Mandatory Time

Six hundred people dressed exactly the same way, sharing rooms that all look greatly similar, assembling for lunch, assembling in the morning and assembling occasionally to play in the field. The food served to these people at lunch is pretty bare minimum, nothing in the form of taste but it’ll get you by. There is a timetable for everyone, that they must follow to the exact minute or there could be severe consequences. What is this place you may ask? Well, it is a jail. Yet there was something wrong with this jail on the western outskirts of New York City, nobody knew that they were in jail.

To the people inside, it was believed that this was just a stage of their life, they must go through to do something later in life. A few checklists to get a tick mark on, then finally freedom. It was a new technique the government was looking to use to reduce the number of people that return to prisons. Never let them know they were ever in one. Each prisoner, as they were being checked into a new prison would be put through a series of psychological procedures making them think that they are in some sort of mandatory education facility that everyone had to go through.

Then just like in any other prison, they would have to pass time with activities such as reading books, community service, and at times the opportunity to play in the field. A timetable for each of these activities was made for each week and then the same week was repeated each and every year till the prisoners proved to the officers that they did not have any ill intentions. Hence peacefully solving the criminal problem and allowing each prisoner to never have to go through the trauma of being in a place they would call a prison. That’s great right?

Well, we cannot be so sure about it just yet. The forceful presence and, repetitive week, sparked resistance within the prisoners. They thought to themselves, “Well, I am not in a prison, I am not in someplace to correct myself, so then Why am I made to do things in this extremely certain way?" What is it that limits me from my own form of expression? What is it that is stopping me from doing anything I want throughout the day? What if I wanted to play in the field more times than they let me? All of these collective questions brought them together despite being so divided previously by social groups.

One day in the morning assembly the prisoners decided that they would wear their clothes incorrectly. Since it was a weekday, they were meant to wear an orange shirt with orange pants, yet they choose to wear their dark blue shirts with their orange pants, which were only to be worn on weekends and at the time of special events. This was meant to be a form of protest, that if each person presented themselves incorrectly, what would the officers do? Punish every single person? Not possible right? They would give in. Or at least the prisoners thought they would.

The guards beat each of the prisoners. Terribly, with no remorse. None of them knew or understood why they were put in that position. I guess no matter how much we try to hide the world from a person, they will eventually try to fight for it. That is when force is used.