Criminally Retarded

The following is an excerpt from Part One:

They are called “environmentally retarded.” All of the men housed at the group home where Sid worked for six years had their front teeth removed. This had been done years earlier when they first entered state operated facilities for the mentally ill. Teeth impeded the shock therapy conditioning process. Particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, children who today might be diagnosed with autism or Tourettes or even ADHD may have been thrown into a cauldron labeled “retarded.” They were cloaked with shame and degradation. It was a common practice to commit them to institutions. In Rhode Island, the Ladd Center was one such place.

Draconian procedures such as shock treatment were generally accepted practices. Many of the guys would tell Sid the stories of being locked in “the blue room” without food or water. They were subjected to violence and sexual abuse. According to their rendition one woman was gang raped. Her child was boiled to death and hauled out with the trash.

By the 1970s and 80s those practices and facilities became obsolete. Most of the occupants were transitioned into group homes. Although many of the injured parties were not afflicted with retardation at the time they were committed, the process of living in that environment, and being exposed to those behaviors, eventually rubs off. They are classified as environmentally retarded.

A similar type of phenomenon occurs in the joint. Criminals locked in cells, as well as the ones who get to go home at the end of their double and triple shifts, are affected equally. After being exposed to an undesirable class of inmate population for a while, it becomes preferable to turn a deaf ear or a blind eye to their plight, whether real or imagined. There are users, whiners, and bullies, like anywhere else in the world. In prison, because of the oppressive environment and C/O intervention, it flourishes in concentrated doses.

Complacency can become as contagious as the common cold. My observation at the Intake Service Center is that many of the staff treat all prisoners equally as unworthy of respect or dignity. It creates a downward spiral of self-righteous, inhumane treatment.