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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Herman, Jo Pa and Us

Yes, we have cable connections at our beds.  Most guys have TV’s:  clear plastic, 13 inch color sets (remotes are prohibited) that cost over $200.00 but can be purchased in catalogs for $70.00 (electronics are covered by the exclusive contract DOC has with Keefe.  Inmates – just as with commissary, phone calls, and CDs – pay exorbitant mark ups for “personal property”.  And most guys do their time watching TV – a lot of it.
Sports, as you can imagine, dominates TV watching in here (closely followed by BET and Univision (the Spanish network that specializes in beautiful women 24/7).  This past week all eyes were focused on two huge scandals and news and sports converged into a perfect storm of opinions.  Herman Cain, black Republican candidate for President, has been dogged over allegations brought by four white women that years ago he sexually harassed them.  As that story swirled around the building with debates over the veracity of the accusers’ stories and underlying racial component to it, the tragedy that has become Penn State broke.
Penn State:  Football, Jo Pa and pedophilia.  Newscasters flocking to “Happy Valley” to “report” (I use that word tongue in cheek) every scurrilous detail.  With self-righteous indignation, talking heads tell the viewers exactly what the proper moral response should have been from Joe Paterno, the athletic director, the grad assistant and everyone else involved.

And the news reporters:  what must Edward R. Murrow be thinking?  They report as “breaking news” every lurid tidbit they can find.  Each mention of “anal penetration” brings another spike in their Network’s Neilsen rating.  And the notion of innocent until proven guilty?  “Screw that.  We can speculate why Sandusky wasn’t offered a head coaching job anywhere. “
Meanwhile, as their grandfatherly head coach is forced out, Penn State students gather and chant, “Jo Pa” until the cameras show up and the night mixes with alcohol and anger and cars are turned over and windows broken.  All the while we sit in our prison dorm and watch and argue.

Herman Cain.  You want black inmates to feel sympathy for a Republican, run the stories the way they’ve come out about Cain.  The entire episode smacks of the century old fears that black men are hypersexual.  The fact that the black man in question is a conservative Republican only adds to the feeding frenzy.
Penn State.  Regular inmates hate sex offenders, especially pedophiles.  Though this – and all compounds – have their share of them, they survive in prison under the constant fear their crimes will be found out.  If my crime and education carry special status with respect and admiration, theirs is at the opposite end of the spectrum.  At higher level facilities child sex offenders are routinely raped, beaten and murdered.  They spend their bids in “pc” – protective custody – for fear of what the general prison population would do to them.

Here, they are taunted (“diaper sniper”, “clown hands”), pushed around and robbed.  A year ago I wrote a blog detailing my ambivalence dealing with sex offenders.  How, I wondered, do I meet my Christian duty to be merciful with my disgust over a man who would find sexual release with a child?  I reached an uneasy equilibrium, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach that allowed me to treat each man the same, to not pass judgment.  And then came Penn State. 
Is Sandusky guilty?  I don’t know.  Should Joe Paterno morally have done more?  I don’t know all the details.  I know this – in a frenzy to get ratings our “Fourth Estate” has sold their souls and we collectively encourage it each time we buy into the “breaking news” of the day mantra.

I know one other thing.  The New Testament Book of James (my favorite Book in the Bible) details in five chapters Christian discipleship.  It is not an easy path.  As I listened to the debates in here unfold about Herman Cain, Penn State and Joe Paterno; one admonition from James kept replaying in my mind:  “mercy triumphs over judgment.”  Wise words if ever there were any.
And for all those who “know” precisely what Herman Cain did and what Joe Paterno should have done Rudyard Kipling said it best:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there nothing in you
except the will which says to them:  Hold on.”

