Revolving Door

No one would claim that Federal Prison is the place to go if you want to witness emotionally mature men coping with their feelings.  While stunted emotional development is on display every day, things reach a low (or high depending on how you look at it) when guys go home.  I’m not talking about the guys leaving, I mean the guys left behind.  You might think, of course, you’d be happy for your cellie, your workout partner, your card playing buddy to finally get out, but I’ve seen guys express the exact opposite:  “That ___hole, leaving me here to deal with this place!  He’ll be back in a quick minute, can’t make it out there without me!  I thought we were boys, we were like that, but now?”

True, these guys are using anger to cover their actual feelings – of abandonment, jealousy and confusion.  Best friends at each other’s throats – you see it weekly.  You just hope that they can figure it out before it’s too late.  What a shame to aid and support each other for years, making it through the most difficult times of their lives, only to blow it all up in the end.  But sometimes both the leaver and the left behind behave angrily and even with downright meanness.

On the flip side, sometimes a guy nobody likes goes home.  He’s loud, obnoxious, rude, disrespectful, smell, dishonest, whatever.  Makes your time here harder.  He may be the guy awake and yelling at 5:30 AM or the one who “jocks” the TV.  What a relief when he goes.  Everybody shouts, “At last!  Never could stand that guy!  Good riddance!  Whoo-hoo, party! But hold on.  This jerk is going HOME!  Well, he served his time.  But it shoulda been me!  He deserves prison more!”  The chorus is deafening.  

Eventually things calm down and we understand our one truth:  He’s gone and we’re still here.  Well, at least we no longer have to deal with his behavior.  Sometimes, though, the troublemaker will have a moment of conscience and shake your hand on the way out, wish you well.  And even though he behaved like an insufferable jerk the whole time he was here, you take the high road, wish him well and move along.

Doing the right thing is not always easy, but it’s still the right thing.  Of course, most dudes respond by cussing the guy out and letting him know how they really feel.  I have to admit that’s a little cathartic and entertaining for the rest of us.  (A psychology student could write quite a dissertation just on these weird goodbye experiences.  If the BOP found it in their hearts to help us go to school, I’d write it myself.  They top out at GED, though, which is an entirely different post.)

Now check this out.  At least 20 times since I’ve been in prison I’ve seen the revolving door in action.  Maybe the guy was here in our block, or other prisoners know him from their own earlier bids at other places, but he’s back.  And the response every time is joyful:  hugs, fist bumps, exclamations of excitement, expressions of camaraderie.  Could this be a cover for real feelings?  Of course!  And it’s so over the top!  What did Maya Angelou say?  “We do what we know, and when we know better we do better.”  Don’t they, don’t we, doesn’t society know better by now?  It breaks my heart to see this cycle repeated all over again:  poverty, crime, incarceration.  The revolving door is real, the numbers don’t lie.  While someone of my age, race, education, family support, etc., has maybe a 1-3% chance of returning, for others in different situations it’s 50, 60, 70, even 80%.  I’m not saying I know the whole cause, but I can say some things.  For instance, behaving like it’s no big deal to be back in prison just doesn’t help the situation.  That’s why I have a standing directive with some of the guys in here with 20 year bids.  If I return (assuming anything is left of me after my wife, kids, Mom, Dad, siblings, etc. are through with me), immediately upon my walking through the door PUNCH ME IN THE FACE!  Then call me a Dumbass!

My point is that we all have to stop accepting the prison revolving door as somehow normal.  It’s part of why I try to lend a helping hand to others in here, trying to be part of the solution.  Sometimes guys have no one else inside or outside.  You have to trust that sometimes an act of kindness can change someone’s life. 

Hunger Games

Stealing!  This is the Number One Worst Thing you can do in prison.  Funny, huh?  When you think that some of us ended up in here for exactly that offense!  But in here stealing from one another gets you outcast status pronto.  You can get in an argument, call the other dude’s mom a name, punch him, whatever, and an hour later all is good.  But get caught stealing from another Guest?  You’re done.  Shunned like a leper.

On the other hand, taking what you can from the BOP – no problem.  Which, sadly, has become the Captain’s latest point of emphasis.  His new rules include no second helpings at meals, no slipping uneaten food back to your cubbie for later (not even a banana or an apple), and no kitchen items like muffins, quesadillas, etc. hitting the Black Market.

