Jack Abbott as a Product of the Criminal Justice System (Essay Sample)

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Jack Abbott as a Product of the Criminal Justice System
The American society is riddled with a multitude of systems, ranging, from economic ones, to political ones and even sociocultural ones, all with influence and determine the course of events within the American society. One of the most salient one has been the criminal justice system, which has been in the media lately for the wrong reasons. A great deal of criticism has been meted out against this institution, a factor that calls for a radical review of its impacts and implication if viable solutions are to be developed. In Jack Abbot’s In the Belly of The Beast: Letters from Prison, has been lauded as a snapshot of the vagaries of an inefficient and ineffective system that is in urgent need of reforms. This paper delves into the dynamics of the criminal justice system and its impact on the lives of convicts, with Jack Henry Abbott as a case study.
For a person that spent over twenty years within the incarceration system, Jack offers the reader an insider insight like never before. The long-term sentences served in the prison system coupled by Abbott’s literary and intellectual prowess make his book a major avenue through which the prison system can be reviewed and understood. Central to Abbott’s argument is the fact that the prison system is flawed and effective, a matter that is reflected through Jack’s words as well as actions. The physical, psychological and intellectual pressures that come from total confinement in such institution comes out not as a rehabilitation mechanism but rather as a compounding factor for criminal conditioning (Neubauer, and Henry, 54). In other words, many prisoners, as exemplified by Abbott; are caught up in a system that not only is effective but also contributes to further psychological issues among the inmates.
Abbott’s journey within the criminal justice system goes as far back as his teenage years, where he spend most of his time in juvenile prisons. By the age of twelve, Abbot had already contact with the criminal justice, as such his fate was cast in stone, as his book goes on to elucidate. Foster care marked the beginning of Abbott’s relationship to the incarceration system. Among the most heinous crime committed by Abbot in his youth were armed robbery as well as his brief escape from prison during the 70s. The importance of this assertion is that it allows the reader to get a transitional image of what transpired in Abbot’s life between his entry into jail and his death by suicide in 2002 (Chan, par. 1 and 2).
The primary goal of the incarceration system is to rehabilitate inmates into law-abiding citizens, as well as lock away the dangerous criminals from the society. For Abbot, however, the system is designed to perpetuate societal problems, subsequently failing in its mandate. According to Abbott, the criminal justice system is an institution of oppression and cruelty, one that is effective in accomplishing its mandate of breaking people and perpetuating their life of crime and delinquency. Besides entering the criminal justice system at an early age, Abbot points out that the prison life in itself is another major contributor to the perpetuation of crime and violence.
According to Abbott; “everyone in prison has an ideal of violence, murder. Beneath all relationships between prisoners is the ever-present fact of murder. It ultimately defines our relationship among ourselves.” In other words, violence permeates all levels of association and interaction within the prison system, an element that becomes ingrained into the mind of an inmate, especially if they are serving long sentences, as was the case with Abbott. Abbott goes on to describe the prison system as place where torture techniques such as sensory deprivation, starvation and solitary confinement only require a warden’s approval for them to be implemented. Upon release from prison, Abbot went on to stub a waiter at an eatery after a small misunderstanding as accurately captured by Chan in the article: Mailer and the Murderer (Chan, par.6).
While the American society was quick to point out the failure of the prison parole-review departments, few failed to notice the influence of the prison system on Abbots life. For an individual that had spent his entire adult life behind bars, living with people serving time for various violent crimes, Abbot asserts that the culture soon grows upon the individual and becomes part of him. According to Abbot, life within the prison is dictated by a code of violence and murder, and that “the only time they appear human is when you have a knife at their throats. The instant you remove it, they fall back into animality. Obscenity(Abbott, 12).” His reaction in killing the waiter can thus be looked at as a conditioned reaction; one that Abbott had been accustomed to due to his two-decade stay in the corrections department.
Primarily, Abbot brings to light the long-term psychological consequences that come about as a result of prison confinement. While serving time in solitary confinement, Abbot asserts that; “the wasteland that is your memory now comes under the absolute dictatorship of idols too terrible to mention (Abbott, 43).” From the treacherous time spent in confinement to the anger of living with the reality that freedom is an illusion that is highly unlikely to occur, a long-serving inmate becomes accustomed to the vagaries of prison life, ultimately collapsing under the mental and psychological pressure that it creates within the inmate. The correctional aspect of the prison is thus lost into the complex and violent prison culture, an element that policy makers in the criminal justice system have seemingly ignored.
Abbott does stand out as victim of a system that is ultimately creates violent and murderous individuals. While there is no doubt that Abbott was a psychopath and delinquent who deserved psychological help than incarceration, it is easy to connect the dots between Abbott’s psychopathy and his early engagement with the criminal justice system. From as early as twelve years old, Abbot had been made contact with the violent culture that came with incarceration and confinement (Stuntz, 107). In other words, while his teenage counter par...