Psycho factories

But like all new prisons these days, supermaxes have been greeted with universal excitement -- they are, after all, a boost to any local economy. If the notion that we've put a smiley face on prisons sounds far-fetched, consider Polk County, Texas, where, Hallinan reports, a new prison was greeted with great cheers. Three days before the prison's opening, the prison held an "open house." For $25, members of the public got to eat real prison food, wear real prison clothes, even spend the night in a real prison cell. The town's mayor strummed a guitar from a bunk in one cell, and a judge sang appropriate favorites such as "Folsom Prison Blues." Or consider Wallens Ridge, Va., where the new supermax was celebrated with a party complete with yellow and white tent and barbecue pit. The warden told the crowd how proud he was of his town's new prison, which "shows we can make a difference. We can create jobs and prosperity and protect people while we're doing it."

It has never been easy to keep order in prisons, which are, after all, filled with people who have shown themselves capable of antisocial behavior and much worse, many of whom have little left to lose. How many resources does society really want to invest in them, and just what are prisoners' rights beyond food and shelter? Hallinan shows how over the past few decades, pendulum swings in the nation's courts on these age-old issues have played a crucial part in the development of the prison-industrial complex.

Prior to the '60s, wardens ruled individual prisons virtually at their own discretion; courts rarely intervened. But the Black Muslims succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to pay attention to prison life with its ruling that Muslim inmates must be given the same religious accommodations as Christians. A frenzy of inmate lawsuits followed. Suddenly, inhumane conditions that had always been a feature of many prisons -- such as severely overcrowded Alabama jails in which six inmates were crammed into a cell measuring 4 by 8 feet, with only a hole in the floor for a toilet -- were ruled unconstitutional.

The next decade saw the courts ban corporal punishment in prisons and set limits on solitary confinement. Rules were eased on everything from inmates' dress codes to the number and duration of visits to the censorship of their mail. Prison counseling programs flourished. Furlough and early-parole programs were begun in several states.

But after the move toward "empowered" prisoners came something else: a surge of deadly prisoner uprisings, beginning in 1971 at Attica in upstate New York, in which 43 people were killed. The national mood shifted again, away from sympathy toward prisoners' concerns, away from the concept of rehabilitation, and toward the idea that prisons exist to be the hell on earth that criminals deserve -- and God knows we need more and more of 'em in these corrupt, immoral times.

It's the unseemliness of it all, of the newly acceptable blithe, cheerful attitude toward prisons, and of the new opportunities to make millions off the misfortunes of others and the most entrenched social problems, that most seems to offend Hallinan. And yet that's also what sets him at cross-purposes in "Going Up the River." His instincts as a moralist compete with his talent for drawing amusing portraits of wacky personalities. He lavishes several hilarious pages, for example, on San Quentin's Dr. Leo Stanley, who served as the prison's warden in the 1930s and believed that crime could be caused by the psychological pain of being physically unattractive. Stanley started by giving nose jobs to all crooked-nosed inmates, but before long, Hallinan writes, "He was giving inmates face lifts to smooth their wrinkles, paring down and pinning back elephant ears, even removing blemishes."

Next Page: The psychic toll taken on prison guards

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