#ionia reformatory

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Voodoo Killer Sent to Ionia,” Border Cities Star. December 7, 1932. Page 8. ----- Police Think Power Of Cult Is Broken In Detroit ---- DETROIT, Dec. 7 - The commitment of Robert Harris, voodoo slayer, to Ionia State Hospital for the Criminal Insane and the voluntary abdication from the city of Wallace Farad, confessed founder of the cult of "Islam." led police Tuesday to believe that two major steps had been taken in the permanent dissolution of the vicious cult which preyed upon many Detroit colored people. 

Ugan Ali, Farad's most sinister and powerful satellite, told authorities that he realized the danger of his "teachings" and promised to use his influence in disbanding the group.

Harris was ordered committed to the Hospital Tuesday by Recorder's Judge John P. Scallen, after a special sanity commission had testified that he is insane.

The slayer. looking peaked and weary after his two weeks in jail, sat with chin cupped in both palms as he listened to the testimony of the medical experts. He showed no emotion, although he listened intently to every word.

Harris is "subject to mental confusion, delusional thinking, and has his hallucinations," the testimony read. He probably will never regain sanity, the doctors reported.

Farad was persuaded to leave town Tuesday by Detectives Oscar Berry and Charles Snyder who investigated the murder. He seemed willing to go, they said, and said that he would not return to Detroit again. 

Harris slew Smith November 20 by stabbing him through the heart and then crushing his skull with an iron bar, on a rude altar in his home at 1429 Dubois street.

[A scandalous account of an infamous incident in the early years of the Nation of Islam, though Harris’ connection to Fard and belief in the NOI’s early teachings is much more tenuous and confused than this account indicates. More here.]

[alangocha]

Students connect with the incarcerated in poetry course

Guillermo Delgado, academic specialist in community and socially engaged arts in RCAH, leads a course at MSU where he and RCAH students venture to local prisons, such as the Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility and the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia, once a week to speak face to face with inmates. from MSUToday - All stories http://bit.ly/2TJm16I

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“7 Years For Robbery Meted Out To Clarence Menard,” Border Cities Star. November 19, 1931. Pages 3 & 15. ---- Three Years Each For Roy Menard and Charles Larsh ---- ROBBED STORES --- Elder Menard Asks That He Get Lashes Instead Of Long Term ----  Sentences ranging from seven years to two years less one day were imposed by Magistrate Smith in Sandwich Police Court today upon four ex-convict burglars  who robbed stores in Armherstburg and Belle Isle during raiding expeditions between the Border Cities and Chatham.

CLARENCE MENARD Clarence Menard, 23 [top photo] received the seven years sentence after pleading for leniency on the grounds that he has just finished four years in a Michigan penitentiary. 

His younger brother, Roy [bottom photo] and Charles Larsh, both 19, were given three years sentences. 

Orvill Renno, 27, who helped with evidence for the Crown, received two years less one day determinate and two years less one day indeterminate, to run concurrently. 

ASKS LASHES The elder Menard asked that he be given a short sentence and lashes rather than a long sentence. 

‘I spent the best years of my life so far in Ionia Penitentiary. I would like to pay for this crime but I do not wish to spend the greater part of my life In prison. Therefore I would like lashes," stated Menard. 

"I cannot give that," replied His Worship. Lashes are not a part of the penalty for this offence. 

CANNOT UNDERSTAND ‘I can't understand why a boy of your apparent intelligence can’t see that a life of crime leads nowhere but to the penitentiary and possibly the hangman's noose," continued the Bench. ‘Your past record doesn't seem to have taught you anything." 

‘I am Innocent. Why did Renno, who gave evidence against me, tell the boys in the county jail that he would frame me and that he couldn’t take the rap alone because It would be too severe?’ demanded Menard. ‘For three weeks he coaxed me to plead guilty with him. I am Innocent." 

‘You have been found guilty,’ pointed out Magistrate Smith. ‘You have a bad record, and within three months of when you leave Jail after four years, you deliberately commit another serious crime. 

BURGLARY TOO COMMON ‘Burglary is becoming too common, in this county. I must impose a sentence that will not only punish you but deter others as well. Seven years In Kingston Penitentiary." CONSIDERS YOUTH Magistrate Smith first Imposed a five-year sentence upon young Larsh, but decided to make it three years for both when Roy Menard came up for sentence, this decision came in consideration of their youth after a conference with Crown Attorney Allan. K.C. 