Bernie, Jack and Me

I lead a peculiar life in prison. I have remained – at least for the first three years anyway – above the daily fray of theft, two-bit violence, threats and general disrespect from larger, more violent men.  As I’ve written before, Darwinism – “survival of the fittest” – plays out daily in places like this.  That I’ve remained unscathed and only been a recorder of the abysmal conditions here is one of those things I have counted as a blessing from God.  Oscar Wilde, as I previously noted, was quite right when he wrote “what seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.”
Survival of the fittest.  So often that is thought to be the biggest, the strongest, the cunning predator over the weak prey.  I have discovered that brains, education, and your crime, may in fact place you in the realm of “fittest” in this screwy world behind wire.
Which led to a funny revelation for me the last few weeks.  As Bernie Madoff’s wife and son peddled a book attempting to get them public sympathy (at the price of more scorn heaped on Mr. Madoff) guys started calling me “Larry Madoff”.  Newspaper accounts of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, his wife’s “I didn’t know” mea culpa and his liquidation trustee’s multiple suits against anyone ever connected with him (at least the attorneys will be paid in full!) appeared on my bunk and guys would ask for my thoughts.

Then, last week Jack Abramoff appeared on “60 minutes” and the guys lined up to hear my pronouncements on the man convicted of corrupting congress and cheating his clients – various Indian tribes seeking gambling compacts – out of $45 million.  Ironically, Abramoff served less than four years in a medium security Federal prison.  He now works as an accountant for a pizzeria with a $24 million restitution order on his back.  Of course, he lives at home with his wife, children and dogs – same house, same everything – just as he did before his arrest.  So, naturally I was called “Larry Jack” for a few days.
And the questions always followed the same lines:
“Do you really think Madoff’s wife didn’t know?”
“Why do you think she hasn’t divorced him?”
“Does it piss you off that both their wives stayed while yours dumped you?”

Leaving my answers to those questions for another day, both stories got me thinking.  Take Bernie Madoff.  His wife said “he was a wonderful man who got in over his head and was afraid to admit it.  It took on a life of its own.”  I get that.  Like Bernie, my intention was never to steal for twelve years.  I know why I wrote the first check.  I know what I was feeling, what I was dealing with.  And, I knew it was wrong.  But once you cross that line it gets easier and easier until you want to stop, but the fear of getting caught, of admitting what you’ve done, paralyzes you.
Like Bernie, death seemed a better solution than facing failure.  It was a George Bailey moment he – and I – faced.  Only Frank Capra didn’t write the ending; a judge did.

Then there was a comment from Abramoff.  He told the interviewer his pride blinded him.  He was, in his mind, a highly moral man, a pillar of the community.  The money, the access, the perks, corrupted him.  It was true as Bob Dylan so poetically put it, that “all he believes are his eyes…and his eyes they just tell him lies…”  There’s a reason the Bible warns us of the dangers of pride.  As Jack Abramoff spoke, I could only shake my head in agreement.
Bernie, Jack and me.  I told a friend in a letter this week I’m a better man for going through this.  I’m a lot lonelier, but I’m also a lot less judgmental and more merciful.  I’m not sure what Bernie’s doing, but Jack – well, he appears to be a different man as well.

Soviet dissident and political prisoner Mihajlo Mihailov said “whoever follows his inner voice and saves his soul, learns empirically that, so long as the soul is not lost, the most important is not lost.”
Bernie and Jack are not simple, black and white, good versus evil men nor are their circumstances.  The guys understand that about me.  But, it applies to everyone.  Perhaps there’s a little of Bernie and Jack in all of us.

Pieta

One of the world’s best known pieces of sculpture is the “Pieta”.  Latin for “pity” it depicts a weeping Virgin Mary holding the broken, dead body of her son, Jesus.  Christ is prone, across her lap, his arms hanging to the floor.  Mary looks with sadness and love, motherly love, at the body of her dear son.
That came to mind this week as I thought about mothers.  As I wrote a few weeks ago, my younger brother, my only sibling, passed away.  He lived a difficult life punctuated, I imagine, by moments of joy such as at the birth of his daughter.  My brother had a very difficult relationship with our mother.  He lashed out at her frequently.  He could be – and regularly was – verbally abusive.  For much of his adult life he was full of anger and self-pity.  He needed someone to blame and that fell on my mom.
My mom isn’t perfect.  She’s half Italian, half Irish and three-quarters worried what everyone thinks.   But, on her own she was her congregation’s visitation committee.  Birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations, tragedies, it’s my mom who gets cards and meals out.  She goes to hospitals and nursing homes every week.  She was able to reach and help so many, yet my brother was unreachable.  So many times in my life I remember her eyes welling up with tears as she’d whisper “he hates me”. 

