Stick Together and Come Back Home. Patrick Lopez-Aguado
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 any of the students stand or sit in the shade during break or lunchtime, even when they were talking with me. When the students were out on break I usually sat on one of the side benches under a tree by the building so that I could observe what happened during break without imposing on students while they socialized with their friends. When I was outside some of the students I worked with or had gotten to know would often come up to me and talk for a while before going back in for class. However, now when they did this one of the probation officers or staff members would step in and tell them to move along, sending them back to their table. Consequently, policing the students’ access to the shade became a way for staff to keep students at their appropriate tables and on their designated side of the divided blacktop.
During one of these lunch breaks, I sat with Ben, one of my regular students, while he complained that he had to stay after school to help clean up the yard as punishment for getting to school late this morning. He explained, “It’s not even hard work or anything, it’s just hella hot.”
“Yeah, and they won’t even let you guys in the shade anymore huh?” I responded, referring to the staff moving the tables away from the trees.
“Naw, it was cuz we were all chillin’ here, and kids from the other side started coming over, started sitting in the shade.”
“Were they scared something was gonna happen?”
“I dunno, probably. They probably thought there’d be fights, like different gangs would both be in the shade and they’d get into a fight, cuz this is like the only place there’s shade.”
One of the POs supervising lunch spots us and walks over. She says hi to me and walks around the bench to stand directly behind Ben, putting her hands on the top of the seatback and leaning forward over him. “Get off the bench.”
“What?” Ben asks incredulously, looking back up at her.
She replies calmly: “You know you’re not supposed to be sitting here. I’m not calling you out, it looks like you got up on your own.” Ben rolls his eyes, stands up, and goes back to sitting with his friends. I ask her why students can’t sit here, and she answers: “They can stop and talk for a few minutes, but then they try to play it off like ‘Oh I’m just talking to him.’ So just so no one gets hurt feelings, just move them along.”
As Ben’s comments indicate, students understood that the school’s attempts to restrict their access to shade intended to keep them separated. Probation officers shooed students out of shade anytime they tried to linger under the trees, arguing that if some of the youth could not have access to shade then none of them should. While staff members felt this kept things fair between students, it functioned to maintain divisions between youth because kicking them out of the shade inevitably entailed sending them back to their designated tables.
The school’s staff also reinforced divisions between students by policing the boundaries between groups and directing youth who crossed these boundaries to “stay with their side.” Probation and security staff members restricted students to one side of the blacktop in order to prevent gang members