To Larsh it was a birthday present, for yesterday marked his 19th birthday. 

‘I don't Intend dealing with these cases in a light way,’ declared the Bench. ‘If boys insist on committing crimes from time to time It can only have one result severe sentences." ADDRESSES LARSH Addressing Larsh. Magistrate Smith observed: ‘You apparently have spent the last five years In breaking the law.’ 

‘Your Honor, I was convicted for a lot of things I didn't do,’ contended the blonde youth. ‘You were here for stealing a bicycle recently," recalled the Crown. "I didn't steal it,’ averred Larsh. 

PLEA OF GUILTY ‘You pleaded guilty," pointed out Magistrate Smith. 

‘It seemed the only way out. I did it on the advice of my counsel.’

He contended ‘that they sent me to jail innocent’ on two other occasions. 

‘And, anyway,  I was under the influence of liquor when I did this,’ pleaded Larsh.

‘Five years.’ ordered His Worship. He later changed the sentence to three years. 

YOUNGER MENARD Menard, the younger, also claimed that he had been unjustly convicted past and received the same the same amount of credence and three years in the penitentiary. 

‘What about Renno?’ asked the Bench. 

‘His worst crime in the past has been drunkenness,’ supplied Crown Attorney Allan. 

‘He has done the decent thing by supplying evidence to convict Menard, senior, and In view of the fact that this is his first serious crime I will impose a sentence of 2 years less one day determinate and 2 years less one day indeterminate, to run concurrent.’ directed the Bench. 

According to Supt. Wilkinson, of the Windsor Police Identification Bureau. Clarence Menard had recently been paroled from the Detroit House of Correction where he had been sentenced to serve from 10 to 15 years. The young man was released and sent back here, he said, without notice having been given police authorities who had warrants standing against him on other charges.

[AL: Clarence Menard had indeed been in the Ionia Reformatory before. Not just his younger brother but two older brothers had been in the penitentiary - the other two were in the St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary. Clarence worked in the Tailor Shop. He hated the Doctor, who had him sent to the ‘hole’ for ‘false’ complaints of illness. He was often put to work at heavy labour but had a heart condition and often had to stop - this was assumed to be shirking so he was further punished. He disliked the Catholic chapel, finding that the “priest does not preach to us...it is all nothing but names.” An officer in the tailor shop, Martin, accused him of “playing checkers” but when the Warden asked to know where the checkerboard was, Martin claimed Menard had somehow stolen it out of evidence. Menard considered that Kingston Penitentiary was the only prison he had been at “where we have been treated like dogs.” He supported strongly the October 1932 riot, demanding all the changes supported by other inmates - “reform and all that.” He continued to support protests in 1933 and 1934 at the penitentiary, but as with many long term prisoners he ‘mellowed out.’ By 1936 he was a cleaner in the prison, and was released September 1936. He does not appear to have gone back to the penitentiary.

Roy Menard had been in the Victoria Industrial School before. He worked in the shoe shop at the penitentiary. He resented that the guard in charge said “they were all cattle” and drove him particularly hard - the doctor, too, made negative remarks about his brothers and the families ‘predisposition to crime.’ Roy was reported a great deal - in April 1932 for loud talking, a severe warning in May 1932 for leaving his work without permission, several times in July for ‘fishing’, loud talking and insolence to officers - which merited the loss of a week of remission.’ He was reprimanded several more times for speaking in an insolent manner in August 1932, and spent a week on bread and water and shackled to his cell bars for refusing to obey orders and being insolent to the chaplain in September 1932. On October 14 1932 he lost 3 days remission for refusing a medical examination. Menard supported the riot in October 17, 1932. He was reported several more times in December 1932 and January 1933 for insolence and refusing to obey orders. In February 1932 he was sent to the Prison for Women segregation unit, but was sent back to solitary in April 1933 for blocking officers from breaking up a fight between inmates. He took part in the May 1934 protests against the cancelling of baseball, and was given corporal punishment - 20 strokes of the lash. He was released October 1934. Roy came back to Kingston Penitentiary twice more, in late 1936 and in 1940.

Larsh had been once before at the Reformatory in Mimico. He was inmate #2417 at Kingston Penitentiary. Considered a well-behaved prisoner and quite young, he was transferred January 1932 to Collin's Bay and was released by parole in December 1933.]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“The stage of "aftermath" [of the Michigan prison riots of 1981] consists largely of the allocation of blame. Here the Michigan Correctional Officer’s Union [MCO] was the obvious target, especially after the Detroit News broke the charge that the State Prison of South Michigan [SPSM] Block 3 guards had turned over their keys voluntarily.

