Essay No. 14 | CQ-027
“On the streets and in prison, it’s wise to remain anonymous, not to tell anyone your real name. When people know it, they can turn you in to the authorities.”
— One Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer, from Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice
“Call me E.”
That is how the narrator introduces himself in One Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer.
Not with his full name.
Not with the number the State has assigned him.
Not with a list of credentials, although he possesses a formidable education in the law.
One letter will do.
E.
The abbreviation is both an introduction and a defense.
It reveals enough to begin the story while withholding enough to preserve the storyteller.
On the streets and in prison, E explains, disclosing one’s real name can give another person power. A name can be passed to the authorities. It can be placed in a report, attached to an accusation, entered into a database, called across a courtroom, or printed above a number on a prison identification card.
A name tells the world who you are.
It also tells the world whom to find.
Identity Can Be Both Shield and Target
Most of us are taught to think of our names as possessions.
A name is among the first gifts we receive.
It connects us to family.
Ancestry.
Culture.
Memory.
Expectation.
We sign it to documents to announce consent.
We place it on our work to claim authorship.
We speak it when introducing ourselves because a name is supposed to make recognition possible.
But recognition is not always protection.
For people living under surveillance—or in places where trust has become dangerous—being known can create vulnerability.
The same name that allows a friend to find you allows an enemy to identify you.
The same signature that establishes ownership can become evidence.
The same reputation that creates influence can attract institutional attention.
This is the first conundrum contained in the quotation:
Identity can be both shield and target.
To Know a Name Is to Possess a Kind of Power
The narrator compares withholding one’s name to an African tradition in which a child receives a secret name because anyone who learns it may gain power over that person.
Whether on the streets, inside prison, or within such a naming tradition, the underlying insight is the same:
Knowledge is never entirely innocent.
To know someone’s true name is to possess a way of summoning that person.
Describing him.
Locating him.
Praising him.
Accusing him.
Recording him.
Controlling him.
Names make people legible.
And legibility can be a form of power.
Institutions Understand the Power of Names
That is why institutions insist upon recording them.
Courts caption cases with names.
Police create lists of names.
Prisons assign identification numbers but never truly discard the names; they bind the two together.
The number makes administration easier.
The name makes punishment personal.
A person enters the system as an individual and is processed as a record.
Once the name is attached to the record, other things accumulate around it:
Charges.
Convictions.
Sentences.
Disciplinary reports.
Parole decisions.
Institutional histories.
The name that once belonged principally to family and community becomes an organizing device for bureaucracy.
Identity becomes data.
The Shadow Counsel
The jailhouse lawyer occupies an especially complicated position within that system.
He assists prisoners with motions.
Appeals.
Grievances.
Legal research.
Other documents through which incarcerated people attempt to make themselves heard.
Yet he cannot formally appear as their attorney.
He works behind the scenes.
The pleading must bear the imprisoned client’s name, not his.
His reasoning may shape the argument.
His research may identify the issue.
His writing may give the claim its force.
But his authorship remains invisible.
He calls himself a “shadow counsel.”
The phrase captures both his usefulness and his danger.
The narrator must remain unseen in order to help others be heard.
Useful, but Not Powerful
Prison systems that do not provide lawyers must still permit incarcerated people meaningful access to the courts.
Jailhouse lawyers can become essential to making that access real.
They help other people in prison understand procedures, identify claims, research precedent, prepare motions, challenge disciplinary actions, and pursue remedies that might otherwise remain inaccessible.
Yet the institutions that depend upon this work do not necessarily welcome the people performing it.
A person in prison who teaches another incarcerated individual how to challenge a conviction, sentence, disciplinary decision, or condition of confinement has acquired something institutions always notice:
Knowledge.
Knowledge can become influence.
Influence can become power.
The jailhouse lawyer is therefore permitted to be useful while being discouraged from becoming powerful.
Under those conditions, anonymity becomes part of the practice.
Anonymity is not modesty. It is strategy.
Invisible Work
There is a long history of indispensable work performed by unnamed people.
Speeches are drafted by hands the audience never sees.
Legal arguments are shaped by clerks whose names do not appear in the case caption.
Movements depend upon organizers who never stand at the microphone.
Families survive because of sacrifices no public record preserves.
Prison intensifies that invisibility.
A jailhouse lawyer may identify the legal issue, conduct the research, write the argument, and give another person in prison a chance to be heard.
If the motion succeeds, the victory legally belongs to the person whose name appears on the papers.
If prison officials dislike the challenge, however, they may become very interested in discovering who actually prepared it.
That is another conundrum:
The narrator must sometimes remain unseen in order for his work to become visible.
“Call Me E” Is Also an Act of Self-Naming
Yet the opening “Call me E” does more than conceal.
It also allows the narrator to name himself on his own terms.
The State may possess a complete institutional identity for him:
Name.
Number.
Conviction.
Sentence.
Disciplinary history.
Parole record.
But he does not begin his story with any of those things.
He decides how the reader will first encounter him.
Call me E.
That choice matters because systems of punishment are also systems of narration.
The prosecution names a person defendant.
The prison names him inmate.
A newspaper may name him felon, killer, career criminal, or monster.
A parole board may reduce decades of life to the official description of a crime.
Each label claims to identify the person.
Each also narrows him.
Words Control the Narrative
WORDS CONTROL THE NARRATIVE.
Once a label becomes the accepted name, the public may stop looking for the human being beneath it.
Offender can swallow:
Father.
Son.
Student.
Teacher.
Writer.
Neighbor.
Believer.
Friend.
The worst act becomes not something the person did, but what the person is.