Then a strange thing happened.  As my brother lay dying those last few difficult weeks it was my mother he called for.  Going in and out of lucidness he’d call “where’s mom?” and mom was always there.  My father, a stoic Korean War Veteran, couldn’t stay in the room and watch my brother’s life ebb.  He would walk out, go around the hospital halls.  Not my mom.  She took his laundry (t-shirts, pajama bottoms) each night and brought them back fresh the next morning.  When Mark lost his appetite, she made rice pudding (one of his favorites) and fed it to him.
The morning my brother died my mother had spent the night “I just had a sense,” she told me.  At 4:30 am she called my father at the house.  “You need to come back.”  My dad arrived just a few minutes before Mark took his last breath.  My mother never left his side.

A mother’s love.  I have seen grown men in here, men who have been stabbed, beaten, shot, kept in solitary for months, who have never shed a tear in their lives until their mothers passed.  And then?  I’ve seen them weep uncontrollably.  A guy I respect in here told me early on a piece of advice I’ve thought about these past few weeks.  He said “if his mother hasn’t given up on him, he’s still got a chance.”  For nine months after my arrest my father refused to speak to me.  My mom?  Multiple times each week she wrote. No matter what I did I knew my mom still believed I could overcome this.
Shortly after our second son was born, he developed a severe respiratory infection.  His oxygen level hovered, at times, in very dangerous levels.   Our family physician lived in our neighborhood.  He debated hospitalizing our young son but, knowing us and being willing to come by our house anytime we called, he allowed us to keep our son at home.  We were both exhausted.  At one point, late in the evening, I fell asleep on the couch.  When I awoke I looked across the room.  There, sitting in our recliner was my wife.  She held our son to her chest.  He slept soundly under her watchful gaze, his fist hours of restful sleep in days.

I looked at the two of them for the longest time trying to fathom the mystery of a mother’s love.  She would not close her eyes, she would not move while her child lay sleeping. 
Last Wednesday would have been my brother’s 49th birthday.  I sent my folks a card and called Thursday.  My mother wept when she spoke to me.  “Yesterday was tough,” she told me.  I get that.  She carried that child.  She birthed that child.  She was there when her baby breathed his last.

Thanksgiving is here.   The past few months have given me a new perspective on life, a new sense of hope.   I am thankful for this experience.  More than anything, I’m thankful that my eyes have been opened about my mom.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Three Men I Know

There are three men I know and each, I learned this week, are facing a significant crisis.  How they deal with their particular crisis, how they proceed forward, will say much about them.  As I watch and pray over the incidents that unfold around me I see faith lessons.
Woo was one of our first IT students.  I say was because this week he was sent to the hole, locked up after fighting another inmate in the staff kitchen.  Fight is the wrong word.  It was no fight.  Woo, a man I’ve described in the blog before as having a head the size of a Rottweiler’s is a huge man. He has tremendous forearms, almost as thick as thighs, “Popeye” arms.  He is a large, strong, powerful man.
Woo is a staff cook.  Tuesday, during his shift, another staff worker began running his mouth.  Words were exchanged. Woo has been dealing for months with his mother’s passing.  Because her home was in Georgia he was unable to attend (inmates are prohibited from funerals out of state).  So Woo, dealing with the loss of his mother, the despair of incarceration, and the stress of waiting to see if his federal crack sentence is reduced (he has five years to do on a federal conviction which he starts when he leaves VA DOC in June 2012.  In July, President Obama signed into law, applying retroactive sentencing guidelines, that corrects the harsh disparity between crack versus powder cocaine sentences) snapped out. 
He picked the obnoxious inmate up and threw him on the heated stove causing second degree burns.  Woo pled guilty to a simple charge of fighting (could have been much worse), and is doing fifteen days in the hole.  His security level is being raised.  His good time (what little we receive) taken (adding 90 plus additional days to his sentence).  He has been removed from his job and college.

