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Luis Mendez-Garcia
Professor Florian
English 114 B
March 8, 2014
Prison Within Utopian Walls
Have there been times where you felt in a place that is just nothing but perfect? For
example a perfect world where nothing can go wrong in any way, shape, or form. Utopia written
by Thomas More is a book about a newly discovered island in the fifteenth century. It is a place
where everything seems so coordinated as described in the book, a lovely place to be and live
during that time. More details for example, are how the society in Utopia lives their daily lives.
Who explains how they do the farming and cultivating, choose their mayors per city, and ways
in which the population is controlled. In other words, Utopia is based on natural reason and
justice, contrary of the rest of Europe during the time. Utopia is described as an imaginary place
in which the government, laws, and social conditions are perfect (Merriam Webster). Utopia is
referred to a happy place and throughout the book is truly seemed like it, but there were moments
in the books description that were far different than what was being portrayed.
This imaginary island of Utopia really wasn't a perfect place, in fact it was seen more as
dystopia. Utopia could be viewed in different ways, depending on the person if in fact it is a
perfect place or not. When reading the book clues were given that this wasn't a Utopia of any sort
it was much worse than what was being described as paradise. Utopia was a cyclopean open
prison surrounded by water on the coastline of the Island. Utopia is more alike to a prison in
todays society in such ways that utopians wore the same clothing, they had no privacy, they are
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enslaved when committing a crime, and they have representatives in each district that make
decisions for them, similarly to prisoners (More 75).
The style of dress utopians had been no different than anothers clothing throughout the
island. Their mode of dress is the same throughout the island and through all stages of life,
except for distinctions between the sexes and between the married and single(More 63). Since
all the utopians wear the same clothes except for some few exceptions the prisons in the United
States are the same. For example, in the Los Angeles County Jail multiple jail suit colors are
used to distinguish between the inmates, they might have different colors between each classified
inmate, but the same clothing. The similar classification is for the utopians to distinguish
between the male and female, and the ones that are married. In the county jail white represents
the general inmate population that arent high risk nor have medical issues, yellow is used to
classify the medically ill, red, blue, green are all special handling usually for those who have
more than a million dollar bail, these are the more dangerous inmates, and the orange is for male
juveniles and female work furlough inmates (Prisoners). Although there are many different
classifications or colors to represent certain inmates it relates to the utopians because essentially
they are all alike and they could relate to one another. It resembles the utopians on how they
could be labeled with colors or slightly different clothing, but in reality all the people in Utopia
are the same no matter what.
Although Utopians could claim privacy, they really didnt have any at all. No house is
without doors opening both onto the street and into the garden; these double doors, which yield
to a touch of the hand and close of themselves, permit anyone to enter. As a result no place is
ever private: indeed they exchange the actual houses by lot every tenth year(More 61). This
same aspect is with the design of the prisons that everything is open and nothing is private. As
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Ive visited before countless times the Los Angeles County prison, Ive seen how the layout is
from the inside. Especially where the inmates sleep, there is a big room that could maybe house
50 or more inmates and the bed is the only space they have as theirs. Other than that everything
else as you once claimed privacy is gone within the prison. Basically everything you do is seen
and nothing is hidden from the other inmates or the correctional officers in the cellblock. I
witnessed this during the visits in the third floor of the twin towers. Same as in utopia the
people didnt have a say, any privacy even though claimed they did they really didnt. The aspect
was to really hide this from the citizens because they trusted the people in Armarout (capital of
Utopia). They also trusted the representatives that they had from each district, to make decisions
for them.
In Utopia when you do something illegal death isnt the first choice of punishment in the
island, instead the criminals pay with labor and hard work. When committing a crime in utopia
the person is enslaved instead of being killed (More 91). The citizens of utopia are being
enslaved for committing crimes and other injustice acts in society. It seems to be an open
prison, because they are working for the community for committing a crime, but they arent
physically in a jail cell or jail facility. An open prison as I call it because the citizens are tied
up with gold shackles but working in the fields and doing work others would do in the city as a
routine every day. Now this can also happen for inmates in a real prison doing community work.
They might clean the highways and do other useful community work in a more controlled and
observed environment. Even though the citizens that have committed the shameful acts are
enslaved, eventually with time of working and showing that they are loyal to go back with
society they could be released. Similarly goes for inmates who have completed their jail sentence
in solitary confinement are released, but it takes a while for them to get used to society once
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again. The transition experienced by individuals as they leave prison and return home to their
families and communities is fundamentally a dynamic, social process(Visher 92). In other
words it takes time and adjusting to become part of society in both the real world with prisoners
and in the book as well.
Utopia is a place where the people put their trust on the representatives in each district to
make the right decisions and the correct ones for the island. Each district has three
representatives or miniature mayors with power, to control their own district. It creates a
connection with utopia as being more of a prison rather than actually heaven. For example, in the
prisons there are a certain number of correctional officers liable to a certain area or cellblocks,
with inmates. This is broken down further, so for every correctional officer there is about 10.3
inmates and those ten inmates are the responsibility of just that one correctional officer that has
power (Stephen 5). This incorporates the power of the representatives that the utopians have
compared to the authorities that each correctional officer has. For example each correctional
officer represents his own inmates and has to watch them and make decisions for these inmates
that cannot be made within them.
Utopia was made to seem like a beautiful place to stay, and experience the civilization on
the island because it was portrayed as paradise, nothing below those standards. In reality this was
a very antique or early stage of prisons because they had no privacy, they weren't able to speak
out for themselves they had other people to do it for them, and they really didn't have freedom.
They only had freedom within the district, but on the outside of the district there would be
horrendous punishments for stepping out of the district. It was more of early open
imprisonment within the island, without the realization of what the truth really was, very
dystopia.
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Works Cited
Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
More, Thomas and Paul Turner. Utopia. London: Penguin, 1984. Print.

"Prisoners." N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2014. <http://www.lasdhq.org/
divisions/leadership-training-div/bureaus/mpp/5-03.pdf>.

Stephen, James J. "Bureau of Justice Statistics." Census of State and Federal
CorrectionalFacilities, Oct. 2008. Web. 9 Mar. 2014.

Transitions from Prison to Community: Understanding Individual Pathways
Christy A. Visher and Jeremy TravisAnnual Review of Sociology , Vol. 29, (2003) , pp.
89-113