That grammatical shift carries enormous moral consequences.
A person who committed a crime remains a person with a history extending before and after the act.
A person defined entirely as a criminal becomes easier to imagine as possessing no meaningful identity outside the crime.
Naming therefore does more than describe reality.
Sometimes it determines how much reality we are willing to see.
A Human Being Cannot Fit Inside a Case Caption
“Call me E” resists that reduction.
The narrator does not surrender his identity to the categories available to the institution.
He gives the reader a single letter.
Then he allows his actions, thoughts, doubts, humor, discipline, beliefs, and contradictions to supply the rest.
During the course of one prison day, E reads scripture.
Exercises in a cell narrower than his outstretched arms.
Studies Spanish.
Listens to the news.
Speaks with other people in prison.
Carries legal files to the law library.
He believes in the ideal of law while distrusting many of the people who interpret it.
He helps people in prison who may have exhausted every other legal remedy.
He holds onto law like a life preserver even though the legal system has not rescued him.
His identity cannot be contained in a case caption.
Neither can anyone else’s.
The Moral Ambiguity of Anonymity
The quotation also raises a harder question.
Is anonymity always good?
No.
Remaining anonymous may be necessary for survival.
But secrecy can protect wrongdoing as easily as resistance.
Informants conceal themselves.
Officials hide behind procedure.
Institutions distribute responsibility so widely that no individual appears accountable.
People with power can use anonymity to escape consequences.
People without power may need anonymity to survive them.
The ethical meaning of anonymity therefore depends upon what the concealment serves.
Is the hidden name protecting someone who challenges injustice?
Or someone who inflicts it?
Is secrecy preserving dignity?
Or preventing accountability?
Is a person withholding identity because the truth is dangerous?
Or because the truth would expose him?
The name alone cannot answer.
We must look at the work being done in its shadow.
A Name Can Become a Sentence
There is another danger in naming.
Sometimes a label outlives the event that produced it.
A conviction may occur on a particular date.
A sentence may eventually end.
But the name attached to the conviction can continue traveling.
Felon.
Ex-convict.
Offender.
The institutional language can follow a person into employment.
Housing.
Education.
Relationships.
Public reputation.
Community life.
A legal sentence may therefore have an expiration date while a social label does not.
The person leaves the institution.
The name the institution gave him may leave with him.
That raises another question of justice:
How long should a human being be required to answer to the worst name society has given him?
Why It Matters Today
We live in an age that constantly asks us to identify ourselves.
Names.
Photographs.
Locations.
Preferences.
Contacts.
Purchases.
Searches.
Opinions.
All can be collected and connected.
Visibility is often presented as belonging.
To be known is to participate.
But every disclosure creates a record.
And every record has the potential to travel beyond the purpose for which it was originally given.
The old warning from the streets and prison has acquired a digital form:
Information about who we are can be used to find us.
Classify us.
Persuade us.
Exclude us.
Monitor us.
Or place us under suspicion.
At the same time, anonymity can make cruelty easier.
People say behind false names what they might never say face-to-face.
Power can hide behind automated decisions and unsigned notices.
Responsibility can disappear into systems.
So the challenge is not simply to choose visibility or secrecy.
The better questions are:
Who is asking for the name?
Why do they want it?
What will they be able to do once they possess it?
A name can be a gift.
A name can be a weapon.
Wisdom lies in knowing the difference.
Questions for Reflection
- When has being known by name made you feel recognized, and when has it made you feel vulnerable?
- Who has had the power to name or label you, and which of those names have you accepted or resisted?
- When does anonymity protect necessary truth-telling, and when does it prevent accountability?
- What identities, roles, or labels have others used to describe you that capture only part of who you are?
- What changes when a person claims the right to name himself rather than accepting the identity an institution or society assigns him?
About Conundrums
Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice is a cycle of stories exploring imprisonment, law, justice, freedom, accountability, conscience, identity, redemption, and the resilience of the human spirit.
In One Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer, the narrator’s decision to call himself simply E opens a larger inquiry into identity, anonymity, surveillance, legal advocacy, institutional power, and the struggle to remain more than the categories imposed by punishment.
The law may require a name.
The prison may assign a number.
The record may attach a label.
But none of them, by themselves, can contain a human being.
Closing Reflection
Call me E.
One letter.
Enough to begin.
Not enough to surrender everything.
The simplicity of the introduction conceals a sophisticated understanding of power.
To give someone your name is to make yourself available to recognition.
Sometimes recognition means relationship.
Sometimes belonging.
Sometimes authorship.
Sometimes dignity.
But recognition can also mean surveillance.
Classification.
Accusation.
Control.
That is why the narrator chooses what the reader receives.
He does not disappear.
He does not surrender.
He introduces himself.
But on his terms.
Perhaps that is the deeper power hidden in the opening.
The institution already knows his name.
The State already knows his number.
The courts already know his case.
The prison already knows his sentence.
What none of them possesses completely is the authority to decide who he is.
So he begins again:
Call me E.
“On the streets and in prison, it’s wise to remain anonymous, not to tell anyone your real name. When people know it, they can turn you in to the authorities.”
— One Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer, from Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice
Justice begins with the courage to see clearly.
— Easy Waters
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The Conundrums Quotations Project is an ongoing series of literary reflections on law, justice, freedom, memory, punishment, conscience, redemption, and the human spirit, inspired by Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice.
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The Conundrums Quotations Project
CQ-027 | The Power of a Name: When Being Known Becomes a Form of Power
Easy Waters
Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice
Unbound Voices Publishing
A Literary Meditation on Law, Justice & the Human Spirit.