I have become aggressively pacifistic (an oxymoron if ever I heard one) since my arrest.  Violence is never the solution.  Behavior – fighting especially – to settle disputes in prison is commonplace.  I regularly recite the mantra to the guys “you can’t put your hands on someone in the real world”.  Unfortunately, in the “real world” too often “might makes right”.  Violence begets violence.  As Gandhi said “an eye for an eye and we’ll all be blind.”
How will Woo respond?  How will the loss of his job, college and good time affect him for the remainder of his bid?  What has he learned from this that will ensure he won’t repeat the insanity?  This is Woo’s third time in prison.  I pray it’s his last but this past week gave me reasons to think it isn’t.

Monday night the 5:00 pm news put up the photo of a “convicted sex offender” caught in a high school parking lot in Richmond.  “An investigation revealed the offender had failed to register.”  The offender?  Alexander, the “lawyer” I’d written about previously who made thousands of dollars each month off the hopes of inmates seeking a way out, the same guy who became involved with an officer this past summer which led to him being investigated and her being fired.  The same Alexander who was only released 56 days ago.
As I’ve written before, I met Alexander at the Henrico Jail.  To see someone I knew in jail came as a complete shock to me.  I’d seen him around bar events, legal ed seminars, and the like from time to time.  My gut reaction always was “this guy’s full of it”.  My opinion didn’t change when I saw him at the jail or later when I saw him here.  He was too cocky, too crazy with the officers, and to quick to tell guys their cases were beatable.  I avoided him.

Some of the officers had tipped me off that things weren’t as Alexander said.  He’d tell guys he ran a $4 million plus scheme on the street to gain inmate awe (point of information:  million dollar thefts carry reverence in prison.  I am treated as a genius because I was dumb enough to get caught after steeling $2 million).  He, in fact, took $30,000 from a trust account.  He also neglected to tell guys he had a 1999 conviction for indecency with a minor.
Even worse, there were indications Alexander hadn’t learned anything from his stay in the hole his last three months here – or his three plus year bid.  A number of guys had stopped me the past few weeks asking for help putting letters and materials together to mail to Alexander.  “He’s agreed to have his law firm handle my appeal,” they’d tell me.  Problem is, there is no law firm.  Alexander isn’t a lawyer.  He’s still running the same hustle he ran in here.

Now, he’s back in jail.  He’s facing new charges and these are serious:  failure to register is a major problem for a sex offender.  Being in a school zone as an unregistered convicted sex offender makes things even worse.  Alexander will, in all likelihood, be back in prison within the next few months.  He’ll get new time for his new charges and additional time for his violation of the terms of his probation.
For the guys in here still doing time, it’s just another dumb ass who gets out and screws up and makes it that much tougher on the rest of us to get out early.  Will Alexander ever get it together?  The answer appears to be doubtful.

And then there is Gary.  Gary is an Episcopal minister, a rector at a well-established church in Richmond.  Shortly after my arrest a dear friend who came almost daily to see me telephoned my minister.  The minister’s response when my friend asked him to visit me at the jail?  “I’m not getting in the middle of his legal problems and his marital problems.”  He wasn’t the only one from my church who rejected me after my arrest.  But the sting of being rejected by my clergy was deep.
My friend turned to his own pastor – Gary – to visit me.  Gary didn’t know me.  He’d never met me.  I wasn’t a member of his flock.  Yet, this man, this stranger, called on me at the jail.  He continued to do so monthly.

When I transferred to the hell that was receiving, Gary showed up.  He listened to me.  When I cried out asking “why” he didn’t offer simple, easy explanations for the mystery that is God.  Shortly after my arrival at receiving he sent me a card with the archangel Michael portrayed.  “Michael is the angel who guards and protects the Lord’s people” he wrote.  I put that card on the bunk so that every night as I lay there hearing the screams throughout the building I saw Michael.  That card, that angel, greets me every time I open my locker.
Throughout my stay here at Lunenburg Gary has written me – and visited.  He sent two amazing books about Christian meditation that helped me “silence the noise” in my head during prayers and bask in the quiet presence of God. There are two men that have led me to a deeper understanding of the mystery and magnificence of the Lord.  Gary and my friend Harley, who asked Gary to visit, are those men.

