Drugs and reality in captive society. Some observations on chemical adaptation.

Abstract

The prison world is a captive society with its government, its policies, its sanctions, its language and its customs. It forms part of a greater population of ‘rounders’ who live in free society, are associated with criminal activity and have had previous prison experience. The rounder justifies his actions with general statements: “there is no really honest man”; “honesty is just a fear of getting caught.” He is prevented from belonging to the free society once it has banished him to prison, and his criminal record and his past associations are never forgotten. He usually lives out his ‘rounder life’ because there is no other society for him. The prison custodial and professional staff are part of the ‘world in opposition’, and the inmate calls them ‘squares’, scoffs at their apparent honesty and well-meaning efforts, feels they are deceitful, untrustworthy and justifiable targets for opportunity, connivance and manipulation. In parallel, the uses of drugs, chemicals and fermentations in prison have a distinctly different set of values and frame of reference than in free society. These variations and modifications in the use of drugs, together with the role of chemicals and poisons, reflect the ambivalent attitude which the inmate has towards the social system in general. The Medical Officer must not allow himself to be identified as an inmate man or an institutional man. He cannot be party to any plan or activity either by the administration or the inmate population. He must function only in his role as doctor in the society of antagonists, and use his professional standards and his judgment to carry out his medical duties in his neutral position, to interpret the language of the two societies, one to the other, and prevent both groups from using the medical department for reasons of their own. The Medical Officer is truly the ‘third man’ in the institutional life.