Shooting criminals

>> Photographer Ron Levine takes a tour of Canadian and American geriatric prisons

by SIOBHAN O'CONNOR

Thurmon Jetton's forehead is lined, his hair is white but the smile on the 68 year old's face is as candid and sweet as a rascally little kid's. Standing proudly by an intricate model sailboat at one of the six North-American geriatric prisons, he tells portrait photographer Ron Levine how, in the early '80s, fuelled by rage and a little too much whiskey, he swung a baseball bat aimed at his girlfriend's husband and accidentally "killed her dead as a doornail."

Sentenced to life, Jetton, along with over a hundred thousand others in North America, faces old age and illness in the slammer, in conditions that are a far cry from your standard retirement plan. Jetton is a subject of one of the 65 portraits in Levine's latest exhibition and book, Prisoners of Age, which is the first exhibition to ever be mounted on Alcatraz Island. It's a stunning collection of photographs and statements documenting North America's growing geriatric prison population--something that Levine describes as a "crisis."

Sympathy for the devil
The native Montrealer--who now spends most of him time shuttling between Alcatraz and his home in New York City--has spent the last three years travelling across North America visiting old men in prison, taking their pictures and hearing their stories. The product delivers a rare, jarring glimpse at something most people are probably quite content not thinking about: the faces and voices of men who've been sentenced to life for rape, murder, assault, drug trafficking, theft.

While some of these stories read like treatments for slasher flicks (Walker Smith, 76, stabbed his mom 47 times over a minor laundry dispute), others feel more like tales of gross injustice (William Howard Johnson, 67, sentenced to life for stealing $24).

The project's caused quite a stink among victims' rights groups and staunch conservatives. Because whether or not Levine or book designer Michael Wou intended it, the work inspires a certain amount of pity for the criminals. Aware of his detractors, Levine says: "I'm not excusing these crimes. But I'm giving a voice to the voiceless. In all my work I've tried to capture the dignity of my subjects. With Prisoners of Age, I wanted to do the same: show that these are human beings who could be your grandfather, and that because of that fact alone they deserve a kind of dignity and respect."

Ready for their close-ups
Believe it or don't, but Levine seems to have some pretty fond memories from his visits. He peppers his stories with humour, describing most of the men he met as kind, or at least funny. He had to constantly remind himself that his subjects were convicted criminals.

"When I first showed up they all thought I was a Fed," laughs Levine. "But by the second day they were lining up to be photographed. The oldest guys especially. I'd pass them in the hall on their walkers and they'd look up at me and say, 'When you takin' my picture?'"

In the introduction to Prisoners, journalist David Winch calls the inmates "toothless tigers," something that rings true for Levine. "We did run into a few scary guys, but with the majority of them it was almost impossible to see them as hardened criminals." Which resulted in he and his assistant, Kirk McGregor, getting in a little hot water in an Alabama prison. "Kirk gave one of the prisoners a twoonie," he laughs. "The next day a guard came up to us and wanted to know if we'd given this guy a coin. When we said yes, the guard told us we'd have to go get it back. Apparently even Canadian currency can be whittled into weapons."

State of emergency
While Levine makes it clear--in the preface to his book and in conversation--that he's neither a sociologist, journalist nor criminologist, he has no shortage of things to say about what he calls the "crisis of the ageing prison population." "I don't propose that we let all these guys free just because they're old," he says, "but there has to be a way to reevaluate each case individually.

"Prisoners of Age is documenting a microcosm of things to come," explains Levine. "Now we're stockpiling young prisoners. Young people are being put away for life for small crimes and they'll become just like the guys in my project: old, sick, dying inmates." Levine cites the American 1973 Rockefeller drug law (where severe penalties are issued for first-time offenders) and the law aimed at habitual criminal offenders known as the "three-strikes law" as irritants to this crisis.

As the book's foreword by CBC Radio's "Rosie" Rowbotham (who served 20 years for pot trafficking) reminds us, the numbers of old prisoners are growing at an incredible rate. It's predicted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons that the numbers will double within a few years. Meanwhile in Canada, over 17 per cent of our incarcerated population is over the age of 50, a number that is also expected to jump exponentially in the next decade.

"It doesn't take a genius to see that there are huge problems with the Canadian and American prison systems," says Levine. "The laws have to be looked at but nobody wants to do it. The trick is getting the right people to say there's a problem. Me saying it doesn't mean a thing. I'm just shedding a little light." :