When I seek to model my Christian life after someone, it’s Gary I think of.  He had no reason to reach out to me.  Yet, his faith led him to me.  I am surviving this because of people like Gary.
Last night I received a copy of a letter Gary mailed to his parishioners.  My friend sent it with a short note that said “keep Gary in your prayers”.   Gary advised his congregation that he’d been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  “The doctors are optimistic” he wrote about his prognosis.

I have taken to heart conversations and letters I’ve shared with this wonderful pastor.  Life does indeed not appear to make sense sometimes.  And trials and suffering make their way into our lives and they test us to the point of breaking.  But, God is good.  He is in the midst of all storms and He does see us through.
Every night since that first visit he made to the jail, Gary has been included in my prayers.  I don’t understand why or how cancer strikes.  I don’t understand why good people suffer.  But I do know Gary will be fine.  He is a good man and has the love, respect, and prayers of many.

Three men I know this week confronted trials.  Like all of us, some of the trials faced were the result of anger and impulse, or pride and arrogance, and others just visited upon us for no reason.  I pray for all three men that their trials awaken in them the true purpose God calls them to.
And these three remind me of a story:  “A Rottweiler, an attorney and a priest walk into a bar…”

Friday, November 11, 2011

Dreams Deferred

I had a conversation with my bunkmate the other night that got me thinking.  I must confess I didn’t like IG very much when he moved into the bottom bunk.  He was extremely cluttered – to the point of being sloppy.  He also brought a lot of “irons in the fire” with him.  He ran a few hustles:  parlay sheets, poker games.  On more than one occasion I lost my cool with him.  On more than one occasion Big S had to tell him to “tighten up”. 

But gradually over the past six months, we’ve developed a friendship.  He’s a very bright, polite kid:  just 24, already locked up seven years.  And, when I’d snap, he’d very quietly just, well, take it.  “My mom told me to be respectful of my elders” he told me one time.  That’s something you don’t hear very often in here.
IG has changed a lot.  He’s much neater and better organized than he was (though still not up to the standards either Big S or I maintain) and he’s become a voracious reader.  Almost every afternoon we have a conversation.  He’ll read something in the paper or come across an author he’d not read before and he’ll want to discuss it.

He’s a young, bright, black man trying to grow up and learn and ultimately make something of himself.  And to do that in this environment is a statement about his character.
The other night I was reading the newest issue of “Esquire” and there was a brief interview with comedian and actor Tim Allen.  IG saw me reading the piece and asked me about him.  I’m not sure why, but I read him the part where Allen refers to his first night in jail and the resulting three years he spent in California’s DOC for cocaine possession conviction.

“He went to prison?  How old was he?”  IG asked me.  I told him he was in his twenties and explained how he started honing his comic skills in prison as a means of passing time and protecting himself.  IG grew quiet.  “Larry, can I tell you something real personal?” he asked.  “Sure,” I replied.  “When I was in high school I did a couple of plays.  I wanted to be an actor.  That was my dream.  Then I got locked up.  I won’t ever be an actor.”
“Why not?” I asked.  “Why can’t you be an actor?  Why does your conviction have to define your future?  Why can’t you dream?”

Nothing is more destructive, nothing more harmful, than giving up your dreams.  I know from personal experience.  I also know a prison sentence doesn’t have to be the end.  It can be a beginning. 
One of the biggest hurdles I face dealing with the guys in this college program is overcoming their belief that no one will give them a chance as a felon.  Unfortunately, the evidence supports their view.  Virginia may lead the nation in discriminatory practices toward convicted felons after release.

And still there is hope.  For a long time I agonized over my future.  Perhaps it was the words I read in a letter from my ex:  “You’re a convicted felon.  You have a huge restitution order against you.  You have no home, no money, no future.  You’re not much of a catch.”  For more nights than I wish to recall I lay awake wondering what would become of me.  I’d be homeless, I thought, living under a highway overpass, alone, unloved, with nothing.
And then something happened.  And I remembered my dreams, dreams I put aside for years.  And, I realized, I could come back.

