Abstract
In Indefinite, Michael Walker utilizes his own time spent in jail to describe the psychological, physical, and existential experience of incarceration. Walker takes the reader through a disorienting and jarring journey that provides insights into an area of the criminal justice system that is shrouded in mystery because of the closed off nature of correctional institutions. Indefinite is an ethnographic study of jail life and the experience of those who have been criminalized by society. This study employs a mix of oral histories, statistics, participant observations and feelings, as well as existing literature to give the reader the beginning understanding of experiences in jail.
The book’s contents can be a bit bewildering due to the order and manner with which they are delivered. The structure of the book is intentionally disorienting to capture the confusing experience of incarceration and “the same dizziness to which newbies were subjected” (p. 79). A challenging aspect of this book is the lack of marked time throughout. Rather than worrying about establishing an identifiable timeline the reader can follow, Walker uses each chapter to take a deep dive into different emotions and social structures present in jail life; and uses a variety of stories and excerpts of his time in jail to do so, regardless of the order he experiences them in. This lack of chronology was also an attempt to demonstrate the lack of a process within jail life. I would caution a reader who is less familiar with the criminal justice system that this effort to demonstrate that jail is “not encased in the smooth sociological trickery of a single process” (p. 21) may be confusing. The lack of process in the time spent with in the jail itself is well established but could benefit from a clearer explanation of the system of the courts and the decisions made in the court system. At multiple points in the book Walker discusses the emotional toll that court dates and the hope they generate have on the residents within jail. As Walker observes, “We apparently believed—enough to make the effort—that a haircut could be the difference between freedom, an unwanted continuance, or an unfavorable outcome” (p. 130). The residents of jail do not have a clear understanding of how the court system works and that confusion is passed on to the reader by not explaining any of the court processes. However, the book could be improved by giving the reader information on the inner workings of the courts, even with the disclaimer that the jail residents were not privy to this information. The book could have done a better job of exemplifying the confusion residents feel in jail without causing so much disorientation in the reader.
Another goal that Walker sets out for this book is to provide people with an understanding of jails as different from prisons. Within the world of punishment and criminal justice, this distinction is rarely articulated as many scholars will choose to lump together these two types of correctional institutions. As Walker writes, ”. . . while the average daily population counts in prisons are higher than they are in jails, far more lives are touched by jails than prisons. . . not everyone who goes to jail will go to prison, but everyone in prison has done some jail time” (p. 11). Walker is attempting to clarify this distinction as he believes that it is akin to comparing high school and college. Within the context of the larger social understanding of these issues, much of what Walker describes are themes that seem to also be present within prison systems and the larger body of work concerning correctional institutions. Walker however gives clear examples and outlines the way the themes of correctional officer’s conduct with residents and the overall dehumanization of residents play themselves out with the politics and social life of residents within jails. The classification of “criminal” as a form of dehumanization because of its inability to be linked with everyday mundane activities is exemplified throughout the book. From one scene: “’What the fuck could you do with a credit card?’ Deputy Brown asked with a laugh. ‘You’re already a criminal!’. . . It’s hard to imagine ‘the criminal’ having prosocial behavior or positively contributing to society” (p. 115).
One example of a theme that plays out through Walker’s entire book is the use of race as a classification tool. Walker opens the book with an explanation of how race is one of the informal classification tools that correctional officers use for residents of certain sections of the jail. This use of race for classification and control of the residents is a complex phenomenon that Walker comes back to many times in his book. Notably when talking about the “rep” system (the establishment of a leader for the different racial classifications) and the “politics” of the jail. The depth and intricacies that Walker can flush out using his own experiences and the retelling of stories he heard from fellow residents gives the reader a substantial understanding of the integral role that race plays in places like jail.
Overall, while this book may at times be hard to follow and disorienting, it gives many insights to the jail system that are going to be hard to find elsewhere. Walker has taken an area that many are interested in, yet struggle to gain access to, and given concrete and elaborative depictions of its inner workings. Students and professors in the areas of psychology and law, legal studies, social psychology, and sociology who are interested in carceral systems within the United States would benefit from picking up this book. Indefinite provides readers with many examples of concepts that may have been mentioned in other literatures but not been concretely depicted due to lack of access to the information.