Gettin' Money

In my never-ending quest to blend into my environment and possibly even shed my “Whiteman” nickname, I continue to add to my prison vocabulary (think of this as a warped version of Sesame Street’s Word of the Day).  Today’s term, boys and girls, is “Get Money.”   Any guesses?  Okay, here’s a hint:  If you think it has anything to do with real money – bonk! – you’re wrong!  After all, as I’ve explained before, we don’t have any money.  Yes, we do use stamps as currency, so the phrase could be about acquiring stamps.  But no.  Hey, maybe it has something to do with our prison jobs and pay day, when the balance on our commissary accounts get adjusted?  Good guess, but again, nope.  Give up?  Okay.  In here, Getting (or more precisely, Gettin’) Money = Working Out.  For example, “Yo Cheesepuffs, you gettin’ dat money?” or “I’m headin’ outside, gotta get some money!”  Yes, I’m dense.  Been in here nearly two years and just figured this out last week. 

Here’s how:  The library where I work was closed for the afternoon, so I got to enjoy a little time outside.  Weather was beautiful, cool breeze, sky above the wall a cloudless blue.  I was playing racquetball with a friend when he hit the ball onto the roof.  It was our only ball, so game over.  That’s when another guy from the unit called us, shouting, “Yo, you wanna get some money?”  I asked him what he meant and after all the other guys within earshot finally stopped laughing at my ignorance, they explained that it means lifting weights.  Why, I asked?  No really clear thought on that, except maybe building muscle is like “putting money in the bank.”  You know, like you can count on it.  I still didn’t quite see it, but as with many things here, I realized I just had to roll with it.  So we all had a good time working out.  Strenuous, but it felt great.

Jump ahead to the next morning.  Every muscle is sore.  I’m hobbling down the hallway, barely able to move, when someone yells out, “Hey Whiteman, I saw you gettin’ that money yesterday!”  To which I responded with what I thought was bound to catch on as the newest prison slang, “Naw, it’s more like my body kited a check.”  Two people in the vicinity chuckled, but one of them only laughed because he thought I said “kike” and he always laughs at jokes about Jewish people.  So I had to explain that kiting a check means writing a fraudulent one.  Let’s just say that if it takes two or three minutes to explain a punchline, the air kind of goes out of a joke.  A slow and painful death.  On the plus side, though, I am expanding my prison vocabulary.  On the negative side, attempting a joke that was understood by exactly one other person (a white guy) may have dug my Whiteman nickname hole a little deeper.  Glad I didn’t go with my first instinct, something like, “I just wish we could change to a Supply Side model!”

Our Very Own Birdman

I’m both a librarian and a sports referee in this town of 1300 residents, all confined to an area less than one half mile by one half mile, so I know a lot of people and -- being a gregarious guy -- can talk with most of them, whatever their mood or situation.  But I don’t even come close to this one guy, the most infamous inmate on the compound:  Birdman.  Okay, before you ask, no, he was not given this nickname in homage to the famous Birdman of Alcatraz.  He got it because he communicates exclusively using bird sounds.  That’s right, he walks around all day chirping, cackling, and squawking like a bird.  And people actually ANSWER him as if he’s making sense!  One thing I’ve learned from this, though, is that language is not just words.  Most of what we communicate is non-verbal, body language, tone, glances.  You can convey a lot with hand gestures.  So sometimes I find myself trying to talk with Birdman, the way you might with an actual bird person, if you can imagine such a creature.

This is all amusing, I suppose, until you’re walking up the hill to chow and Birdman calls in the seagulls, which swoop in like a deranged flight of the Navy’s Blue Angels, buzzing the guard tower and your head!  Yes, the birds understand him perfectly!  Let me assure you that I have seen Birdman reading and writing.  In fact, he is quite literate.  Like so many behaviors here in prison, his bird talk is all part of the Hustle.

So what, you may ask, is his hustle?  Well, the guy was having headaches and complained of blurred vision.  Turned out he had a brain tumor, which was removed without a hitch, but when he woke up from surgery he could not speak; he could only make birdlike utterances.  This was nearly three years ago!  So most people accept that his disability was caused by a botched brain tumor operation.   If Oliver Sacks were still alive, no doubt he’d be flying down for an interview.  But as it turns out, Birdman has a plan.  He’s going to file suit against the government for negligence, cruel and unusual punishment, pain and suffering, etc., then get discharged with a big settlement and live a life of luxury.  There is just one flaw to his logic:  people have heard him let his guard slip and actually speak English.  Which is understandable, since it must be hard to maintain his charade 24-7.  People have heard him arguing with his cellie, talking to himself while typing in the library, and even singing to himself in the shower.  Still he persists, no doubt counting on the unwritten rules of prison life to help him.  In this case, the rule is our intense desire to get something over on the administration.  We would all like nothing better than to see Birdman win, so we can all laugh at the idiocy of the BOP.  Little victories like that can help you get through a bad day.  Which is why if I’m ever asked about Birdman’s speech, my answer will be a resounding, “Caw!  Caw!”