On June 15, Perry Johnson announced that Gerald Fryt, union head, and another local officer were being fired, and 14 other correctional officers, including the 2 from Block 3, were suspended. The MCO threatened a statewide guards' strike. However, on June 26, Fred Parks and Perry Johnson signed an agreement which ended the strike threat. Thirty vacancies were filled at State Prison of South Michigan, and it was agreed that the Department of Corrections and MCO would jointly review the discipline policy.

Also, on June 15, Perry Johnson fired the deputy warden of the Northside Complex and demoted the assistant deputy warden and the commander of the morning shift. They "had information on May 25," said Johnson, about plans for the disturbance, and neither acted on them nor informed the warden.

Perhaps the Michigan riots were too easy to explain. The first SPSM riot was on  by the MCO. Michigan Reformatory rioted because Jackson rioted. The May 26 Northside riot happened because certain officials were incompetent. Johnson originally claimed that "Marquette was clearly a planned, calculated disturbance by some really tough, hard-core, maximum-security prisoners." In support of this, Marquette officials originally claimed that the fires had been started with incendiary devices prepared in advance. Later, however, the investigators for the Padden Commission found no evidence for this. That left the department with the fallback explanation: Marquette rioted because of all the other riots.

To us this is a little thin. A riot in one prison does not automatically bring on a wave of riots in other facilities in the state. Attica didn't. Joliet didn't. We suspect that the turmoil in the entire state system had something to do with it.

On the other hand, a newspaper poll reported on June 1 found that the public in Michigan thought "lax discipline" was to blame. Fifty-three percent of their sample of Michigan residents agreed that was "a real reason" why inmates rioted, compared with only 32 percent who blamed the guards. (Eighty-three percent cited overcrowding as a reason.) The universal belief among inmates we interviewed was that the guards had been the victors. A year after the riot inmates had fewer privileges, less yard time, and were locked in their cells more. Some believed that the guards had provoked the riots at all three institutions on purpose, in order to justify tighter security measures. Others believed in a conspiracy to provoke inmates to riot and then make graft off the contracts to rebuild. Inmates at Marquette—not so much elsewhere—believed that the riot had been a unifying experience and were more likely to see it as a justified rebellion. One inmate who had faced charges after the riot said it would have been morally wrong for him to plead guilty to a lesser charge, and that he was obliged to show courage, having been named as a "leader."

Shortly after the riot, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against the State of Michigan, charging that the conditions at SPSM, MR, and Marquette were unconstitutionally bad. The suit was settled in 1984 with a consent decree, which required the state to provide for better sanitation, medical services, and access to courts and lawyers.

The Padden Commission produced a set of recommendations, targeting for reform staff racism and the grievance procedure as well as other problems. However, there has not been enough money in the DOC budget, or enough interest on the part of the state legislature, to implement them in a systematic way.

Gerald Fryt took his bid for reinstatement to arbitration but lost. The arbitrator's opinion declared that the wave of riots had taken place because of Fryt's individual action. Barry Mintzes was replaced at SPSM by Dale Foltz. Michigan Reformatory is still open. The Michigan prisons are still full to capacity, and the Emergency Powers Act has been invoked repeatedly. Violent disturbances, small riots, and deadly assaults on inmates and guards have been recurrent features of the system since 1981.” - Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 159-160. [AL: The photo is from the Michigan Daily, of June 2, 1981, about the opening of a new maximum security rushed in the wake of the riots.]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Prison photographs of Stephen Milanowski, taken in the Michigan Reformatory; Ionia, Michigan (1984) [TOP]; Massachusetts Correctional Institute, Walpole, Massachusetts (1981, 1982) [FUCK IT license plate]; and Michigan State Prison, Jackson, Michigan (1985). More info and photographs here.   

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The Michigan Reformatory Riot, May 22, 1981 “An inmate reports the common reaction at MR to the news of the Jackson riot:

People were already stirred up because of how this institution was run. When they heard about the riots [at Jackson] it stirred them up even more. People looked around and said, "We're tired of this s—t."

At 7:00 p.m., inmates of J-Block were released for their evening recreation. Some inmates recall increased tension from both guards and the 500 inmates on the yard.