From the Captain’s point of view, I’m sure it’s about losing money, repressing criminal thinking and extortion, and so on.  What he may not have considered is that we just don’t get enough to eat.  Picture grown men subsisting on three school lunches a day, single serve, no extras.  Especially those of us who try to stay active for our mental and physical well-being.  They say we can always buy food from the commissary, but that’s impractical when you consider that the average library clerk now earns about $9.50/month and a spare shopping list might include 1 box oatmeal/week, 1 bag of healthy nuts/week, maybe 2 protein bars/week and, the only luxury, a bag of instant coffee/week.  Add in a bottle of Advil/month for assorted aches and pains and you’ve spent $67.85 in a month.  That $9.50 paycheck just doesn’t cover it.  A lot of us don’t get money from home.  So can you blame us for slipping an apple in a pocket from time to time?

You might say that I’m just rationalizing criminal behavior, but the way I see it, being behind bars is our punishment.  We just want to stay as healthy as we can and get home when our time’s up.  I’m not advocating for Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, or Panera – just asking not to be hungry all the time!  Every day!  So, you may be thinking, get a second prison job to make a little more cash.  Against the rules!  Switch to a higher paying job?  Well, on the compound there are about 150 so-called premium jobs, and there are 1,350 of us vying for them.  Negotiate your pay?  LOL.  So we’re in a tough position.  Picking up a banana or bag of chips that would end up in the garbage otherwise doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me.

But if you get caught doing so, the punishment is – wait for it – no commissary for 3-6 months.  So then you cannot buy any food even if you do have the money!  Repeat offenders even end up in the SHU.  So, my usual refrain applies – you just have to shake your head, chuckle, and carry on.  Would be nice, though, if you could cancel your reservation at this establishment.  I hear the Motel 6 always has a light on…. 

Captain's Rules

I know my blog posts fluctuate between incredulous and maudlin, but most people here – both the “guests” and the guards – live those extremes.  Their actions and attitudes rarely keep to the middle of the road.  For instance, the guards are either so extremely lazy and uninvolved that they might as well be just cardboard cut-outs, or they’re so over-the-top amped and antagonistic that they do nothing but stir up trouble.  Is it asking too much to have quietly professional guards?  I don’t want to go off on a rant, but if you’ve ever read Orwell’s Animal Farm or heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment (I understand there’s a new film about that), then you may be able to imagine how our new belligerent Captain has emboldened a few uneducated knuckleheads to abuse their power over us.

We’ve begun to wonder to what lengths he will allow the guards to go.  I try to tone down some of the ridiculousness of all this when I share it with you, because “who would actually believe it?”  But here’s an example that may help clarify what I mean.  During the baseball playoffs, the tv room has always stayed open until the game ends.  One tv shows the game, but the others may be playing something on other stations.  No big deal.  Until the Captain decided that only MLB could be watched after hours.  When we made the mistake of not following that rule one night, a guard marched in, turned off all the tv’s and demanded to know who had been watching an unauthorized non-baseball station!  Of course, everyone had been watching the game (wink, wink).  So the guards decided that they could tell who’d broken the rule by where they were sitting in the room, threatening “shots” (disciplinary action) for all of us who had until their arrival simply been peacefully watching tv. 

It seems like every hour of every day some stupid behavior like this happens.  We’re all just hoping to ride it out until the Captain moves on.  Word is he wants to be a Warden and hopefully that will happen – only, please, somewhere else!  As for how nutty we guests behave, see my other posts.  For most of us, though, it all rolls off our backs.  I remind myself daily to remember kindness and compassion.  Everyone wants someone to listen to their pain, and I try whenever possible to be that guy for others.  The benefit?  You definitely hear some stories you’d never hear anywhere else!  Okay, it’s cool and drizzly today.  Gotta go grab my orange hat and say hi! to the Captain!

The Great Hat Debacle

The day had finally arrived, to great fanfare:  HAT DAY!  September 30.  Captain Douchebag (sorry if that offends, but it’s the nicest nickname he has, don’t even want to repeat the others) finally decided that yes it was finally cold enough in the mornings and after sunset to allow prisoners to wear their hats outdoors.  Glory Be!  Hallelujah!  I slapped my hat on my chilly bald head and happily strolled outside to greet the day.

