The Great Escape?

The other day word spread over the officers’ radios that a possible escape had taken place.  It hadn’t of course, but the reaction and behavior of some officers shows how ill-equipped they are to work at a prison.  It also shows how unnatural the state of incarceration is.

Faheem is a 28 year old African-American, former Army paratrooper, doing seven years for drug possession and sale.  He’s also the building painter as well as a general fix it man here in the college building.  He does just about any job that needs to be done in our building.  He’s a bright, funny, young Muslim student who can always be found walking around with a paint brush or dust mop in his hand.

Last week during CO O’Tay’s shift the famous escape caper took place.  How do I describe CO O’Tay?  She is a morbidly obese sixty year old black woman who gets more grievances written on her than any officer on the compound.  She is loud, verbally abusive and very short tempered.  And, as long-time, serious crime residents here will tell you, her behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at a higher level.  “You tell a guy he has 75 years, even life and he’s at a level 4 and then subject him to her?  She wouldn’t last a week.”  Sounds harsh and brutal, but that’s prison.  That’s the reality of Virginia’s corrections system.

But here?  Here guys – out of their own ignorance – cuss her and yell back at her which just adds gasoline to the fire.  Its anger and ignorance running head-on into more anger and ignorance.  It’s toxic, it’s obnoxious and I sit on my bunk and watch it play out daily.

So, Faheem goes down to maintenance and retrieves a large folding ladder.  He brings the ladder back and moves around the building Windexing and wiping down all the large mirrors hung at the connection of wall and ceiling that give the COs views down every aisle and into most corners.  And the rag he’s using is thick with dirt and dust after only a mirror or two because we live in squalor and filth.  Dirt, grime, insects, an occasional mouse, they all become part of the 4A landscape.

The job completed, the mirrors sparkle, and Faheem folds the ladder, knocks on the booth glass and is buzzed out both doors and onto the boulevard.  The officer in the booth, however, isn’t O’Tay.  She was on break.  It was a “filler”, a roving CO who sits in when COs go on break.

Faheem walks the ladder back to maintenance.  No one’s in the shop.  He leaves the ladder, comes back and is admitted to the building and sees that rec call was just made.  Quick change and out the door goes Faheem which makes perfect sense because it’s 75° and sunny.

O’Tay returns from break and doesn’t see Faheem – or the ladder.  What does she do?  She hits the emergency button and radios the watch command office.  “There’s a guy with a ladder missing.  I think he’s gone over the fence.”

Within seconds of that transmission the loudspeaker begins blaring “4A, bed 25, Antony [note:  his given “birth” name] report back to your building immediately!”  A captain, three sergeants, and the unit manager hustle down the boulevard and into our building.  All three building officers (our two regulars and the “floater”) are huddled in the control booth.  “How longs he been missin?”  “How the hell did he get a ladder to the fence?”  And Faheem?  He’s out walking laps on the track on a beautiful, sunny, early spring day.

Faheem had no idea what was happening.  As he completed a lap he stopped at building 4’s rec gate and waited for an officer to open the lock.  “He gave me a weird look when he let me in”, Faheem told me later.

Five minutes of panicked questioning and then everyone realized the ladder was where it should be, always was, and so was Faheem.  And O’Tay?  Just a lot of muttering by officers about what an over-reactive idiot she’d been.
Here’s the serious side to the issue.  Escape is nothing to joke about.  An attempted prison escape carries an automatic loss of good time, a street charge which, if convicted under, carries a minimum of five years and you’re shipped to max security.

The problem isn’t O’Tay.  The problem, you see, is the system.  The system needs bodies – both inmates and folks who lack other job skills to watch them.  In most cases, the only difference between officer and inmate is the conviction.  The folks are from the same towns, same schools.  The officers lack professionalism and training because running a prison properly – safely, humanely, with appropriate programs for rehabilitation – can’t be sustained with 40,000 inmates. 

It’s the honest assessment of the prison system that escapes reality, not Faheem and his ladder.