Science: Leadership in Prison

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"All men who came in Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday or Tuesday and Mr. Whitney—please step out of their cells!"

This curious order was uttered early one morning last week in the old cell block of Sing Sing prison, whose gates had closed behind Richard Whitney, five-time president of the New York Stock Exchange (TIME, March 21). Starting a five-to-ten year sentence for grand larceny, holding his substantial, six-foot-two figure erect and his chin lifted, Mr. Whitney—Prisoner No. 94,835—displayed such extreme fortitude that it seemed at times like a pose. He was assigned to a tiny, damp, malodorous cell whose only plumbing was a bucket and he asked for no favors. But deference, curiosity and admiration were apparent all around him. Prisoners loitered in his path, hoping to exchange a few words.

In the social life of big prisons such as Sing Sing, convicts tend to form groups, and each group has a leader. The phenomenon of leadership in prisons is of considerable interest to prison officials, because they think that leaders are troublemakers. It is also of interest to sociologists as a part of general convict psychology. In Sing Sing, Richard Whitney is a celebrity and a man apart, but he is not likely to become a group leader. This was indicated last week by a thoroughgoing analysis of leadership in prison which appeared in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The author is Sociologist Donald Clemmer of the Illinois Department of Public Welfare.

In three years spent as "clinical sociologist" in the Menard Branch of the Illinois State Penitentiary, Mr. Clemmer played baseball, football and other games with the convicts, talked to them sympathetically when they were sick or downcast, won their confidence. He thus learned the identity of certain leaders, their qualifications and what their followers thought of them. One trait which every leader seemed to need to keep his following was that of being "right"—i. e., of not truckling to the prison authorities. Mr. Clemmer admits that leaders are often at the bottom of "conflict situations"—riots, mass demonstrations, group escapes—but finds that in the daily life of the prison the leaders are not usually troublemakers and that the objective which they and their followers have in common "is to make the time pass as agreeably and as comfortably as possible."

Mr. Clemmer analyzed 14 convict leaders ranging in age from 26 to 48, in mental age from nine years plus to 18 years. The average mental age was 15, which is higher than that of the adult population of the U. S. (13 years 6 months). Only two, however, had had schooling beyond the eighth grade. One of these had two years of high school and the other quit college during freshman year.

Of the 14 leaders, ten were sent up for armed robbery, three for murder, one for burglary. All but two had been raised in cities of 50,000 or more, and the two exceptions had lived in such cities since adolescence. All but five had spent 18 months or more in other penal institutions. All without exception had shown delinquency at an early age. In physique they ranged from skinny giants to chunky short men, but Mr. Clemmer noticed that none was overweight.