Inmates who have been in prison for a long time are much like citizens who have learned to cope with harsh dictatorships for many years. They have settled into a routine of submission and, after many experiences with the brutality of the authorities, they cherish the calm and relative safety their docility secures for them. They resent and despise anyone who seeks conflict with the authorities, or anyone who they even suspect might try to escape.
I didn’t know this when I first got into prison. I assumed that any sane person would seek to escape. Prior to being sent to the Central Prison, I had stayed at three different temporary detention facilities, and had worked on ways to escape from each one; but I was always moved out of the facility before the plans could be put into action. So, my experience at that point had only been with new prisoners who had just recently been deprived of their freedom; they were, thus, more daring and enthusiastic to reclaim it. Long-term prisoners are different.
They have given up, advise others to give up, and collaborate with the authority against anyone who has not given up. This, obviously, is similar to the difference between the youth and the older generations living under a dictatorship.
There is a special and very personal type of spite older inmates feel towards anyone who challenges the authorities because such people expose the fallacy that their passivity is not wisdom and patience (as they claim) but nothing more than defeatism and cowardice.
The existence of rebels is humiliating to those who have accepted surrender.
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