It’s always seemed to me that jailing hardcore lawandorder Republicans served more of a social purpose than prison usually does, since it tends to turn control freaks into advocates for prison reform. Charles Colson comes to mind.

But I may have to rethink the whole matter. I’ve just been reading The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk by Susan McDougal, perhaps the only person to come out of the attempted lynching called Whitewater with her honor intact:

The atmosphere at Carswell [Medical Prison] was completely different than at Faulkner County Detention Center, and I found it very hard to integrate. Part of this was because of the floor I was on, and part of it was because the long-termers were so hardened. And part of it came from a very unexpected source: the evangelical Christian movement in the prison.

Started by ex-Watergate felon Charles Colson, the ‘born again’ movement had metamorphosed from a very worthy project to a kind of gang — the Christian Crips of prison. Led by a few strong, outspoken women, the Christian converts habitually told other prisoners when they could eat, when they should pray, and with whom they should socialize.

They were unabashedly intolerant of anyone who disagreed even slightly with their view, and they seem to reserve special contempt for the Jewish women on the floor. Routinely harassed, the Jewish women tended to keep their mouths shut and kept themselves separate from everyone else.

Having been raised a Christian, I was angered by this perversion of Christian principles. I never could stand the hypocrisy of those who claimed to be religious yet acted in profoundly unGodly ways. It was one of the things that I had grown to despise about Kenneth Starr.