A Plea for Change

Incarceration, according to the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Prisons serves three purposes:  Punishment, Deterrence, and Rehabilitation.  They are definitely getting the punishment aspect right, or wrong in the view of those being punished.  The U.S. jails more people than any country in the world and for longer periods of time.  Sentences continue to rise in duration, in spite of evidence that except for severe circumstances which may merit lengthy incarcerations, no sentence beyond 5 years actually makes a difference.  In other words, if a person does not “learn his lesson” in 5 years he is not likely to do so in 10, 12, 15, 20, etc.  Our nation keeps men and women locked up long past any point of effectiveness, then sends them back into society with very little support, forcing them to relearn life on the outside, while fending for themselves.

Deterrence, I think, is also over-rated.  Very few inmates here that I’ve talked to even considered the consequences of their acts.  Not being able to process cause and effect is probably a key reason that people get in trouble with the law.  Therefore, making laws more onerous and draconian in order to “make people think” before committing a crime has very little impact.  Most guys never even entertained the idea that they’d get caught.  They just keep doing what they are doing until they can’t do it anymore, always thinking they are smarter than the next guy.

Unfortunately, because of our skewed perspective  on punishment and deterrence, a majority of inmates, once released, just recycle back in the system before long.  To offset this pattern, the BOP claims to provide Rehabilitation Programs for inmates.  Yes, Rehabilitation.  The word conjures images of busy inmates learning a trade or taking college classes, joining self-help groups and workshops.  The Number One factor most highly correlated with lowering recidivism is education, no one will argue that.  So logically one would expect the system to provide as many opportunities as possible for guys to better themselves to prepare for a productive life on the outside in order not to return to prison.  But that’s not what I’ve seen.   Granted, I have only been in one federal prison, known as a “good spot”.  It’s safe, clean, and does offer amenities that probably aren’t seen at many other prisons.  We have a large, grassy Recreation Yard, a well-stocked library, slightly better than marginal food.  It’s not the Four Seasons or even the newly remodeled Red Roof Inn, but it could be worse.  From what I hear, it’s exponentially better than a county jail or state prison.  So, with these accommodations, you might suppose the BOP would also provide educational programming to support rehabilitation, right?  Not so fast, my friends.

Let’s first get to the public perception of life in federal prison, as portrayed on tv and the media.  The following is a list of items that do not exist here at what is known as one of the “crown jewels” of the BOP:  (1) community college level classes, (2) training in things like welding, carpentry, plumbing, or any other popular trade for that matter, (3) computer access, (4) support for taking college correspondence courses, or (5) any reward or incentive to pursue education on your own.  No time off, no preferred housing, no quiet study area, no access to supplies, nothing.  Now before you climb the steps to your cozy room in your ivory tower, I know you are going to say that the reward should be the education itself.  That it makes you a better person, striving to learn how to live outside of prison.  I agree, in theory, but if you could only spend a week, even a day, in prison, I guarantee you that you would change your mind.  As I’ve written before, many guys here do not have any support system to rely on.  They are going it alone, navigating this prison system without any guidance.  They feel cast aside, cast out of society, waking up every day staring at the same walls and counting down 5, 10, 15, 20 years behind bars.  They came into prison with little education and no marketable skills and they see no way of obtaining any before they go home.  They need HELP!  And when I say help, I don’t mean some uninterested case manager telling them to “program”.  A case manager who has never read their file and may not even know their name.  Yes, like you, I would never have bought into this “woe is me” whining of inmates in the past, but now that I have seen it with my own eyes, as our Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan sings, “things have changed.”

