Hamster on a Wheel

Many times I’ve used this blog to try and paint a picture of life in here.  Because, until you actually experience it, you can’t comprehend the bipolar nature of prison, it isn’t well-thought out; it’s like a hamster on a wheel, you go and go and you get nowhere.  In fact, for all the emphasis on security and structure and organization, it really is a disorganized mess.  In the midst of random chaos you try – if you’re lucky – to find balance.  A friend wrote me recently and asked how I did it, maintained myself and my outlook.  I’m not sure.  But putting this on paper may help explain.

Typical day.  There’s a fight.  Two guys throwing punches at each other over something important like:  they can’t agree on what to watch on the dayroom TV, or “dude disrespected me”.  And no one, absolutely no one, intervenes – unless of course one of the guys is being seriously pummeled.  The officers will sweep in.  Both guys are hauled out and end up in “7” building, a/k/a “the hole”.  Ten days for fighting.  No one sees physical confrontations as a problem.  And “old heads”, the guys who did some serious time at serious prisons, will tell you at a higher level it’s not punches, its homemade knives, and locks in socks.  And why not?  You give a guy fifty years, you set no structure in his life, you have no real security on the floor, and you create a “thunder dome” environment.

Is it right?  No.  Yet, when I tell guys “you can’t act like this in the ‘real world’ (you know, the world outside here)” they look at me like I’m from some other world.  Violence, physically redressing problems, is part and parcel of this world in here and prison officials either are unable or unwilling to fix it.

Then there’s the constant rumor network:  “inmate.com”.  You put one thousand men in cramped quarters, most of who lack basic knowledge – like reading comprehension and math, and watch how simple stories run like wildfire.  Guys lack knowledge of the corrections system, of the law, politics, economics, life in general.

Try this exchange the other night during the Vice Presidential debate.  Question from Guy one:  “Who pays for Medicare and Social Security?”  Guy two:  “The government.  It’s free.”  Guy one:  So why would we want to pay for it?”

I get a piece of paper out and I start with $1000.00 as wages.  And I deduct seven percent for SSI; then take two percent Medicare; then tax the wages at eighteen percent for federal income tax and four percent for state income tax and they both say “Where’s my thousand dollars?”  Simple lesson, right?  If you make (gross) $52,000 a year, you’ll be lucky if your net is $38,000.  I show this and guys look at me like I’m Socrates who just let them in on the meaning of life.

And then, there’s the time I arrived here three years ago.  Almost every guy here had been in the system for years.  They were “finishing their bids” – five years or more, especially guys higher up the security chain, knew how to behave.  They’d seen the stabbings and the rapes and the extortions.  “You do your time and you mind your own business.”  What do we have now?  We have dozens and dozens of guys coming from jails where they sat six months, then they head directly to Lunenburg.  They go into “fast track” receiving for three to five days in “7” building and push a cart up the boulevard, land in our buildings where they’ll stay for thirty days, sixty days maybe, and then they’re off to “3” building and re-entry where they do nothing other than the “word of the day”.  Why?  Because these guys are sentenced to one year or possibly eighteen months.  They’re young; their families send money so they buy loads of crap on commissary; and, they think they’re at camp.  What’s fourteen months to a twenty-year old who’s never had a job?  And guys doing real time, running all the programs that these knuckleheads get enrolled in, are pissed.  Because the young dopes are coming back.  We all see it.  And if we see it, why doesn’t the prison administration?

I’m not a conspiracy guy.  You can’t convince me a multitude of people can organize and carry out a project and – most importantly – keep it quiet.  Somebody always talks.  But watching the way prisons are operated, I have to wonder.  Because prisons are run, prisons are structured, for return business.  And all the talk about re-entry, second chances, and any of the other terms politicians like to throw around are just Orwellian clap trap.  The truth is, the system is structured for failure.

