PBH volunteers say they seek to accomplish something much more basic than pure academic instruction. By socializing with the prioners, tutors say, they hope to help the inmates reintegrate themselves into mainstream society. "We're trying to give them an outlet to the outside world," Walter says. "Exposure to nice, happy people who aren't involved in crime is good for them."

Contact with people like the Harvard tutors is particularly important for many prisoners because they come from a violent background in which "the street" is home and "officers" are the enemy. Coming from the underclass, such individuals often feel they have no real opportunity to attain conventional standards of success or happiness, writes Rhodes scholar Jay MacLeod '83-'84, who was a PBH officer during his undergraduate years. In his book on disadvantaged Boston-area youth, Ain't No Makin' It, MacLeod argues that such hopelessness leaves people disconnected from mainstream society. Inmates agree, saying they feel shunned and forgotten. "No one's trying to do shit for us," says prisoner Ronnie Mack.

For many disadvantaged youth, prison is merely a mandatory rite of passage, Freed says. Connerty--who like most of the Deer Island inmates is serving out a drug-related sentence--says he has been getting arrested since he was nine years old. "By the time I was 18 or 19 and got put away, I was assured of knowing someone in here," he says.

Comfortable with crime, prisoners become viciously suspicious of what they view as an unjust society. "The system is collapsed. There's a breakdown," explains Earl Williams, one of the few prisoners who has attended college.

By interacting with the inmates, PBH volunteers say they are attempting to challenge prisoners' attitudes toward society. "One of our main functions is to give [the prisoners] a sense that we're out there, people who care--that they're not lost in the system," Walter says. "They want to talk to someone. They know we volunteer, and they don't have much to look forward to. This is a chance to see new faces."

Daunting obstacles stand in the way of such reintegration attempts, tutors say. The dual goal of prisons--to protect society and to punish criminals--creates an atmosphere in which inmates have little room to grow or reform, says former PBH Prisons Committee chairman Christine L. Vanasse '88, who wrote her thesis on the topic. "If' we punish them, how at the same time can we make them better people?" she asks.

Inmate complaints about what they call Deer Island's suffocating environment support Vanasse. "You're put under psychological tests 16 hours a day. You're restrained 24 hours a day," Williams says.

Recently, the prisoners successfully sued Suffolk County for failing to maintain the facility's physical plant, which, according to Williams, is "ready for the bulldozer." As a result of the suit, prisoners are locked up for extra hours to avoid health and safety problems, he says.

Locking criminals up may be an effective punishment, but it may push criminals farther away from mainstream society, prisoners say. "It's like putting a man in a microwave," says Mack. "He'll overcook."

Boredom and isolation make prison unbearable, some inmates say. "You ever get irritated during class, stare out the window until the bell rings, get up and leave without caring what you missed? It's like that for whole years in here," Williams says. "There's nothing in this building to make you feel good about yourself, and [the guards] get paid to make it worse. You have to shut yourself off to survive."

The damaging psychological effects of prison are poorly understood by most Americans, inmates say. "You need some judges to come spend some time here," Williams says.

Inmates say the PBH program gives them a chance to vent their frustration. Since they live in an atmosphere that seems to deny them any moral or emotional support, a visit from an interested outsider can offer prisoners tremendous hope. "Harvard tutors are the best thing that ever happened to Deer Island," says inmate Mark. S. Samms. "People are concerned."

Some tutors say they view the program's socializing function as more important than the academic instruction. At times, however, the two become virtually indistinguishable. Freed recalls one Monday when he and an inmate were reviewing the social studies segment of a GED exam. "He couldn't find America on the map. We put aside the book and just talked about the basic principles this country was founded on," Freed recalls. "These were new ideas to him, and finally he said, `Wow, this is really neat.'"

It is the personal contact offered by the program which attracts many of the prisoners in the first place, prisoners and organizers say. "Initially all these guys are coming down to look at some cute girls," O'Connell says. "These guys have on their best clothes, their best linens." Prisoners also come to receive "good time"--credit toward early parole--and to temporarily escape their cells. "The dude is bored," says Mack, explaining why he participates in the tutoring program.

But as time passes, tutors say, prisoners grow interested in the schoolwork. Inmates speak of fellow prisoners who originally came for the "good time" but grew interested in algebra. After a while, some prisoners are more eager to do school work than their tutors. "I feel like I've brought out in some guys an interest that was latent," Freed says.