Death in Prison

A correctional officer (C.O.), prison guard, died over the weekend.  He had a heart attack at home.  I am sure he is mourned by family and friends, and I feel sympathy for them.  I am truly saddened by any loss of human life.  CO Jones was a decent guy, treated us fairly, and at times was even friendly, though he made it clear that he was not any inmate’s friend.  He kept things simple:  he was staff, we are inmates.  We’re fine with that.  We respected him, because he treated everyone – black, white, Hispanic, whatever – the same.  He didn’t do favors but if, in prison parlance, “you had somethin’ comin’,” he made sure you got it.  I don’t know his first name.  May he rest in peace.

Inside – not counting the suicide I wrote about in a previous post – six inmates have died of natural causes over the past few months.  I knew all six by face, some by name.  Some guys in here form bonds as strong as brotherhood; you know everything about them.  Spouses on the outside may support each other, too.  We are a community and look out for each other.  You live in a 7-1/2 by 10-1/2 foot cubicle with one or two other guys and you get to know each other pretty well, whether you want to or not.  These people who died were our friends.  Three were found unresponsive in their bunks by their cellmates.  The other three were in obvious distress. 

 

A dark joke here is that no one ever dies on the compound.  Somehow they always hang on until they reach the prison's medical center.  Old timers tell a tale like something out of the movie Weekend at Bernie’s of a dead body propped up with staff talking to him as they rolled him in a wheelchair to medical.  There’s a story about a body that fell off a gurney, clearly unresponsive, and a staff member pretended he had jumped off the cart and scolded him for goofing off.

When the prison guard CO Jones died, they shut down the entire compound for the day and held a Town Hall meeting to counsel us about his death.  The chaplain, the psychologist, the counselor, and an administrator took turns talking with us.  We prayed.  We were told that help was available if we wanted to talk to someone about the tragic passing of this prison guard.  We were asked to consider his death as a cautionary tale about taking better care of our health.  We were told to let ourselves mourn.

Now compare this to what happens when an inmate dies.  Every few months a hastily typed and scanned memo appears on the electronic bulletin board listing the names of inmates who have died.  It often has typos and sometimes even misspells their names.  No memorial service is held for any of them.  There is no Town Hall meeting.  We are told to stop saying, “they found ______ dead.”  No prayer, no counseling, nothing happened, so shut up.  The feeling is that we are not allowed to mourn.  The Administration would probably tell you that they are maintaining order, trying to keep the place calm.  But we inmates understand that the real message is that their lives mean more than ours.  We are not worthy of a dignified death.  We “got nothin’ comin’.”  

I can’t tell you what the Administration’s reasons are for what they do.  But after awhile perception begins to feel like reality.  In here this reality has been explained to me by a fellow inmate as follows:  “They try to take away everything, they don’t let you do nothin’ here, not even die.”