Before we came out, they put extra guards on the roof, extra police, we were late coming out, and we could see, they're waiting, wanting us to riot—so they said let's give them what they're waiting for. People were saying, "Let's riot, let's riot." You could see the tension, people started grouping up. It was not a usual day with basketball.

Shortly after 8:00 p.m., a fight broke out at a group of picnic tables near the entrance to J-Block, when a black inmate apparently struck a white inmate in the head. Many inmates told us that this was part of a plan by a group of black inmates to draw officers into a fight. A white inmate declared:

The blacks were attacking the whites, but it was not so much a racial thing as just to get the police there. Then, when the police came, the attackers turned on them and fought.

Other inmates declared vehemently that the incident was spontaneous.

There were a white guy and a black guy in a fight, and the officers set the riot off. Four or five officers rushed up and grabbed them—in this institution, when they see a fight, they rush up, choke your neck, grab you—200 were watching them do this.

A guard stationed in a tower overlooking the yard fired a blank shot to break up the fight; when this failed, he shot several rounds of live ammunition. This gave enough cover for the guards to flee the yard for the control center and for the door to J-Block.

"Within four or five minutes," Warden Foltz later commented, "the prison went from normalcy to pandemonium." The siren was sounded for the 500 inmates to return to J-Block, and about a third of them complied—mostly those who had already been waiting near the door before the fight started, so as to be the first ones back to their cells. Guards on the tiers immediately began to lock up those inmates who returned to their cells.

Simultaneously, however, inmates entering J-Block fresh from the melee on the yard overpowered two guards, held them briefly, and obtained their keys to both J- and I-blocks. One guard was injured seriously enough to require hospitalization. No attempt was made to hold these guards as hostages. Inmates used the keys to release the rest of the prisoners in J-Block, who spilled back onto the yard; a large group entered I-Block and began to release inmates housed there. Inmates on the upper tiers of I-Block broke through the connecting doors into the upper tiers of J, destroying whatever would break and setting fire to whatever would burn. All guards on the yard and in I- and J-blocks retreated to the control center.

Warden Foltz acted quickly to implement the DOC's riot contingency plan. Ten minutes after the disturbance began, a gun squad was sent to the rotunda area to protect the control center. A few minutes after getting there, the riot squad observed about 75 inmates breaking into the infirmary, which abuts the rotunda area. The gun squad forced this group to retreat, probably saving not only the infirmary but the control center as well. In addition, the gun squads allowed officials to bring groups of inmates who wanted to leave the riot through a gate into the rotunda, and to house them temporarily in the honor blocks.

By about 8:20, Warden Foltz had called for assistance from the nearby Riverside Correctional Facility, Michigan Training Unit, and the Michigan State Police. These forces began to arrive at 8:30 p.m.

Twenty minutes into the riot, inmates controlled much of the prison, including the two main cell blocks, the furniture factory, and the food services building. To be more precise, these areas were out of the control of the administration, and inmates moved freely in these areas. Inmates did not try to "fortify" these areas or patrol them. They had armed themselves with makeshift weapons, mostly for personal defense. The riot lasted six hours, not because of any defensive strategy by inmates, but because the forces of the state were waiting for the best conditions for an offensive.

Organization among inmates throughout the riot was virtually nil. While some few inmates apparently made futile attempts to develop demands, these attempts went unnoticed by the inmate population and by the administration. 

For the duration of the riot, inmates' activity took essentially three forms: anarchic destruction of prison property; mostly anarchic conflict among inmates over wealth, sex, grudges, and (to a debatable extent) race; and attempts by uninvolved inmates to obtain food, avoid fire and smoke, avoid violence, and (if possible) enjoy the experience.

During the riot at SPSM's Central Complex, inmates had been on the yard, their actions observable by officials. In contrast, at MR inmates roamed in and out of the several buildings they controlled; besides, it was night. This gave a greater opportunity for crime and violence.

Immediately following the expulsion of the guards, groups of inmates set fire to the counselors' offices in both blocks and moved through the blocks smashing windows and plumbing. Most inmates moved out of I- and J-blocks to escape the smoke. In addition to the blocks, inmates set fires in the chapel, the two-story school building, and the food services building, and an attempt was made to set a guard tower afire. Many were unhappy with the widespread destruction, but none were willing to fight about it.

I heard that the guy who burned the kitchen down, a guy told him, "We got to go in there and eat," but he said, "F—k those motherf—kers, they been dogging us. Let's just tear [this place] up."