But wait, what’s this?   Down by the guard shack some kind of fracas is underway.  Guys lined up, handing their hats over to the guards.  As I draw closer, I hear, “He’s changed his mind, now says it will be cold enough to wear hats on October 8^th.”  WTF?  But I’m cold now.  That’s crazy!  The complaints rain down on the guards, some of whom allow us to at least stow our hats in our pockets instead of confiscating them.

Flash ahead – it’s October 8 – heading out the door with my hat on!  But then I meet guys coming the other way, saying, "Nope, now it’s October 12^th, take it off!"  At this point even the least cynical, bitter, angry, etc., person among us (the guy I try to be) has to admit the Captain is just f—king with us.  To rub it in, the loudspeaker announces that wearing your hat can earn you a Shot (disciplinary report) for being out of uniform.  When pointed out to a guard that technically we would be “in too much” uniform, since the prison issues us our hats, dude did not even smile, responding with a gentle (sorry kids for the language), “Shut the Fuck Up!

Well, on the 12^th, lo and behold, we wear our hats outdoors without incident.  And you have never seen grizzled, hardened men so giddy with delight!  Sight was funny, entertaining and sad at the same time.  But wait, not done yet.  Remember the title of this post is not “The Hat Incident”.  It’s a full-blown Debacle.

So all of a sudden there’s a new rule that we can’t wear our hats in the chow hall.  Why is this a problem?  Well, normally you walk in, and while waiting by the door you leave your hat on, grab your tray, sit down, remove hat, and eat.  If you forget, a guard just reminds you and you take it off, no big deal.  But now, the Captain has decided that when we walk in the chow hall we must pluck our hats from our heads and THROW THEM AWAY!  In the trashcan!  One lieutenant particularly loves this idea, our throwing out our headgear willy-nilly.  But then an older lieutenant is overheard telling him, “I don’t care what the captain says, this is stupid.  Here’s the problem.  The gray caps are bought with the prisoners’ own money at the store.  If they have a receipt and you make them throw it away, they can file a tort claim and the prison will have to pay them, which means paperwork, hassle, money.   The tan hats are given to them as clothing, they’re BOP property, so if you make them throw it away, then we have to give them a new one!" To which the new lieutenant replies, “I don’t give a shit!”

Next morning a long line of guys shows up at the laundry seeking new hats.  The officer there unleashes a string of expletives but agrees that they should get them.  Only problem is, the storeroom is out of tan hats.  They only have one box of orange – and I mean hunter’s vest orange – hats.  So he passes them out to about 25 guys and says he’ll order more.  These hats, it turns out, are nicer than the tan ones.  This guard earns the rarely bestowed “he’s cool for a guard” label.  Because he did the logical thing, giving hats to men who needed them, and also, even cooler, said, “Fuck the Captain.”  Which now means that every bright orange hat in our sad little world represents a stab at the Captain.  I’m sure you can guess how this goes over.

Next day, on Captain’s orders, all orange hats must be confiscated.  He apparently thinks they are contraband sneaked in from another compound or something.  He demands that all inmates must have laundry issued tan hats.  But you know, it only took two prisoners who absolutely positively refused – they stuck out their hands for the cuffs, said, “Take me to the SHU!” – for the captain to storm off to the laundry to figure out where these outlandish orange hats came from.  You should have seen his face when the laundry officer told him, “Damn straight I issued the orange hats!  It’s MY laundry and it’s YOUR people who threw the hats away!”  Huge round of applause.  I swear it was like the rousing nerd-stands-up-for-himself speech in a John Hughes film.  That is, if Hughes had shot the movie in prison and all the actors were tatted up and dressed in prison garb, but you get the point.  And get this, we kept our orange hats!  Ka-ching! One for the little man!

And let me just tell you, I do love my orange hat.  Even though it’s gotten a little warmer the past few days, you should have seen all the guys making a point of parading past the Captain, nodding smartly in their new orange hats!

