Another Lockdown Goes By

Monday morning the announcement came. “The facility is on lockdown. Cease all movement.” Rumors had been swirling the entire past week that it was coming. Rumors in prison come at you by the dozens and they’re almost always wrong. This time they were right.



In the college building we figured it was a perfect week for a lockdown. Classes were on a ten day break. With the exception of the grammar review session I was leading, the guys were on break. Funny thing is, the prison system doesn’t care about scheduling around school. “Security trumps everything”, is the standard operating procedure. They’ve scheduled lockdowns during GED testing, college finals, anything.


The compound thought it was coming for other reasons. First, the new warden showed up a week ago. He’s the warden from the soon to be closed James River Corrections Center, a level 2 facility sitting on the banks of the James in rural Goochland County. That prison, built in 1896, was dilapidated and crumbling, a visible reminder of the “old prison” model: red brick and foreboding, not the new “kinder yet still behind wire” design so popular around Virginia’s correction establishment. James River was known as an “easy bid”. Tobacco was still plentiful; cell phones were all over the compound. Sounds like a perfect guy to take over this facility!


The assistant warden here, a round belly fellow who actually believed in rehabilitation, promptly stepped down. He wanted the warden’s job. Being turned down a second time, he finally decided to move on. His next stop: Mecklenburg, currently used for receiving. The assistant warden at Nottoway (a level 4 just up the road and the site of a significant stabbing incident six months ago – one officer seriously injured, one inmate dead, couple others seriously hurt) decided to come here. A former senior officer here, he loves buildings to shine. “Fresh paint is a must.” I’ve got news for him. Cologne on a turd doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a turd.


So, the new bosses are at work and a fresh shift began Monday. Perfect time to lockdown! The premise behind a lockdown is relatively simple. You hold every inmate in their building, limit access around the compound including access by inmates to guys in other buildings. You then swoop in with a sufficient force of highly trained officers to search out drugs, tobacco, weapons and assorted contraband. It should work, in principle at least. But principle doesn’t have much relevance in the modern DOC.


First, there are insufficient numbers of officers to conduct a fast-paced sweep. Lock down was announced at 8:15 am Monday. Our building wasn’t “shook down” until Tuesday afternoon at 4:00. E and I are bunkmates. We lucked into two female CO’s from our building. They knew we were “good guys” so our search (going through our lockers and personal effects) took less than five minutes. “We miss you guys over in 3.” Truth is, neither of us had anything (other than a few extra t-shirts and an extra pair of running shoes) but we could have hidden a kilo of weed in our lockers and it wouldn’t have been found. These two young female officers are good, hardworking ladies, but they lack the time to actually do the job properly. Instead, they play the odds “they’re cool; we can overlook them.”


Second, a fair number of officers are corrupt. They buddy up to the inmates and for “the right price” get stuff in. This compound is currently overrun with “spice” – synthetic weed that is undetectable in urine tests. The Virginia Legislature rushed a bill through – already signed by the Governor – to make the sale of “spice” illegal. Yet, here on the compound it’s everywhere. How, do you suppose it gets in?


Three days before we locked down, CO’s gave Big S and DC a “heads up” to move extra CDs, books and sneakers. Where does the extra stuff go? Vocational and educational buildings. They only run drug dogs through those buildings so, under the watchful eye of the building officer, bags of CDs and extra clothes are placed in cabinets in the school.


It’s all form over substance. The results from our building shakedown: about 30 empty plastic jars. All the extras are still in place. Meanwhile, the officers are exhausted. They’ve worked extra hours; COs that are off this week are called in and paid extra for additional shift work. The shakedown costs a great deal and accomplishes virtually nothing.


If that’s true, why do them? Great question with a simple answer: because that’s what’s always been done in prison. Why fix what hasn’t worked for decades? DOC is a tired, outmoded, outdated department still investing precious resources in a prison operation that fails miserably day in and day out. Shakedown’s just another example of that broken paradigm.


I sit in my cut. The sun is shining. I’m reading and writing and looking forward to a run at the end of the week. Meanwhile, the COs are struggling to finish buildings 5 and 6 before tonight. They could try a new approach, but they won’t. Six months from now we’ll do it all over again.