Some inmates looted other inmates' cells, stealing and destroying property:

People were going in the rooms, taking TVs, radios, clothes and everything, money, food, what they cook up with. Guys in the rock were calling out names, acting like police. A guy say, "Break [a cell number]," and another would break the door [i.e., open it manually] and they'd go in the cell, and take what they wanted out of the room.

But some "rocks" were guarded by organized patrols:

Inside of our rock they looted a bit. We put a desk in the doorway and said, "There's not going to be any looting here." What we did was, we held a big party. We were getting high on dope and spud juice [alcoholic liquid brewed from anything fermentable].

The food services building was broken into and food distributed freely:

There was a food line. Eight or nine guys would go in the kitchen and bring out food and cereal. Two or three were in the kitchen making hamburgers, and they brought out boxes of cereal, crates of milk, boxes of cheese and crackers, 5-gallon containers of coffee.

But while many ate and conversed on the yard, in other areas groups of prisoners committed multiple rapes. Over 30 inmates later claimed to have been sexually assaulted during the riot. One inmate, after being repeatedly raped, reportedly had a metal object shoved into his rectum. The number of inmates injured by other inmates rose to over 60, but only a few of the injuries were serious.

Some inmates who were injured by other inmates then received medical assistance from a spontaneously organized first-aid team:

Question: After you got hurt, what happened?

Inmate: Two Muslim brothers escorted me up across the yard to where they had first aid.

Question: What kind of first aid was there?

Inmate: Inmates had broken into the laundry and gotten out towels and blankets, and went in the kitchen and got some ice, so they could give a little first aid.

Inmates disagreed over the degree of racial character of the riot. While some white prisoners said afterwards that there was not much racial violence and that they were not afraid of black inmates, others stated that "the whole thing was racial" and that they had gone to great lengths to defend themselves from black inmates. One group of white inmates climbed onto the roof of an auxiliary building out of fear of attack by black inmates:

Inmate: We [a group of whites] got on [the roof of] the cannery. There were only two ways to get up. And the guys up there were all white, and they let us up. They had the two entrances guarded. There were about 125 of us on the cannery when the state troopers came in.

Question: What was this group of blacks doing?

Inmate: They were trying to grab some of the white guys and pull them off the roof and force them to have sex. Some blacks in the yard had pool balls and they were throwing them at us.

Other white inmates, though, denied that the riot was "racial." These white inmates seemed to have been around longer and were less subject to attack due to the personal relationships they had established, or the respect they had earned. One white inmate of seven years' residence reported:

I was standing where I lock [i.e., my cell] on I-Block, fourth floor. And they were hitting the door [i.e., from J-Block], and I thought I was going to get an ass-whipping. [But when they broke in] I knew the [black] guy in the front of the group, and I smiled at him. And they were busting windows with a long stick. And I pulled out windows and busted them with them to join in for my own preservation.

The white inmate quoted earlier who spent the riot hiding on the cannery roof had been transferred to Ionia one month before the riot after a suicide attempt at a minimum-security institution.

In short, it appears that some more seasoned inmates had developed a sense of low-level identification with each other across racial lines and did not see each other as enemies or targets.

More experienced inmates were also more likely to see the riot as a potential appeal to the outside world, or a means to get "better living conditions."

They tended to characterize the Jackson riot as a rational protest, imputing to it more of a sense of purpose than was really there, and to feel as if the Ionia riot may have been a "failure" by comparison:

The whole thing was really nothing. The people at Jackson were fighting for something—they were tired of harassment by the police. Here, they just went nuts.

Some inmates read the Bible in groups, played basketball, lifted weights; others armed themselves with sticks and prepared to resist the police reoccupation. Islamic inmates were cited by both black and white inmates as abstaining from violence in an organized way during the riot.

Because inmates were dispersed throughout the institution, retaking the prison was difficult and slow, lasting over four hours. At 10:40 p.m., gun squads of guards and state police entered the prison and began to sweep outlying areas, which had mostly been vacated by inmates by this time. Just before 11:00 p.m., the first floor of the furniture factory was swept and secured. Fifteen minutes later, a platoon ordered the group of white inmates off the roof of cannery, but they refused to go back on the yard. Finally the police agreed to lock them inside the cannery.