Rules for Rules' Sake

I get it, I really do.  In prison you follow the rules, like them or not.  I don’t even mind most of the time, but then there are those rules that seem made just for the sake of having something to enforce.  Such as:

The Knit Cap Rule:  We are not allowed to wear our caps until a guard decides that it’s cold enough for them.  The other day when it was 62 degrees, overcast and drizzling, most folks pulled out their lightweight knit caps bought at commissary or issued by the prison.  That is until the following conversation with a guard (observed with my own eyes and ears):

Guard:  You must remove your hat.

Old Man:  Why?

Guard:  It’s a rule.

Old Man:  Where does it say that?

Guard:  In the rules.

Old Man:  Umm, no it doesn’t.

Guard:  Yeah it does.

Old Man:  Where?

Guard:  I don’t know, that’s your problem.

And a few minutes later:

Guard:  Remove your hat.

Prisoner:  Why?

Guard:  Per the Captain’s orders.

Prisoner:  For what reason?

Guard:  Come on, you can’t tell me you’re cold.

Prisoner:  You can’t tell me I’m not.

Guard:  The Captain will let you know when it’s cold enough to wear a cap.

The Pockets Rule:  While walking to recreation, you are not allowed to have your headphones hanging around your neck or in your hands, even with the radio off.  But our gym shorts don’t have pockets (unless you sew some in, which some people do, but pockets are contraband, and you will be sent back to your bunk if a guard notices your pocket).  This resulted in the best pat-down exchange so far:

Guard:  Hey, come here.

Prisoner complies without speaking and guard pats him down, inmate with quizzical look on his face.

Guard:  You don’t have pockets!

Prisoner:  I know.

Guard (patting prisoner’s butt):  Hey, what’s this bulge?

(All other prisoners snicker.)

Prisoner:  My radio.

Guard:  Where is it?

Prisoner:  In my underwear.

Guard:  Why?

Prisoner:  Yesterday you told me that my radio was not to be seen.

Guard:  But you’re hiding it.  I could take it.

Prisoner pulls wide the band of his underwear.  Says:  Sure, go ahead.

(More snickers with laughter now.)

Guard, red-faced, to all of us:  Get moving!  Get the hell out of here!

The No Books on the Recreation Yard Rule:  This isn’t a strictly new rule, but now old Wesley Snipes, backed by Captain Douchebag, has decreed that we will have NO BOOKS AT RECREATION – EVER!

And finally the You Must Wear a Shirt at Rec Rule:  Which means no shirts and skins games at basketball court.  Can’t take off your shirt when it’s 100 degrees and muggy.  No shirts off, at a man’s prison!  The reason?  Something about it might offend the female staff.  I try to make sense of all this, but seriously?  Do these women never go to a pool?  Or the beach?  I mean, they chose to work here!

Anyway, so much for nothing much happening here.  The Captain appears to be angling to make something happen.  The more he treats us as children with all these senseless rules, the more guys are going to rebel.  They aren’t in prison because they played well with others, or because they got along well with authority.  These petty rules just make already angry people angrier and more resentful.  Respect breeds respect and the opposite breeds the opposite.  Even children know this.

Dealing with Overcrowding

Ever had to wait in line to take a shower?  Brush your teeth?  Use the phone?  The toilet?  Get hot water for your instant oatmeal?  Pick up your mail?  Lines!  People!  Crowds!  Aggghhhh!!!  This occasional inconvenience for most folks is almost an hourly event in prison.  And in the past few months it’s gotten steadily worse as our numbers increased from 145 people to 170 on the unit.  Per BOP guidelines, maximum capacity is no more than 2 men per each of the unit’s 62 spacious cubes.  That means we are zoned for 124 people.  And that’s crowded.  Now add 46 extra guys to the mix.  That’s 46 extra showers, 46 more trips to the toilet, 46 more crowded in the tv room, etc.  Everybody competing for resources, not always respectfully.  I’ve seen guys wait in line from 8:30 pm til after 10 just to get a shower.

Now I know that you may be reading this and thinking, “Boo hoo.  You’re in prison!  Lucky you even get to take a shower!”  I hear that.  You’re entitled to your opinion and yes it could definitely be worse in here.  But someday we’ll all be getting out.  The great early critic of American society Alexis de Tocqueville is one of many who has considered that fact in accordance with his belief that you judge a society based on how we treat the least among us – the poor, immigrants, the incarcerated.  Maybe crowding doesn’t seem like a big deal, but if you were in here, you’d get it.

