In Massachusetts, if they label you a sexually dangerous person (SDP), criminally-insane, or unfit to stand trial, you end up at Bridgewater.

Massachusetts Correctional Institute Bridgewater is not a hospital; it is the state's oldest and largest prison, a maximum-security fortress, the bulk of which was built nearly 100 years ago. Most of the cells have a window. If the prisoner looks through the three layers of steel and wire that shield the window, he will see a walled-in grass plot, his only change of scenery from the decaying prison. The cells were built with three-inch slits above the doors for air, but these have been sealed off so the prisoners cannot throw their shit into the corridors. Most of the cells nave no bathroom.

Those inmates judged "criminally-insane," who are under commitment or in for pre-trial observation, were moved across the road last December into a new maximum-security complex that has toilets in the cells and is surrounded by a double barbed-wire steel fence instead of brick walls. Those judged as SDPs remain behind in the old prison, one part of which is so dirty that a federal district court judge last September challenged on confinement in Bridgewater on the grounds that it was cruel and unusual punisment.

Prisoners in both the "state hospital" for the criminally-insane and the treatment center for SDPs have indeterminate sentences. They are confined by judicial order under a "psychiatrist's" a recommendation, and can not be released until two prison psychiatrists" give their approval. Wealthy persons can hire their own psychiatrists; the poor must use those provided by the Department of Corrections.

However, as New England Prisoners Association executive director Russell Carmichel points out, few if any of these appointees are licensed doctors, not to mention medical specialists. They are allowed to practice only within the prison walls.

"Some doctors have almost no formal knowledge of medicine," Carmichel says. "You have doctors who can't even speak English. The frightening thing is that thousands and thousands of people have been committed according to their recommendations."

The current state hospital population comprises more than insane perpetrators of violent crimes. Some state hospital inmates are alleged criminals who have been sent to Bridgewater for pre-trial observation by the prison's medical staff." With the current backing of trial cases, pre-trial observation often lasts for months, even years. Other inmates wind up at Bridgewater because their lawyers have tried to obtain shorter sentences for them by having them plead insanity Because most "patients" are given drugs--often against their will--the ploy can easily backfire, burdening taxpayers, destroying the minds and lives of human beings.

"A lot of sharp guys come in here, take drugs, and get mindless," one prisoner who works in the state hospital says. "These are guys who could do things. some of them never leave."

Charles W. Gaughan '37, superintendent of Bridgewater, acknowledges that such mistakes can occur.

"I don't particularly encourage the use of drugs among rational prisoners," he says. "These mistakes are the fault of the judicial system."

Certainly the judicial system, overworked, pliant to the wills of those with power, prestige and money, deserves part of the blame. But after you spend some times at the "state hospital" or treatment center, you begin to feel as if the courts are only sorting out pre-marked parcels. Many state hospital and treatment center inmates are persons of average intelligence or above who went to school for four, six, and even eight years without being taught to read on the first grade level. They are able-bodied people who could not find jobs in a country which in this century has approached full employment only during wars. Almost all of them lived in the decaying neighborhoods of medium or large-sized cities. Few of them are insane.

So you ride the 45 miles out to Bridgewater once each week and for an hour and a half you teach a guy to read. Your first time down you wonder how some convict who has been labeled criminally-insane or sexually-dangerous is going to react to an occasional visitor from Harvard. You meet the guy, try to find something to talk about, administer a battery of standardized reading tests. At 9 p.m. you finish. You say good-bye to the guy you've tutored and don't know whether to smile, look sad, or even look at him. Then you ride back to Harvard. But after only a couple of weeks, you realize that although the inmates might have reason to resent you they do not. Unable to read in a society which leaves the individual largely on his own, these inmates have been swindled, ridiculed, deprived of work, virtually forced to pursue a path that leads to the prisons. The inmates who have volunteered for the reading program often make a supreme effort to learn. Besides, in a prison environment virtually devoid of therapy and personal virtually devoid of therapy and personal attention, even short visits mean a lot. Guys you don't tutor flock over to say hello and rap for a few seconds. After a few weeks, tutees start talking to you about prison life, at times about personal problems.

At the treatment center the SDPs admire women who, like Riva Korashon '75, are not afraid to come in and tutor them. When Riva couldn't get down to Bridgewater one week she wrote her tutee a letter. She got back a note written on the level of a struggling first grade student, with post-script "I love you."

But the prison setting often severely restricts the amount of learning or emotional development anyone can accomplish. When an inmate has received drugs shortly before a tutoring session he cannot concentrate. The anxiety of prison life overwhelms many prisoners; it is virtually impossible to learn if you can't relax.

Inmates get relocated inside the prison, and to visit them. Many guards want to help you, but one or two resentful corrections officers can block your path by telling you that you're late (even if you're not) and that you'll have to wait an hour before a guard can leave his station to escort you to the prison school. You wonder why this occurs in a institution with over 400 guards for less than 9000 inmates.