Guys in here think I’m a hopeless optimist.  Maybe I am.  It doesn’t mean I’m not scared or there aren’t days (and nights) that I don’t cry out “God, what will become of me?”  And a day doesn’t go by than I’m not lonely and loneliness is as bad as hopelessness.  I told IG I decided I would endure, I would persevere.  And as the words came out of my mouth I realized I was talking to IG about faith.
IG and I made a plan.  We’re writing to some colleges to get information about theatre degrees and looking for someone willing to mentor him.  I realized dreams don’t have to die.  No matter these men’s circumstances they still can follow their dreams.

The African-American poet Langston Hughes said it best,
“What happens to a dream deferred?
does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?”

No one should have their dreams dry up.

Ryan, Magnetic and Others

In an excerpt from the late Steve Jobs recently published autobiography he explains his disagreement with Christianity.  Too many Christians, he suggests, don’t try and live like Christ and follow His teachings and instead focus on tenets of faith and belief.  I think Mr. Jobs may be on to something and it got me thinking about a lot of guys I deal with in here.

Ryan is in the top bunk next to me.  He’s rather short and a workout friend.  He’s built like a hobbit on steroids.  He also is an active practicing “Christian”, or so he describes himself that way.  He is constantly reading Bible commentaries, pouring over King James interpretations of verses, and looking up precise meanings of words from a Bible dictionary he keeps at hand.  He also attends Bible study and services three times a week.  And yet, Ryan is one of the most angry, distrustful, arrogant people I have ever met. 
“I don’t trust any of these scumbags,” Ryan told me the other day.  When I smiled he asked me what was so funny.  “I’m trying to remember where in ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ that line appeared?”  His curt response:  “Jesus doesn’t expect us to put up with a-holes.”  Somehow I think Ryan missed the entire point of the New Testament.

Then, there is “Magnetic”.   He’s a young kid who has become a philosopher.  He knows virtually everything (just ask him).  He’s toying with the “5%ers” philosophy (hence the name “Magnetic”, there is also “Unique”, “Dominion”, and “Sincere”, in the building.  They pick and choose various pieces of each religious philosophy like ordering ala carte at a restaurant).  Magnetic spoke often of “black Friday”, the day in the future when the oppressed masses overthrow the white majority.  “You’ll be fine Larry.  You care about us.”
Magnetic spouts forth Bible verses (and passages from the Koran) to support his logic.  It blew up in his face recently.  The college students (regular program) had intro to sociology.  Magnetic was enrolled in the class.  The Professor had effeminate mannerisms.  Magnetic announced in class that “God hates” homosexuals and therefore, he didn’t have to listen to anything the Professor said.  The instructor left word for the school principal.  “I won’t tolerate ridicule like that.  He’s out.”  The principal concurred and Magnetic was removed from college.  Yesterday he was moved.  Before he left he asked me if I thought he was wrong to try and uphold a “Biblical principle”.

I thought for a moment about my response.  I reminded him I’m in prison for a “theft”.  “Thou shalt not steal.  My marriage – a church marriage – failed miserably.”  So I asked him, who am I to judge whether that instructor is living right?
I think a great deal about the lessons, the requirements of faith, and the more I think about them the more I realize I didn’t know a thing about what God really requires of us.  Over and over I hear the words from the prophet Micah, “What does the Lord require of you?  Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly before your God.”

Guys in here – Ryan, Magnetic and hundreds more – put on a show.  They “philosophize” about the big complex questions of existence; they memorize prayers and verses; they recite rules and principles of conduct, and they miss the simple message Steve Jobs addressed:  they forget to live like Christ. 
And as I thought about that I realized prison isn’t so different from the real world.  If only we were more compassionate, more forgiving, more merciful.

