Sing Sing is more than a maximum security prison. It is a fairly self-contained world, with its own customs, practices, and expectations. Not only the prisoners, but also the guards, chaplains, teachers, maintenance staff, and everybody else who enters regularly belongs to this world, and there is an understanding that cuts across the various roles and occupations.  It is a world where everyone is expected follow orders without question, including not only prisoners but also security officers and professors. In many contexts, the searches that are always performed on entry might seem degrading, and some volunteers perceive them to be so, but the process is entirely impersonal. The ambiance reminds me a bit of the many factory jobs that I have done, where everyone must simply concentrate on the job at hand.

But the custodians of the prison's secrets are, in the end, mostly the prisoners themselves, since it is because of them that the prison exists at all. What do the prisoners at Sing Sing have that distinguishes them from other people? By comparison with the general population, they are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, but so are many neighborhoods.  Contrary to the stereotype of prisoners a maximum security facility, they do not have huge muscles and are not covered with tattoos.  They do not appear particularly hard or tough, and few people would feel nervous sitting next to them on a bus. Politically, they are probably about as likely to be left wing, center, or right wing as anybody else. I have no demographic figures on religion in prison, but I have met plenty Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Atheists.  

Their opinions on most moral questions may seem either reassuringly healthy or disappointingly bland. Outsiders often imagine that prisoners are secretly seething with rage against society, which can make them appear as either misfits or romantic rebels. While this is no doubt true of a few, I have seen no indication whatsoever that it is a general condition. Some aspiring reformers imagine that one might bring out that rage and channel it into activism, and are disappointed to discover that the anger is not  there.

So why are some men in prison, while so many others that are like them remain outside?  Is it simply chance? Is it that they were given either an unusual opportunity to commit crimes or had the bad luck to be caught? Perhaps, but the role chance plays in human affairs is almost always unfathomable. If I had to pick a trait that impresses me most often about prisoners in a maximum security facility it is that they do not know a lot about the world outside. Many do not seem to know how one applies for, and keeps, a regular job.  They do not know how one is required to dress for work, or how one needs to act to keep a job. For quite a few, I think a life of crime does not appear as either rebellious or depraved but simply a matter of what they regard as “common sense”: Selling illegal drugs brings in the rent money, and somebody who shows your family disrespect has to be shot.