OVER THE LAST few weeks, some local politicians have expressed fears that the racial violence in the Los Angeles County jail system could spread to the streets. County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke warned that if the violence escalates, it has the "potential to bring the whole community down."
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is so concerned that the rioting could go beyond the jails that he has offered to help Sheriff Lee Baca keep the peace. The mayor insisted that the "matter should be of utmost concern to all Angelenos." He's right. But not exactly for the right reasons.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday February 28, 2006 Home Edition California Part B Page 13 Editorial Pages Desk 0 inches; 19 words Type of Material: Correction
Prisons: In a column Feb. 19 about racial violence among inmates, sociologist Hans Riemer's name was misspelled as Reimer.
As it turns out, there's little chance of widespread racial warfare on the streets. But day in, day out, riots or no, the race problem in California's jails and prisons is actively producing bigots who, when released, will poison society in a much subtler way.
Law enforcement officials have said that the feuds in the jails stem from tensions between Latino and black street gangs in L.A. True enough, but those tensions aren't primarily racial. Although gangs are drawn largely along ethnic and racial lines, they are more concerned with territory and drug distribution than they are with race. Racial enmity may fuel the rivalries, but the endgame is about organized crime.
All that changes when gangsters go to prison. Their criminal identities give way to less nuanced markers, with race chief among them. In 1937, sociologist Hans Reimer published one of the first empirical studies of an American prison population. His view of the incarcerated community as a primitive society helps us understand that along with their freedom, prisoners are stripped of what characterizes the rest of us.
On the outside, men are fathers, brothers, sports fans, the devotees of certain types of music -- or members of a gang. On the inside, however, where the environment is closed, hostile and populated by people who have demonstrated their unwillingness to abide by accepted social norms, men group themselves according to any identity that promises to help them achieve their primary objective: survival.
For most of U.S. history, prisons were racially segregated, and power was divvied up along ethnic, class and geographic lines. In all settings, "in" and "out" groups emerge. Child molesters, ex-cops and informants, no matter their race, are beyond the pale. In the Soviet gulags, petty criminals ganged up to exploit and brutalize political prisoners.
