Crossing the Line : While Serving as a Lompoc Guard, an Anthropologist Receives a Lesson in a Peculiar Peril of His Profession

Mark Fleisher’s epiphany came during an episode of “Hill Street Blues.”

A balding, bespectacled anthropologist at Washington State University, Fleisher was in his eighth month of field work at the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, serving as a corrections officer or “hack” to study morale among other “hacks.” That day, he had spent nine hours investigating the stabbing murder of an inmate named Juan.

And when he watched a violent street killing on the television cop show, he suddenly realized he was growing bored. “Slowly it dawned on me that something in me had changed,” he said. “When I began my work at Lompoc, I was anxious about getting involved in serious violence. Now I was afraid that Juan’s death would be my only killing. What a shame that would be.”

Fleisher, 41, had crossed a line that many anthropologists have approached but that few admit having crossed: He had “gone native,” adopting the attitudes of the people he was studying, to the point that his professional objectivity was lost.

A Thorny Problem

The possibility of going native has bedeviled anthropologists since the 1920s, when workers in the field first began partaking of their subjects’ culture. It is a particularly thorny problem for anthropology.

“The method that is characteristic of anthropology, and no other science, is participant observation,” said Roy Rappoport of the University of Michigan, president of the American Anthropological Assn.

“You not only observe, but to the extent that it is appropriate, you also participate in local activities,” Rappoport said. “You try to learn how to do it as much as you can yourself. . . . What is involved here always, to some extent, is going native. You are attempting to get an inside view of the culture as well as an objective outside view.

“That is not to say that this insider’s view is more or less valid than the outsider’s objective view. Both have validity, but they are different. The important thing is that you don’t get them confused.”

“Mark was doing what any anthropologist would consider difficult field work,” said anthropologist H. Russell Bernard of the University of Florida, who was Fleisher’s mentor during graduate school. “When you do field work in your own culture, even if the people are radically different from anything you grew up with, they speak the same language, watch the same television shows, and so forth. It’s difficult because you can become wrapped up in the local culture, very much involved in people’s problems. You can lose your objectivity.”

Fleisher’s flash of insight marked the start of a long, difficult process that included three solid days of discussions with his mentor and months of introspection. He ultimately recovered his professional demeanor and completed his study. But along the way, he gained some unusual insights into hacks and the men they watch over, and a fresh perspective on what has often been called one of the most violent institutions in the federal penal system. From that, and from the whole experience of “going native,” has come his book, “Warehousing Violence,” due out in February from Sage Publications.

Fleisher began the prison project from a very personal approach. He had previously done his doctoral dissertation among the Salish Indians of the Northwest, “but my passion has always been prison studies. I spent many years studying women who married violent men, convicts”--studies he is continuing now that his work at Lompoc is finished.

In 1985, he was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to study morale problems among correctional officers at Lompoc. He carried out the regular duties of supervising meals, supervising inmate groups and investigating violent acts while at the same time he studied the staff.

“I was learning the job and, by being a regular staff member, I had access to channels of information that outsiders never have,” he said. “For example, in the dining hall, you are standing there watching individuals being fed, making sure people aren’t taking too many hamburgers or packages of sugar, and you hear correctional staff talk to prisoners and resolve problems.”

At first, only a few staff knew Fleisher’s true purpose. “It was part of my job, my skill as an anthropologist, to develop rapport. And the way to develop rapport was by being there when the men were proving their mettle,” such as during violent incidents.

Did a Good Job

“After I developed rapport, then I told them why I was there,” he said. In general, he said, other hacks seemed to accept him because he was doing a good job and he kept his head in emergencies.

“You’re in an intimate relationship with these people where, indeed, what they say about violence and danger is true: You’ve got to trust the people you are around. And you begin to trust them, you begin to like them, to rely on them, and you begin to identify,” he said.