For one thing, always having to compete for basic stuff like food, water, the toilet, it leads to stress and that leads inevitably to conflict.  As you may appreciate, most of the 170 guys on the unit don’t have graduate degrees in peaceful conflict resolution.  Preferred adaptive strategies include arguing, hustling, stealing, bullying, lying, cheating, etc.  The prison administration appears confused by all this discord.  They assume we’re just whiners, and respond by cracking down on petty rules that were never previously enforced, which only leads to more frustration.  Here’s an example:  If you are in line for a shower or the laundry the procedure has been to hang your towel or place your bag in line, so you don’t always have to stand there for an hour or more.  We all follow the plan, it works just fine.  Maybe your turn comes up, you’re not back yet, no problem, the next guy goes and you bump back one place in the line.  But now, out of the blue, we’ve got the guards walking along collecting the towels and laundry bags, tossing them in a bin and shouting, “No line saving!”  Really?  Seriously?

So here we have this vicious cycle developing.  But the one upside is that the sudden rule enforcement is pulling us all together, galvanizing us in a solid opposition to the administration.  Maybe, as some believe, this niggling crackdown is a ploy intended to distract us from the stifling overcrowding in here.  If so, I tip my hat to them (only not inside, since they won’t let us wear hats indoors anymore).  Score:  BOP 1, Us, 0.  Except, shhh, don’t tell.  I’ve got my hat on,   writing this with a contraband mechanical pencil while eating a muffin smuggled from the kitchen.  Small victories!

The Art of Bantering with Guards

These are actual conversations with guards over the past few days: 

As I'm leaving the Chow Hall with an empty water bottle:

Guard – What’s in your hand?

Me – A water bottle?

Guard – Why?

Me – It doesn’t fit in my pocket.

Guard – Why do you have it?

Me – I am heading to Rec and am aware of the dangers of dehydration.

Guard – Do you know it’s against the rules to bring it into Chow Hall because guys fill them up and steal.

Me – Yes, but it’s empty (holding it up) and I was leaving.  And I wasn’t trying to hide it.

Guard – I could take it.

Me – Yes you could.

Guard – (Staring at me.)  Well?

Me – (Handing him the bottle.)  Okay.

Guard – Keep it.  Just letting you know I could take it.

Me – Duly noted.

Guard – What?

Me – I am aware.

Guard – Of what?

Me – Your ability to take the water bottle.

Guard – Oh, okay, good.

Me – Is that all?

Guard – Yes.

Lesson here:  Be polite and concrete.  Answer exactly what you are asked and no more.  And don’t argue.  If you do that, they have no idea what to do.

Walking down steps after being called to my job as Baseball Commissioner:

Guard – (Standing at bottom of steps)  Why you coming down them steps?

Me – It’s safer than jumping.

Guard – Where are you going?

Me – After I get to the bottom?

Guard – Yes.

Me – Recreation.

Guard – Why?

Me – I was paged on the intercom.

Guard – Why?

Me – I guess because Officer ____ wants to speak with me.

Guard – Why he need you?

Me – I don’t know, most likely about softball.

Guard – Does he need you now?

Me – Well, he called me now.

Guard – Name?

Me – (I tell him my name.)

Guard -  (Now calls on the radio to Recreation to check this out.)  You better get going, he called you five minutes ago, he wants to know where you been?

Me – Talking to you.

Guard – Umm, okay.  Go.

After translating a question that an Hispanic prisoner wants to ask a guard:

Guard – Are you Puerto Rican?

Me – No.

Guard – Are you from Puerto Rico?

Me – No.

Guard – Where are you from?

Me – (I state the state I’m from.)

Guard – When did you come to the United States?

Me – (I tell him my birth year.)

Guard – Is that when you learned American?

Me – Yeah, but I already knew English, so it was easy.

Guard – Then why do you speak Spanish, or was that Mexican?

Me – Both, and because I like it.

Guard – Damn, I’ll never figure you people out.

To me all this feels like an old episode of Candid Camera or Punk’d but unfortunately these are typical exchanges in here.  Main rules:  I am never rude, never cuss, answer all questions, nothing more and nothing less.  I also choose my words wisely.  It would not do to banter with some guards at all.  Most important thing:  Keep a straight face, something I’m getting good at – in English, American, Spanish or Mexican!