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“Inside” is a defining place more separate from the outside world than might be any other space within enclosed perimeters. “Inside” is a high-security prison in a midwestern state that represents the end of a voyage from opened to closed, from self-determination and volition to restraint, from wantonness and profligacy to suppression and shackles. Along the way, the newly captive stops off for assessment and classification, for scrutinizing, pigeon-holing, admonishing, and exhorting. He (and she, too) is examined, cleansed, deodorized, deloused, and debriefed. He is prodded, penalized, and penetrated. He is given an official badge of demonization, and whatever purulency might exude from the open-woundedness of his child times is summarily wiped as one would a baby's sniffling and grimy face. He is at once made into a monster and a cipher, a ghoul and ghost. And all the while he fades into a sea of blue as vestiges of uniqueness and distinction are abolished—all desire is muted for governance and control.
The prison inmate is a disreputable rogue, a heinous boil on the face of the community, the incrimination of his society's disfigurement. Why have we been unable to eradicate the scourge of psychopathy existing despite our many advancements? Why does our world of incarceration and captivity expand despite a technology and intellectual armory that should be liberating us? Why do the causes of social and restorative (truly equalizing and