At 11:45, gun squads swept and secured the section of the school area that had not burnt to the ground; between midnight and 12:30, the recreation basement, chapel, and maintenance building were secured. By that time, only about 150 inmates were still on the yard; the rest had returned to their own cells. The inmates on the yard had lit fires and obtained blankets; many were eating or engaged in other peaceful activities. "The violentness decreased over time, like a watch running down."

At 1:15 a.m., inmates on the yard were ordered over the yard loudspeaker to return to their cells; most complied. A few who approached the advancing police line—"about thirty or forty of the main instigators"—were met by tear gas. Squads of guards with state police protection entered J-Block and secured it tier by tier, locking inmates in the nearest available cells. By 1:25 a.m., J-Block was secured, followed by I-Block at 1:50 a.m.; and finally, at 3:00 a.m., the group of inmates who had been secured in the cannery were moved to J-Block.

Warden Foltz and his subordinates were generally praised for their response to the riot. State Representative Paul Henry, who was present in the control room that evening, declared that he was "deeply impressed with the professionalism and sophistication" displayed by Foltz and the state police commander on the scene.

However, some inmates we interviewed stated that they either knew of or had seen widespread physical brutality on the part of guards against inmates suspected of being involved in the riot. Inmates also reported massive destruction of inmates' property by guards after the riot. We have no independent evidence of these charges.

Inmates reported their conditions of confinement to be much worse since the riot: assignments fewer, yard time sharply restricted. Inmates who did not participate in the riot were critical of the administration's seeming disinterest in distinguishing between participants and non-participants. The inmate who was on the cannery said:

[After we were locked in the cannery] we got a paper and pencil and wrote a note, with our locks [cell numbers] and numbers; we said we had nothing to do with the riot, we got on the cannery to stay out of it. And still, when they locked us up, they treated us like we did something. They fed us bologna sandwiches once a day, they said it was twice, it was not true; they were unsanitary, not wrapped; there were no showers for about two weeks; if your plumbing was stuck up, that was too bad, you had to live with it.

Most inmates believed that any effect of the riot on public perceptions was negative; some attributed this to a "cover-up" by Foltz and the media and to reports that the riot was racial. Inmates were aware of post-riot prosecutions, and a representative evaluation was "Yeah, they got the main ones, and they got a few that didn't have anything to do with it." The only improvement that some inmates contended had taken place since the riot was in the food.”

- Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 146-151.

[AL: Picture shows Michigan State Police at the prison during the riot; taken from ‘‘I can’t imagine the terror when it started’,” Ionia Sentinel-Standard. May 20, 2016.]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Michigan Reformatory Riot—May 22, 1981 The Prison and Prisoners “Ionia is about 60 miles northwest of Jackson. This town of about 6,000 inhabitants contains three major state correctional facilities: Michigan Training  nit (a minimum-security youth facility), Riverside (a medical facility), and Michigan Reformatory (a maximum security facility for "young" offenders). In 1981, of MR's 1,325 inmates, 64 percent were black, 34 percent were white, and 1 percent were "Mexican-American." Most of MR's inmates lived in two huge cell blocks—I-Block and J-Block. These wings have five floors, each with two tiers, or "rocks," one on each side. Where the two blocks meet at a right angle, there are doors on each floor which, if they were not usually kept locked, would permit passage between the blocks. At the other end of the central yard from J-Block, the prison's control center is housed in a rotunda from which wings branch in six directions. These wings include the administration area, the infirmary, and other residential units, including a dormitory housing about 230 "trusty" inmates. Most MR inmates who made the comparison declared that MR was the worst prison in Michigan. More than the dilapidated condition of the institution, inmates objected to the presence of vermin in the cells and in the meals. 

Inmates who had worked in the kitchen complained:

There were rats in the toaster. The food sits for weeks. The pans sit out on the dock, and they get all full of maggots, and they rinse them out with a hose.

One inmate, who had served as a "representative" of his tier to the warden's offices, reported:

I brought up requests as far as store merchandise, headphone equipment, rock changes, what things they might let us have, and to date they haven't approved none of this. I feel this administration wants the institution to stay as tight as possible. This institution has been considered the tightest joint in Michigan, as far as freedom is concerned.