Back to why I’m writing this blog.  It shouldn’t be this way.  I had two strange moments this week, both involving people’s perceptions of me.  And both humbled me and made me think, why is it me they see like this?  Both a teacher and a college student pulled me aside and said “guys see you as a role model.”  And, my initial reaction was to laugh.  I’m doing time – more time than most of these guys – and I’m doing it for breaking the law which I knew was wrong, and I knew there were risks but my ego let me think the risks didn’t apply to me.  And I remembered hoop star Charles Barkley’s famous statement, “I’m no role model”.

Why do they think I’m a role model?  “You don’t sugar coat what you did.  You take responsibility for it, you own up to it and you structure your time to make this period of your life count.”  They both added, “You don’t think you’re better than any of these other guys.  But, you think you’re better than prison”.

I’ve thought about that a good deal.  My ramblings this week are so you can understand what a waste of time prison is.  They system needs structure.  The system needs discipline and organization and the goal that a person can be restored after going through this.

Prison shouldn’t be 24/7 of boredom broken up by fights.  Prison should be transformative – in a positive way.  Until politicians and corrections administrators are willing to admit the system they oversee is failing, until voters are willing to hold those same people accountable for the violence in here and recidivism rates once guys leave, this broken system will continue to eat up money and lives.

If I can see it from in here, theirs is no reason why those in charge can’t see it.

Another week down.  Two fights; seven guys with dirty urine; forty new guys pushing carts.  On and on it goes, like the hamster on the wheel.  Time passes, but you get nowhere.

Quick Notes: Lunenburg this week

A couple of things that happened this week. 

First, the school bathroom became a “love nest” this week.  Two men, not known to be supporters of gay marriage, were caught “entangled” in the four commode stink hole that is the facility’s “school bathroom”.  Nothing, it seems, is beyond the realm of possibility in here.

This past week the booth began announcing “female officer on the floor”.  No one’s sure why.  I’ve always wondered why so many women willingly work in this environment.  Fraternization is a serious problem.  And female officers are both ogled and ogling (they routinely walk into the bathroom).  Equal employment means women have a right to work here.  Two questions come to mind.  Why then, are male officers limited in their ability to work around female inmates?  And, why does the prison need an announcement when a female officer does a walk through?  Sometimes what’s said tells us more about what those in charge think than just the words taken at face value.

I’m pleased to report that all three hospitalized students are now back in 4A.  But, Mustafa fell out – flu like symptoms.  Me?  I received my flu shot Friday.  Inmates over 50, kitchen workers and the chronically ill automatically get them.

One week into the new “grooming policy” and beards are coming out everywhere.  It’s funny, but guys equate facial hair with freedom.  If they only equated education and rehabilitation the same way, recidivism rates would collapse.

The NAACP announced in Richmond this week a renewed push to automatically restore felons’ voting rights.  350,000 Virginians – 6% of the eligible voting pool – are currently disenfranchised because of the felon voting exclusion.  Virginia is one of only four states that do not automatically restore a felon’s rights upon completion of their sentence.  Governor McDonnell was quick to announce how many voting rights he’d restored.  While he is to be commended for his efforts, 1800 felons is a small percentage of the total.  And, what happens when he leaves office?  There is no guarantee the next governors will view voting right for felons as an important political issue.  Felons deserve a say so in this country’s, this state’s direction once they’ve completed their sentence.

And two quick updates on former students.  “Live”, the gang leader who was indicted six months ago for sending out “hits” from here has plead guilty in exchange for a relatively short (9 year) sentence (51 years was suspended).  The poorly kept secret around the compound was that two gang members were called to testify against him.

On a positive note, “Bigs” – a gentle giant of a student (6’4”, 300 lbs) went home three weeks ago after eight years.  Within a week he found a job as the Newport News shipyard working as an electrician’s assistant.

A final thought.  NFL referee Ed Hochuli gave a great quote the other day.  Speaking about the failure of his first marriage twenty years ago and the pain he caused his kids he said the following:  “When you fail you have to kick yourself in the ass and go on.”  I know exactly what he means.

