Decision-Making In Prisons, By Tennessee Williams

Decision making is part of our everyday life; from a five year old deciding which toy to play with, to a college student deciding to ingest large amounts of alcohol on a Sunday night, instead of studying for his upcoming mid-term examination on Monday morning. From a very young age, I always heard those closest to me reiterate on the idea that the decisions we take today, can greatly affect the outcome of our plans tomorrow; being a child, I did not have the ability to understand the meaning behind this, in my opinion, powerful phrase; I thought of, such as a phrase grown-ups utilized to diverge a child from deviancy, or to reinforce the importance of good behavior as that child matured from a boy to a teenager, and from a teenager to an adult.

Throughout the vivid examples of his memoir, what shocked me the most about prison life, is that the structure of correctional facilities are meant to bring degradation to the inmate from the very moment they arrive, to the moment they are released once again into society. To explain the degradation ceremony, Williams gives various examples, including the humiliation inmates experience when they are subject to a strip search (Williams, 40). Not only are inmates subject to the humiliation of being completely naked as a prison guard searches their body, but when in the shower-room, inmates are forced to shower in front of one another with no individualistic privacy; Williams states, that perhaps the thing that bothered him the most while incarcerated, was the fact that he was not able to hug his mother when she drove numerous miles to visit him (Williams, 46 & 47). In my opinion, the visiting restriction of not being able to hug your loved ones is the most psychologically degrading act that prisons can enforce. As I put myself in Williams shoes and think of how I would feel being subject to the many degrading things that occur inside these facilities, I wonder what is enough rehabilitation? Didn’t Stanley Williams experience enough hardship to make him into a law-abiding citizen? As I conclude my literary analysis, I wonder if our prison system should be reevaluated in terms of the physical and psychological treatment that inmates receive. It amazes me, that despite being stripped of their individual identity and being made into a prison inmate, prisoners don’t only go through a physical imprisonment, but also a psychological incarceration as they pay society for their wrongdoing; let’s ask ourselves, what is enough