In the Pen

There were 22 U.S. prison riots last year, the greatest number in history. To find out why, NBC sent Walter and Peg McGraw on a four-month tour of twelve penitentiaries in seven states. The McGraws got 50 miles of tape-recorded interviews with convicts and ex-convicts, guards, wardens and state and federal penal authorities. From this mass of material they put together a nine-part radio documentary called The Challenge of Our Prisons (Fri. 9 p.m., NBC).

Square Shake. The McGraws' most significant finding was that nearly all the trouble originates in state prisons, practically none in the federal penitentiaries ("Inmates say that they get a square shake in federal. They say it doesn't matter if a guard is tough as long as he is square"). They found that most state guards are badly underpaid and that employment turnover is high.

Getting; the facts was not easy. Sanford Bates, New Jersey's Commissioner of Institutions and Agencies, refused to let the McGraws interview inmates at Trenton and protested when he learned they were interviewing ex-convicts who had served time there. Bates, a veteran administrator and onetime boss of all federal prisons, demanded and got seven minutes at the end of the show to answer the convicts' charges. According to Peg McGraw, Bates "is a wonderful man, but he no longer follows his own theories which formed the basis of the successful federal system. He was cooperative only as long as we were doing his side of the story."

Because of the vigor and colorfulness of their speech, convicts have been the stars of the first two shows. An ex-convict called "The Professor" told of his life and hard times in a succession of New Jersey reform schools and prisons, and a California-born swindler named Mac described the slow and painful process of adjusting to life in stir. This week's show begins an investigation of the riots in the nation's largest walled prison at Jackson, Mich., and will be told partly in the words of Earl Ward, the psychopathic riot leader.

Specific Beef. Walter McGraw, 33, and his present wife, Peg, 34, have tried to do their present show without overt editorializing. Prison officials are given their full say, but the McGraws have had to be more selective in presenting the prisoners view point: "If only one inmate told us about a specific beef, we threw it out. But when we got the same story from a lot of inmates we were pretty sure there was some thing to it." They have found no simple explanation for the riots. Most of the prisons are too old, too crowded and too often staffed by underpaid and inefficient guards. But there are deeper psychological reasons, and one of them is the fact that often crime does pay. According to an FBI report, only 13% of the nation's criminals ever end up in jail. Says Peg McGraw: "The ones who do get sent up think that they are fall guys, that they were just unlucky in being put away."

In Hollywood, The Challenge of Our Prisons has a dedicated listener in Producer Walter Wanger, who has been campaigning for prison reform since he served a four-month sentence last year for assault with a deadly weapon.* Said Wanger: "The program illustrates the futility of modern prisons. They have guys only equipped to punish trying to do rehabilitation. Ninety-seven percent of the people in prison are released at some time or other, and prison makes them worse than they were ... I think this program is a hell of a service and will shake the people who hear it out of their apathy."

*On Agent Jennings Lang in a quarrel about Wanger's wife, Cinemactress Joan Bennett.

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