Numbers Inside

So many of my blogs focus on numbers.  There are the number of inmates the United States incarcerates:  over 2 million; numbers relating to living in a low custody dorm (92 guys crammed into 10 square feet of living space each); and numbers about commissary (like Ramen noodles that sell for thirty cents apiece).  Everything, it seems, is about numbers.  It shouldn’t strike anyone as odd that one of the fastest growing security threats inside is built around numbers.  I’m talking about the five percenters.

I’ve written about these guys before.  They are a splinter group of Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  Even N.O.I. members will tell you “those guys are nuts!”  I have to be careful how I say this because my own faith history, the early Christian church, grew in spite of severe oppression.  Our founding fathers (and mothers) of faith were in and out of jail, beaten, tortured, murdered.  And somehow the message got out.  But, I am deeply suspicious of any pseudo-faith that sprung up in the last twenty years during America’s love-fest with incarceration.

Here’s the five percent philosophy in a nutshell:  only 5% of the population (coincidentally, all African-American males in or released from prison) are destined for survival.  They follow a system built on the power and mystery of numbers.  Numerology is the essence of their belief system.  They memorize and recite principles ad nauseam (“number eighty-six, in our natural state…”) and funny clichés (“true indeed, true indeed; indeed its so, indeed it’s so.”). 

Here’s the irony.  The guys actively involved are the worst math students ever.  They take names based on their chief “attribute” (there is a “Kinetic”, a “Magnetic”, a “Sincere”, and a “Dominance” to name a few) and spout off “history” that is – at its least damaging – false and many times racist, sexist and homophobic.  It would make a good neo-Nazi blush. 

But numbers; this is about numbers.  These guys don’t understand numbers.  They have no idea how to perform simple math calculations.  They can’t balance their inmate trust account statements.  Basic items like simple versus compound interest escapes them, yet they profess faith built on numbers.

Linguists will tell you numbers are just a form of language.  Accepting that as true, is it any wonder these guys don’t understand math given their total lack of basic skill with the English language?

The five percenter attraction is built simply on the premise that we, the incarcerated, are victims of an unjust, racist system that seeks to destroy African-American males.  There is much truth in the injustice of the American criminal justice system.  But, the answer is not in the organization of a fringe, race-centric sect that promotes violence and exclusion.

The five percenters have built a cult based on numeric and historic ignorance.  They must be challenged.  That requires – on a system level – a massive overhaul of the criminal justice system.  It also requires education.  Education is the key.  These guys feed off ignorance.  Unfortunately, prison is full of those who were left behind in school and know so very little.

So, day in and day out I find myself being engaged by five percenters to explain history, politics, economics and literature.  It’s a battle worth fighting.  Too many young black men are being lost.

Moral Disconnect

There was a heated outburst between me and two students in here over another inmate.  It all began when a recently released inmate – who these two guys regularly telephone – announced he’d looked the other student up on the internet and found out the man was in on a sex charge (specifically, he’d engaged in sex with a fifteen year-old girl).

I try to take guys as they are in here.  It’s too easy for me to make instant assessments of a man’s makeup without getting to know the man.  And, quite frankly, I am in no position to judge someone else’s criminal failures.  I had a seemingly perfect life which I recklessly risked.

The problem came about when the two “purveyors of virtue” decided everyone needed to know and everyone needed to ostracize the other man.  My friend DC came to me with it.  DC, never one to beat around the bush, told me “this is f---ing me up Larry.  He’s a good guy.  We can’t sign on to this.”  My thoughts exactly.

So I was sitting in my cut, USA Today crossword in hand, when the two approached me.  “We hate snitches, homos, and molesters”, they told me.  “That’s the way you’re supposed to roll in prison.”

Funny, I told them.  I knew at least three of the guys they run with are in on rape charges, and at least one puts the moves on young inmates in the bathroom.  Can you guess how the tension level rose?

The truth is this:  when drug dealers, or murderers, or even embezzlers think they’re better than someone else’s criminal failures they can’t see the biblical lag in their own eyes.  It’s like declaring half the country doesn’t like you because they like government handouts (sorry Mitt but that was butt dumb!).

