Alan: Auburn had chance to be state capital… but they chose the prison. That tells you all you need to know, really.
I met Alan at Cayuga Community College. Alan is younger, maybe mid-20's, and has lived in Auburn his whole life. He moved away from the town for a few years after college but eventually found his way back to Auburn because, as he explained to me, "I'm comfortable here." He currently lives and works in Auburn.
Alan was one of the last people with whom I spoke, and by this time in my research I was more comfortable talking to new people and asking pointed questions. During our conversation, I asked directly about the prison and its impacts on his experience both growing up in Auburn and living there now. His responses were unique, and he introduced me to an aspect of the town that I hadn't heard before: "crazies."
Alan: After they [prisoners] get released, they stay in Auburn. Growing up, my sister and I saw them all the time. My sister is a deputy now, and she's known around her job for being unbothered by the crazy things that happen there... We were talking about it the other day and we really think it's because we grew up here. We would be walking around town and run into "crazy Gary," (he pauses while pretending to look around), Oh! there goes another one! Most people didn't grow up with that.
The of the word "crazies" to describe former inmates stuck me as insensitive initially. After further consideration, though, I realized that this was most likely the way that people inside of Auburn conceptualized the prison population. Reoccurring in different conversations throughout my research was the belief that when released from the prison, inmates would choose to stay in Auburn. Many people who described this to me mentioned that this was one of the negative aspects of the presence of the prison, citing it as being directly related to an increase in crime, homelessness, and unemployment. This negative connotation associated with the released prisoners that supposedly live in Auburn may explain why the word "crazies" is used -- it ultimately minimizes and dehumanizes this population of people. In my research I have yet to come across any former inmates (and it is worth questioning how I, or anyone, would even be able to identify a former inmate), so I wonder who and where these "crazies" are. Perhaps this is a new thread to follow.
While Alan was describing parts of his childhood, I asked him if he ever noticed that there were large numbers of people from outside of Auburn that came to the town on visitation days. After a moment to think, he told me that he always knew when it was visitation day because the Dunkin' Donuts that is just around the corner from the prison would be packed with people. Once again, he remarked to me that this was "weird," but only in retrospect. It seemed as though talking about his childhood experiences with someone who wasn't a native to Auburn caused him to think more critically about his experiences in the town.
The kind of desensitization that Alan described to me reminded me quite a bit about of the ways in which people that live near the prison seem to forget its presence. On multiple occasions, people told me that they never think about the prison, and when they do, it does not bring up any particular emotions. As shown in the responses we collected on our photo-voice ethnography, residents of Auburn don’t view the prison as something that is central to their community. It exists on the periphery, despite it being physically in the center of the town. I think this is, in part, because of the fact that it has always been there. It’s become a part of the community that people have accepted as theirs, so isn't conceived as being out of the ordinary.
In another conversation with a woman from Auburn, she mentioned to me that the first time she realized that the Auburn Correctional Facility was a "big deal" was when she was a young girl. While hanging out at a friend's house, they saw on the news that an inmate from a prison was being released after 50-something years. She watched the footage, unbothered, until her friend pointed out, with some concern, that the town they were seeing footage of was Auburn. Much like my conversation with Alan, this woman's experiences with the prison were only seen as irregular when an outsider pointed it out to her.
Going into this research, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that the people that live in Auburn don’t feel affected by the presence of the prison. Alan’s story shows that people are impacted by the prison, but that these impacts are embedded in the context of growing up in Auburn. From the perspective of Auburn natives, the prison isn’t something that changes the town, it is a part of it.
These conversations reminded me of the importance of analyzing how my own positionality as an outsider to Auburn impacted the ways that I view the city. Doing research in the town with the intent to learn about how, if at all, the prison impacts the culture of Auburn immediately renders the prison visible in ways that do not match the experiences of the people in the town. Understanding the differences between insider and outsider perceptions of Auburn and the prison sheds valuable insight on the ways in which the prison is able to be in/visible depending on who you ask.
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