The other week I received a letter from a man I’d never met.  He’d heard of my situation from a mutual friend and wrote a letter which contained among other things, an interview with the former Catholic Bishop of Richmond, a tireless advocate for prison reform.  It was a warm letter and touched me deeply.  This man and his wife did not know me, yet they wrote to bolster my spirits.  Perhaps Steve Jobs was a little too quick to miss the efforts of some to live a little more like God intended.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Shakedown Week

Almost everything in prison is routine.  Every moment of every day observed by someone.  Counts – six a day (midnight, 3:00 am, and 6:00 am in your bunk; 11:30 am, 6:00 pm and 10:00 pm standing); calls to “13” (the boulevard officer) that there are “four exiting 4A for personal property”, or “school” or “medical”.  Every moment of the day is accounted for and choreographed.  Still the twice a year lockdown/shakedowns create a stir and a discomfort in the inmate population beyond the normal day to day struggles guys face with a lack of privacy and freedom.
Our “fall” shakedown hit this past week.  For months rumors have been running through this place about lockdown and shakedown.  The new warden and assistant warden, it was said, were going to turn this place upside down.  “We’ll be locked down two weeks.”  “They’re gonna feed us in the buildings.”  “Every guy is gonna be piss tested.”  Here’s the thing about prison rumors:  you can’t reason with them.  Every guy telling the story heard it “from a guy who got it from the Sarge, or the ‘Lt’, or the maintenance head.”  For the past four months we’ve heard “Monday’s lockdown.”
So, this past Monday morning, as the diabetics filtered back in from medical at 6:15 am they brought word:  “school and work cancelled”.  A few minutes after breakfast the speakers blasted the announcement:  “lockdown, lockdown.  Lunenburg is on lockdown.” (As an aside, every message in prison is repeated “lockdown, lockdown” or “chow call, chow call” and at a decibel range near that of a jumbo jet).

And it began; the dreaded lockdown/shakedown was underway.  You know what we discovered?  It was the shortest lockdown in my three years of incarceration.  Being confined in the building for three full days is no fun.  You are locked in a basketball size court space with 95 other guys.  Everyone is on edge, trying to hide the extra bowls, shoes, and other stuff inmates accumulate.  The “dayroom” (our building common area) is full of card games, dominoes and guys fixing food.  Meals are staggered:  only one building at a time.  That meant breakfast could be eaten at 6:30, lunch at 3:00, then dinner at 4:30. 
Guys look out the front door and yell back “they finished in ‘1’, goin into ‘2A’,” as though where the mass of officers headed bore any relation to the shakedown coming to our building.

Tuesday afternoon we were called to lunch early:  12:15.  Twenty minutes to eat, back to the building and the announcement came from the booth.  “IDs ready; you’re heading to the gym.”  Outside the building 25 officers and staff stood ready with clipboards, bins, carts, and bags waiting to pour into our building and ransack our stuff.
We were led to the gym and sat down; ten pairs of bunks called at a time.  My cut-mate and I were in the first group:  “95 & 96 come on.”  Back to the building; ID turned over to the “CT”, into the bathroom to strip, squat and cough (you lose all sense of personal privacy in prison); get dressed and get matched with your bunk-mate to a shakedown team; you head to your locker, open it and watch while someone pulls out and examines every sock, pair of underwear, every scrap of paper.

Half an hour later it’s over.  Some guys lost bowls, writing boards, empty peanut butter jars. I lost nothing.  They saw all my folders and books and said “this is the lawyer, he’s clean.”  Then, out of the building and back this time to sit in the visitation room until our entire building was examined.
By 3:30 we were back.  I washed my sheets and blankets (you have to strip your mattress – make sure you haven’t hidden anything inside) and spent a solid hour re-arranging everything.  They pull it out; you have to put it back.

Guys griped about losing extra pair of sneakers, or three extra t-shirts.  They complained about losing bowls and sporks they stole from the chow hall.  I helped a few guys file grievances:  they’d left their laundry bags at the washers and their clothes were confiscated.  By 7:00, things were back to “normal” – whatever that entails in prison.
The sweep of buildings ended Wednesday afternoon.  “Ball courts only, ball courts only” rec call went out Wednesday at 3:00.  Fresh air and stretching.  I was back at work Thursday morning (classes – GED and college were cancelled for the remainder of the week).  As I write this, normalcy has returned to the compound.