He and others we interviewed, having never done time at Marquette or Jackson, believed that inmates were better off in the latter prisons due to their supposedly better conditions and organization among inmates. Inmates and Guards A lopsided majority of the inmates we interviewed charged the correctional staff with gross abuses of authority, such as verbal abuse, physical brutality, administrative retaliation for pursuing grievance procedures, filing false charges or reports, racism, and demanding food items from inmates for personal consumption. Inmates disagreed as to whether "most" or "a few" guards were guilty of such practices. There was general agreement, though, that the situation was often intensely frustrating. One white inmate stated:

I wouldn't treat a dog like they treat us. The officers come in with a harassing attitude, a young punk attitude, they're disrespectful to everybody. I'd say 10 percent of the guards really care, but they can't help you because their peers, which are the majority, have a dogmatic attitude.

Another white inmate stated:

The staff breaks and bends the rules as fast as any inmate. If a guy goes to the hole, he has his food and other stuff be taken.

Another cause to which inmates attributed the guards' hostility was the difference in background between the guards and the inmates—particularly black inmates, but also white urban inmates. "Most of them are rednecks to the max," said one white inmate. "They've never been out of Ionia in their life except to Lansing or Grand Rapids." 

Other inmates boasted of their travels and experience with urban life, and scorned the small-town guards as provincials. Inmates also complained—as inmates in every small-town prison probably complain—that guards' "brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins" all worked for the Department of Corrections, and that this enabled guards to orchestrate informal campaigns of retribution against inmates whom they wanted to punish for behavior they disliked. Shared hostility for all, most, or some of the correctional staff and resentment of their abuses was one of the few forces for unity among inmates:

When an officer comes by and says something smart, and I say,"Look, bitch, I don't want to hear it," and he says he's writing me a ticket, everyone on the rock feels an animosity. This is about the only unity you'll find, staff against inmates.

Otherwise, as in the other Michigan prisons, the general level of mutual solidarity among inmates was low:

If I'm in the control center, and a guy came running in with cuts all over him, it wouldn't mean nothing. Not because I have no feeling for life. But it would be none of my business. That may seem cold and s—tty, but in this environment no one else gives a damn about you but you.

One force for inmate individualism seems to have been inequality of wealth among inmates. Inmates working in the most desirable jobs in the prison's furniture factory could earn hundreds of dollars. However, the furniture produced in the factory was sold to state government departments. The state budget cuts caused the state to purchase less furniture, causing layoffs inside the walls.

Most other jobs paid much less than a dollar a day, and many inmates were without job assignments. These latter had to depend on the generosity of relatives and friends; some, of course, were much more fortunate than others.

Two inmates made these comments:

Inmate: If you have no money to buy things, you're in tough luck. The state issue soap burns up your skin. Toothpaste, they don't issue it. If you're in general population and have no money, you don't get [anything] unless your friends give it to you. There's a guy in J-Block, his people don't look out for him, his mother and father don't visit. I give him toothpaste, let him wear my clothes.

Inmate: About 35, 40 percent don't have nothing. If you got no money at all, they give you nothing but the blues [i.e., official-issue blue overalls]—no T-- shirts, no underwear. They give you grey socks, you have to wear them for one week.

The situation was exacerbated by a system of venture capitalism among inmates. Many inmates made a business of purchasing goods at the store and then selling them to inmates on credit at double the purchase price. Conflicts inevitably arose over the debts (which reportedly compounded at 100 percent interest every two weeks). An inmate described the situation:

A lot get in fights and disturbances—say I get stuff from you on credit. How am I going to get it up with no job, no money. There are some people on my rock who get no visitors. Them are the people that loot. They want to know what it is to have clothes and cosmetics . . . if they only have a bar of soap and the state blues.

With the exception of an Islamic temple in nearby Grand Rapids, which the authorities permitted to organize activities in the prison, no organization held the inmates' allegiance. Inmates generally depicted the population as unorganized—and unorganizable:

These young people don't know how to organize, to sit down in the yard and say, we want to talk to the warden. These young ones are too wild.

While inmates cited the presence of informal gang activity and criminal enterprise at MR to a greater extent than at the two other Michigan prisons studied, no one ascribed to it a very important role. "Gangs" appeared to be relatively informal groups of men from the same city or neighborhood - nothing like the powerful formal organizations active then and now in the Illinois prison system. In summary, although dissatisfaction with prison conditions, particularly with abuses of authority by the staff and with the food, were near universal before the riot, these attitudes had not taken organized form. The absence of organization notwithstanding, one inmate declared to us that a group of inmates actually planned two weeks in advance to riot on May 22, and that their action coincided with the Jackson riot by sheer coincidence:

I was right around the individuals who really sparked it. Really one individual started it, how he did this, he was really extroverted, letting people know how they were being f-—ked around, said "Y'all can't accept all this bulls—t," he had geeked them up, and as he went along it built up like a ball in snow. [These were] guys with a lot of time to do. A couple came from other institutions, and they saw how we were treated here, and they couldn't accept it.