“I began to think of myself as a correctional worker. . . . I began to answer my own research questions, as if I were a correctional worker. ‘I work here. I’ve been trained. I have to deal with thugs, too. Why isn’t my opinion as good as theirs?’

“I defended the bureau to my neighbors and friends. I found myself becoming more aggressive with impolite convicts and, more than once, I caught myself giving them etiquette lessons.”

‘Exploded’ in Anger

In one incident that particularly sticks in his mind, he “exploded” in anger at a convict who had startled him in his office, then subjected him to verbal abuse. “I should have paid attention to what he was saying, but instead I took it personally. . . . That was really outside my role as a researcher.”

And “somewhere along the way,” he said, “I had gotten hooked on prison violence. That day (the day Juan was killed), March 6, 1986, a human being, a real person, was violently stabbed to death. I got to the scene just minutes after it happened . . . and I didn’t care a bit about him.”

Surprisingly, the killing--called an “incident” in Bureau of Prisons parlance--”brought on Christmas-like joy in the prison,” he said. “Moods were almost playful, as if someone had hung out a huge sign, reading: ‘OK, everybody can take it easy for a while. We’ve had our killing for this month. No one else will die. . . .’ This incident was terrific. It was my first killing, after all, and that is something that no one easily forgets.”

Shortly after Juan died, Bernard came to Lompoc for a social visit and Fleisher started talking about his work. “He said, ‘Hold on, wait, hold it!,’ ” Fleisher said. “‘This is not your job. Your job is to play the role, but remain separate. . . . Your job is not to believe what people say. Your job is to listen to what people say, and then to do the research to see the difference between what people say and what they do.’ ”

Bernard recalled: “When I found Mark, he was so much a sworn correctional officer that he was viewing the world from the perspective of a hack. It was threatening his ability to do the job.”

The pair spent three days talking through what Fleisher had learned. “I kept reminding him of his mission, his primary goal--to understand and report accurately. . . . We went over all his notes and extracted places where he had gone over the line. By the end of three days, I was confident that we had pretty much solved the problem,” Bernard said.

A ‘Clearer’ Look

After Bernard left, “I went back into the institution and things started looking a little clearer to me,” Fleisher said. “But it took a while to distance myself.”

Fleisher also began writing about his experiences and that helped.

“It’s the classic problem (faced by) the field worker in anthropology. You go native. You think you are one. But you’re not one. On the positive side, however, what I saw, what I felt, what I experienced, gives me insight into the operation of these places, and how men deal with each other, and how men feel about prison life and all these things most researchers don’t have. Because no anthropologist has done this kind of project before. And damn few sociologists and criminologists have this kind of experience.”

But his conclusions about prison life and Lompoc can be summarized quickly.

“When I went into Lompoc, I was told (by colleagues and friends) that it was a violent, violent place--one of the most violent penitentiaries in the federal prison system. As it turns out, it was the least violent. . . . What you find is that, in the world of penitentiaries, people always say that they are more violent and vile than they are. It’s part of the folklore of the place.”

Fleisher’s conclusions are confirmed by Lompoc warden Richard Rison, who called Fleisher “an extremely perceptive observer.” Rison noted that Lompoc had only two serious assaults and two murders last year, even though 98% of the inmates are there because they committed violent crimes against people. The average sentence at Lompoc, Rison noted, is 20 years.

Risk Losing Jobs

Lompoc is not violent, Fleisher said, because most of the inmates are working in prison industries and making good incomes, averaging $200 per month and going as high as $500 with overtime. They risk losing those jobs if they commit violent acts.

And the morale problem among the hacks? It turned out, Fleisher said, that the bureau thought they had a morale problem because of a high turnover rate among the correctional officers, but what they really had, his report to the bureau noted, was an error in the way they calculated turnover.

“They really didn’t have much of a morale problem,” he concluded. “I can assure you that guys who drive buses in Los Angeles live with a great deal more stress than most guys who work on a correctional staff.”