What did the lockdown/shakedown accomplish?  From an institutional standpoint, not much.  No drugs or weapons were found; they didn’t even bring the drug dogs in.  Economically, it costs a fair amount to shake the compound.  Extra officers have to be brought in and shifts lengthened.  Does DOC have the money to afford twice a year lockdowns at low custody facilities?  Probably not.  The same day we came off lock the news reported Virginia state employees would receive no raise this year.  Low custody facilities such as this are not required to shakedown.  They do it because, well, it’s part of the ambiance of prison life I guess.
Another shakedown over.  Another strip search and disruption of our things, of our routine, completed.  I wonder how treating people the way we do when we lock them up helps to turn them into “law abiding” citizens.  Most guys become institutionalized.  They run their hustles, collect their contraband, lie, cheat and steal their way through their sentence fed by a system that perpetuates itself with dehumanizing the man without worrying about rebuilding his character.

Corrections?  Each shakedown, each lockdown, shakes a little more out of the foundation of prison as a place to correct and rehabilitate.

Seein' The Future

A year after his big pronouncement on re-entry, we are starting to see the effects of the Governor’s emphasis on “new” programs to break the cycle of recidivism.  Lunenburg is in a state of transition.  Guys are moving from building to building.  There are pros and cons with all change, but here is my best guess about the chances for success under the Governor’s new proposal:  you can put perfume on a turd, but it’s still a turd.  The Governor’s re-entry model is a turd.
Shortly after his inauguration, Governor McDonnell announced that Virginia would take an entirely new approach to transitioning soon to be released “offenders” back to the community.  Ten prisons were earmarked as re-entry facilities.  Forget for a moment the Orwellian component to to so much of this:  inmates are now called “offenders”; prisons are called “correction centers”; inmates, er offenders aren’t released, they “transition” to their home communities; the idea was 1) evaluate every offender for their likelihood to reoffend using a 120 question software program, and 2) have every offender attend “thinking for a change”, a pre-packaged group-sharing program where offenders explore their feelings.  Both programs have been implemented here.  Any person with an ounce of common sense can see already the only thing different with McDonnell’s plan are the names.  Nothing has changed.
“Thinking for a change” involves upwards of forty offenders sitting in a room with a counselor exploring general topics such as healthy sexuality, anger, good parenting and job attendance.  Here’s the problem – prison creates an environment where any honest display of feelings can, and will, be used against you.  Offenders use personal disclosure as a sign of weakness.

Add to that the problem that the programs are, well, lame.  The counselors leading the groups are touchy, feely.  Most of the guys getting ready to get out are repeat offenders having done prior short stints.  The structural difficulties released offenders face:  drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues, poverty, court fines and fees, not to mention severe limitations on employment opportunities (because Virginia is one of the worst for discriminating against released felons), are not addressed by the Governor’s re-entry program.
If the Governor and the General Assembly were serious about ending the problem of recidivism they would dramatically change the department of corrections.  Parole would be reinstated and offenders would earn early release commensurate with their participation in meaningful rehabilitative programs.  That means end warehousing offenders and provide real, personalized treatment.  Don’t tell the public drug and alcohol rehab goes on in prison and pass off the ridiculous ten week group meetings as evidence of that.  DOC spends $1 billion each year.  That is one of every eight dollars spent by the Commonwealth and it is horribly misspent.

Then there is the 120 question “compass” test designed to identify likely re-offender candidates.  First, any moron taking the test knows what the “correct” answer is (i.e. the answer that will elicit the lowest threshold on the recidivism scale).  Second, the test has no relevance to an offender until you’re within your final year.
Take me for example.  I am in every low risk category used by the software designer and DOC (age, education, nonviolent, no prior prison).  I scored a “1” in every category.  As the counselor giving me the test said, I’m “virtually no risk to reoffend.”  Yet, my release date remains almost ten years from now.  I have no treatment programs on my “plan” other than “thinking for a change” and ironically, because of my success in “the real world”, I will – in all likelihood be a program mentor.

The Governor’s re-entry plan has changed nothing except require a lot of inmate movement.  It may look good on paper, but recidivism isn’t about paper.  It’s about flesh and blood and decisions men – and women – make when released.  If the Governor really wants to break the cycle of recidivism he needs to be bold.  It’s time, Governor McDonnell, for you to start “thinking for a change”.  It’s time for real corrections change.  It’s time for you to make real structural changes in rehabilitative and education programs and early release.