I’m not an apologist for sex offenders.  They – like all of us – have to atone for their sins and bear consequences for their actions.  But, my faith tells me to be more Godly.  And that means seeing others as He sees me.

Living in here is tough.  It’s demeaning and lonely and at times dangerous.  Still, right is right and sometimes forgiveness matters more than anything.

Shave Policy

DOC lost another Federal lawsuit a few months ago.  A Muslim inmate requested permission to grow a beard.  The request was denied.  So he did what any right thinking American would do.  He sued.

Virginia is one of a handful of states (almost all part of the “Old Confederacy”) which enforces a rigorous grooming policy:  short cropped hair, moustaches only.  For years Rastafarians have done ten or more years in the hole refusing to cut their dreadlocks.  DOC, however, had an exception to the policy.  An inmate could be given a medical “save profile” if the inmate could establish contact dermatitis from shaving.  As a result, dozens of inmates – African American mostly – have shave exemptions, allowing them full beards.  The policy also generated an inmate business in forged profiles.

Last spring, a Federal judge ruled that if DOC could create a medical exception, then “security” isn’t the primary reason for the facial hair ban (DOC argued that inmates could grow beards to hide knives or contraband or after an escape to alter their appearance).  “A religious exception must also be employed”, the judge ruled.  But religious exemptions would require DOC to evaluate each individual request on an objective testing of “their sincerely held religious beliefs”.  That would create way too much work for each facility.

So DOC capitulated.  Like the boxer who said “no mas”, DOC dropped the shave profile.  Beginning October 1^st, any male inmate can grow a one quarter inch full beard.  The only limitation:  the inmate must pay $2 for a “beard id” to go with his “no beard id”. 

That’s another court loss for DOC and another brick out of the wall of the argument that any policy labeled security is sacrosanct.  Fact is, DOC spends way too much time at its lower level facilities enforcing arcane rules that serve neither security nor rehabilitation purposes.  Me?  I’m staying beard free…for now.

Man Down

Three guys in our building spent the better part of last week hospitalized in the prison ward at MCV Hospital in Richmond.  All three were suffering from bacterial pneumonia.  All three saw rapid weight loss, excessive fluid buildup in their lungs, and swelling of their heart linings.  That all three had requested medical care only to be repeatedly denied both sick call access and emergency medical treatment over the past two weeks should come as no surprise.  Medical care sucks in prison.

Virginia outsources most prison medical care.  And as a recent Federal lawsuit brought on behalf of female inmates at Fluvanna Corrections Center can attest, adequate care is not the driving force behind those outsourcing contracts.  For the state, it’s simply cost; and for the company it’s purely profit.  Prison Medical companies have sprung up to provide medical care at a fixed price, per inmate.  Every time an inmate requires “extra” visits beyond nurse/gatekeeper reviews; testing or specialized treatment, the medical provider’s profit margin is squeezed.

For the Commonwealth, medical care for inmates pushes DOC’s budget even higher.  Rather than re-considering their antiquated – and failed – policy of lengthening sentences for all, not just violent, felonies, Virginia DOC willingly outsources more and more of its obligations.  The problem is DOC pays – you the taxpayer pay – every time more outsourced medical care leads to hospitalization.

Inmates are, generally, not folks who had regular access to healthcare before incarceration.  Thrust them into the cesspool that is an ordinary prison, with HIV positive inmates sleeping beside Hepatitis C inmates, with filth and dirt and bodily fluids lurking in every corner and it’s a no brainer.  Guys will get deathly ill and a few – too many – will die.  And poor medical care and death lends to lawsuits, lawsuits paid by taxpayers.

Our three college students, all young and healthy and mid-twenties will survive…this time.  But what about next time?  Why does it take collapsing in the chow hall with a fever to get medical attention?  Why do guys collapse in buildings every week and officers casually walk in and radio “man down” and then wait five minutes for a nurse and stretcher to be pushed up the boulevard?

Why?  Because the system is overwhelmed.  The politicians didn’t tell the truth about the real costs of locking a man up.

Guys get rushed to MCV near death.  The system goes on.  Me?  I keep running and taking my vitamins.