight staff members are typically on duty to supervise, making sure that students stay at their designated tables and sending them to the bathrooms in separate waves depending on which side of the gap their table is on. As the weather began to warm it revealed an underlying emphasis the school placed on maintaining physical distance between groups of students. Fresno is known for intense summers where long stretches of triple-digit heat are not uncommon, and by early April it was already becoming uncomfortable for students and staff alike to stay in the sun during lunchtime. The students’ lunch area was in the center of an asphalt blacktop that absorbed much of the heat while offering little in the way of shade. Two trees by the side of the school building offer the only protection from the sun, shading a small area of the parking lot immediately adjacent to the “Bulldog tables,” and because of how the lunch area is divided the students sitting here are the only ones able to access it.
One day the heat prompts SJEA staff to reevaluate this configuration. As the students finish eating their lunches most stay at their tables, barely talking as they try to shade their faces with their hands, but the Bulldog students all stand up and position themselves under the shade of the trees. After about forty minutes of sitting in the heat, the sun becomes too much for the half dozen Black students in attendance,5 and they collectively walk across the blacktop and stand with the Bulldogs in the shade. The staff members supervising lunch seem stunned and look at each other in confusion, unsure of what to do. The Black students and Bulldogs don’t generally have problems with each other and it quickly becomes clear that neither group is interested in fighting, so even though the Probation Officers (POs) seem alarmed by this boundary crossing, they don’t do anything to correct it. Soon the rest of the students follow suit, joining them under the trees and in any pockets of shade they can find along the wall. The only students still in the sun are two Norteño boys who stay by their table and look sadly over at everyone else in the shade—as uncomfortable as they are, they know crossing over will likely start a fight with rival gang members and get them in trouble with the staff, so they stay put.
When I come back the next week I find that the tables have been rearranged into two parallel rows spaced about 25 feet apart. Each row has 7 tables, stretching about 60 feet from the trailer through the space between the planters. Most interesting is that while still divided, all of the tables are now centered in the middle of the blacktop, intentionally positioned away from the wall and the shade provided by the trees. When I ask her about it, Mrs. Rodriguez, a youth outreach worker at the school, explains: “We did that to move that group that thinks they run everything around here. We moved them out of the shade cuz if this side has to be in the sun, then they can in the sun too!” The school changed the setup of the students’ lunch area because they wanted to make it fair for all of the students, arguing that it was unfair for the “Bulldog-affiliated” students to have the only tables in the shade. However, because staff members fear that students will fight if they are allowed to simply share the shade, they decide to keep everyone in the sun, addressing the disparity while still enforcing the separation between groups and keeping students on their appropriate sides. The emphasis the school placed on dividing students even while reorganizing the tables highlights how important they considered it for preserving institutional security and student safety, and during the summer months policing the students’ access to shade served as an important means for preventing them from crossing group boundaries.
After rearranging the tables outside, the staff wouldn’t let