OK, maybe I can’t convince you that the emotional and psychological beatdown inmates go through makes it hard to do what it takes to aggressively pursue some kind of rehabilitation.  We can agree to disagree.  But until you have walked in our shoes, and in this case that would mean walking in circles for about 25 laps of the dorm to clock a mile, but you get what I mean.  How about we flip the script and look at the numbers in terms of what is available?  This prison has 1300-1400 inmates.  Each quarter two or three self-help styled classes are offered through the Psychology Office.  Re-entry Affairs may offer a class, such as industrial sewing, to stock the Unicor Plant here.  The Drug and Alcohol counselors will do 12 Steps.  Sometimes you can throw in CDL (the book version only) and HVAC.  Sounds good, right?  Rehabilitative education and job training both!  But consider:  We’re talking about maybe 12-13 classes tops, each enrolling about 15 people, bringing us to about 195 slots available for students.  That’s about 15% of the prison population with the opportunity to work towards prison-sponsored rehabilitation goals.  We do have GED classes, too, and I don’t know how many inmates enroll.  I do know that last semester only 3 received their high school diplomas.  Maybe that has something to do with the teachers rarely being in the classroom or bothering to actually teach the class.  In the past two years I can state unequivocally that I have never seen any staff member holding the title of “teacher” actually do any teaching.  Fellow prisoners who have been at other institutions say that’s par for the course.  So who does teach?  Who do we have investing their efforts to offer these men a chance at a better future?  Other inmates hired as tutors.  And yes, many of us do have the sincere motive of wanting to help our peers.  What are the requirements to be a tutor?  Gotta have a high school diploma or GED.  That’s it.  No training.  No background in education.  That doesn’t mean that you won’t stumble upon a prisoner with a talent or knack for teaching, but typically you just get guys with good intentions who quickly become frustrated by the lack of any institutional support.

There must be more, right?  This guy just woke up on the wrong side of his two-foot wide steel bunk and is venting.  He’s just disturbed by the pre-op transsexual with the perm who has decided to run a floor buffer up and down the hallway at 5 am.   Maybe couldn’t sleep through the night-long shoutdown over which state – NC or SC – keeps it more One Hundred.  Well, yes, probably, you’re right.  I’m feeling crabby.  But I promise you I have thought this through before writing and I’m trying to be as unbiased as possible.  So let me add that each quarter these inmate volunteers offer 10-12 classes that have to be approved, of course, by the staff.  Even though they receive no allowance or compensation for this effort, they teach material ranging from economics to public speaking to Shakespeare.  These courses can actually be quite mentally stimulating and challenging.  And in here, anything that can keep your mind active is okay in my book.  The problem with this system is that it relies on the talent pool and interests of potential inmate instructors.  I applaud their efforts, their good intentions, and I know that some of them are extremely knowledgeable guys who were fabulously successful on the outside, but all of that does not necessarily make them good teachers. 

Again, you may be thinking, “You are all criminals! You deserve nothing!”  Okay, but consider that (1) your tax money is paying for this mass level of incarceration and (2) most of us will be getting out of prison someday.  We will be living among you.  Wouldn’t it be logical to spend a few more dollars to help us reenter society successfully?  So maybe we wouldn’t be so likely to recycle back to jail again?  As I’ve written before, I’m not allowed to use a computer in here, so I can’t look up the source, but there’s this quote that says something along the lines of:  “You can judge the humanity of a society by how they treat their prisoners.”  Based on the scorn, warehousing, and disenfranchisement American felons face, what does that say about our society as a whole?

What to do?  Support some recent bills that would reduce time served for inmates who follow the rules, stay out of trouble, and make efforts to reform themselves.  As things stand now, federal inmates serve 85% of their sentence, even on good behavior.  You get that for staying out of trouble.  There’s no additional incentive.  You can sleep all day, watch TV all night, scratch yourself awake long enough to gamble and eat, and you will earn your good time credit.  Just the same as the guy who studies The Bible, takes classes, helps out his fellow inmates, tries to learn some kind of trade, attends self-help seminars and maybe teaches a class himself.  This needs to change.  I’d so like to see some kind of community college-level and college level coursework, leading to some kind of certificate or degree, offered in here.  And at bottom, sentences are just too long.  Guys facing 15-20 years have a hard time even imagining living on the outside, so it’s hard convincing them to put in the time and effort to “program” when there’s no tangible goal to work towards.  I’m in for eight years and that’s considered a short Federal bid.  Let me just say, I learned my lesson long ago, but here I sit, like everyone else, counting the days.

The bottom line is that our society continues to pour good money after bad into the prison system, supporting a cluster of laws that are not in the least effective.  We ignore the problem, locking people up and throwing away the key, convincing ourselves that these bad people got what they deserved.  You think that this will never affect you.  That no one you know is in prison or will ever end up there.  I used to think the same way, and I’m sure my family did, too.  But even if you are fortunate enough to never have to face incarceration or the incarceration of a loved one, you will be affected.  Our society is suffering.  Our criminal justice system is the laughing stock of other civilized countries.  The system is not working.  I work towards the little bit of change a prisoner can effect.  I offer help to anyone in here who wants to better himself.  I tutor, I counsel, I share resources, telling myself that every little bit counts.  I just wish that I could do more, and I call out from this forgotten place to ask society to take another look in the mirror and ask what we all can do to help ALL of our citizens have a chance to succeed.