All this may have been true, but the talk may have gone nowhere without the example of the Jackson riot. No other inmate we interviewed claimed to have heard of riot plans or rumors, in contrast with the pre-riot situation at New Mexico.”   -  Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 142-146.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Money and Beds

“In 1973, the Michigan prison system had housed 7,683 men. By 1978, the number was well over 14,000. As early as 1977, the shortage of beds was described as "at crisis point"—and it got worse.

By 1980, 40 prisoners a day were arriving at the system's reception center at the State Prison of Southern Michigan. "Thus begins the daily game of musical beds," editorialized the Detroit News. "When 40 new people walk in the door, 40 others must be moved somewhere."

The Department of Corrections was unable to build enough new prisons to keep up with the supply of inmates. The new men's facilities that opened in the years 1976 to 1980 came, first, from building where prisons already existed and, second, from acquiring and remodeling institutional facilities in rural areas with depressed economies. Instances of the first were the Northside medium-security complex built at SPSM and the Riverside facility built in the town of Ionia (already home to two prisons). Examples of the second were the Kinross facility, converted from the abandoned Kincheloe Air Force Base near Sault Ste. Marie, and the Michigan Dunes facility, converted from a seminary in the southwestern part of the state. In addition, residence homes and halfway houses were acquired which by 1979 housed over 1,500 men. What the department really wanted to do, however, was to build or convert large facilities in or near Detroit. Here it was stymied. Its attempts to purchase and convert to prison use a department store warehouse, a child development center, and the former Women's House of Corrections were blocked by community and political pressure

In 1979, Governor William Milliken proposed to appropriate $400 million toward a plan which would eventually produce 21 new prisons. If it were not passed, Corrections Director Perry Johnson testified prophetically:

Either the courts will find that the conditions generally caused by this problem amount to unconstitutional treatment of prisoners and order a reduction of commitments or early release of prisoners, or the prisoners themselves will rebel against these conditions, resulting in disastrous institutional disturbances.

But hard times in the auto industry had cut deeply into the state's tax base, and the construction plan disappeared in the legislature. The effects of this crisis of money and beds were most serious at the state's two largest maximum-security prisons. In 1981, about 40 percent of Michigan's male inmates—5,600—were housed at SPSM, located north of the city of Jackson. This depression-era experiment in monumental prison construction had long set a standard in the corrections field for excessive size and unmanageability. Corrections policymakers had long hoped either to close it or divide it up into five or six smaller prisons. But now the state had no beds for the one or funds to spare for the other. In 1979, 200 inmates were "housed" on bunk beds in the stairwells, with no privacy, no place to keep their valuables, and no shelter from the "ever-burning overhead lights." Another 300 were trapped in the Reception and Guidance Center (RGC) under virtual lockdown conditions. Inmates "normally" spend a month in RGC while the department determines their security classification and where they are to serve their sentence. In practice, however, inmates might spend months there. The situation was worse, if possible, at the Michigan Reformatory (MR) in Ionia, the "oldest and most decrepit prison facility in Michigan." Built in the 1870s as an insane asylum, by 1980 it housed up to 1,500 inmates in space meant for 1,183. Supposedly intended for inmates under 23, the crunch had forced inmates from 15 to over 30 into the cramped and unsanitary quarters. One hundred eighty beds had been placed in the recreation areas, and the only indoor recreation was now an unhealthy basement beneath the kitchen. 

"Sewage, leaking from rusted-out pipes, drips down five stories and collects in a stagnant pool in the basement," wrote a reporter in 1979. "The 19th-century sewage system has wooden lines which frequently collapse, forming foul subterranean pools. The steam heating system also frequently breaks down. Water freezes in the toilet bowls in winter."

The state had been trying to close MR as early as 1973. In 1977, the state auditor general condemned the facility as "substandard in every way." "Can you imagine a young guy looking at a ten-year stretch coming to a place like this?" asked MR Warden Dale Foltz in 1979. Replacing MR was the top priority of the proposed construction plan of 1979. Republican Governor Milliken was even more emphatic on a tour in October, 1980: "This institution is outworn, outdated, and ought to be literally razed to the ground."

- Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 115-116